At first, it was easy to ignore.
The world was so beautiful —
raw and unfinished, sure —
but alive.
We built with our bare hands and fragments of memories.
Houses shaped from living wood.
Streams rerouted with glowing stones.
Towers stitched from spiderglass and woven light.
The survivors — hundreds now — thrived on the new land.
We called it "Solace."
A new name.
A new future.
---
But the world… wasn't perfect.
Sometimes, you could hear it —
at night, when the winds died down —
a faint whispering in the soil.
A crackle in the air.
Not the voice of the new world.
Something older.
Something left behind.
---
It started with glitches.
Small things.
A patch of ground where grass grew backward —
spiraling inwards like a whirlpool.
A river that refused to reflect the sky, showing endless black instead.
Lights flickering under the mountains at midnight —
like veins of dying stars pulsing beneath the earth.
---
I noticed it first when I was repairing a broken relay near the settlement's core.
One moment, my tools were steady.
The next, the ground beneath me… twitched.
Literally shifted —
like an eye closing.
---
> [GLITCH DETECTED.]
[ANALYSIS: UNKNOWN ORIGIN.]
[WARNING: OLD CODE SIGNATURE.]
My blood ran cold.
The Old Code.
Remnants of the corrupted Architect systems —
the ones I thought I'd erased.
But some pieces…
they clung to existence.
---
Later that night, as I walked back toward Solace, I found a child standing alone at the town's edge.
She was staring into the forest — silent, unblinking.
When I crouched beside her and asked what she saw, she only whispered:
"It's calling me."
"It knows my name."
And in the dark between the trees,
I swore I saw something shift.
A ripple.
A memory.
Watching.
---
The next morning, two settlers were missing.
Their footprints ended at the river that reflected black.
No sign of struggle.
No signs of violence.
Just… gone.
---
> [NEW MISSION: INVESTIGATE CODE DISTORTIONS.]
[WARNING: ANOMALY ESCALATING.]
---
We gathered a search team.
Veterans of collapse-worlds.
Old hackers.
Blade-runners.
Patchers.
People who knew what it meant to lose everything — and still keep moving.
We equipped ourselves with the strongest stabilizers and protective weaves.
And as the twin suns dipped below the horizon, staining the world purple and gold,
we marched toward the forest edge.
Toward the whispering trees.
Toward the place where the Old Code still dreamed of control.
---
I tightened my gloves.
Felt the thread of creation pulse faintly in my veins.
This wasn't over.
The world was ours now.
But the past —
the broken echoes —
weren't ready to let go.
Not yet.
---
Beyond the river, the forest loomed.
Dark.
Twisting.
Alive in ways it shouldn't be.
Waiting.
---
I drew my tool — now reforged, less weapon, more beacon.
Its light cut through the mist, steady and sure.
And with the others behind me,
I stepped into the woods.