The cavern was still.
Even the subtle hum that had resonated through the stone had quieted. The orb, now stable, pulsed softly—a rhythmic thrum that filled the space. The corrupted entity was gone, its fragmented data now absorbed by the reformatting pulse Ren had triggered. For a brief moment, it seemed like peace had settled over the area. But Ren couldn't shake the feeling that something far more significant lay beyond the surface.
He wiped his brow, exhaustion settling into his bones. The fight had taken its toll, but there was still work to be done.
"We should move before anything else happens," Ren said, glancing over his shoulder to check on the others.
Lira was still standing, eyes wide, her breath shallow as she processed the encounter. Eon, ever the pragmatist, was already surveying the surroundings, scanning the remnants of the corrupted entity that had once hovered in the air. His scanner beeped erratically as it analyzed the data.
"This place…" Eon began, his voice low, "It's not just broken. It's... fractured. Like parts of it are trying to rebuild themselves, but it's not doing it the right way."
Ren's brows furrowed. "Fractured?"
"Yeah," Eon continued, kneeling down and pointing to a jagged crack in the stone floor, where the surface seemed to glitch in and out of reality, like an image buffering. "It's like we're standing in between two realities—like the code here was never meant to merge, but it's still trying to do it anyway. These glitches... they're more than just errors. They're ruptures."
Ren nodded slowly, trying to wrap his head around Eon's words. "So, this entire place... it's part of the Old Code, but it's also becoming something else?"
"Exactly," Eon replied. "It's like it's being overwritten... or maybe it's trying to overwrite us."
Before Ren could respond, a soft click echoed from the far end of the cavern.
Lira stiffened. "Did you hear that?"
Ren held up a hand, signaling for silence. His heart skipped a beat as the walls of the cavern seemed to tremble. Something was moving, but not in a way that felt natural. The air shimmered in waves, as if the space itself was bending.
A silhouette emerged from the shadows, a figure cloaked in darkness. Its shape shifted in and out of focus, the contours of its body constantly changing, like it was caught in a glitchy loop.
Ren instinctively reached for his Thread Splicer, stepping in front of Lira and Eon.
The figure's voice echoed, distorted and layered. It spoke not in words, but in fragments of language—broken sentences, half-formed phrases, like data corrupted beyond recognition.
> "You... should... not be here... You are... not meant to be."
Ren's grip on his weapon tightened, a cold chill spreading through his chest. The voice... it wasn't human. It was something older, something far more ancient than the corrupted entity they had faced earlier.
"We've heard that before," Ren muttered, his voice barely audible. "The echoes of the Old Code. This... this thing isn't just a glitch. It's something else."
The figure flickered, the static surrounding it growing in intensity, distorting its form further. As it stepped forward, the ground beneath it warped, the stones shifting and undulating like waves on an ocean.
Eon swore under his breath, adjusting his scanner. "This isn't just an archive node or a corrupted system entity. This is a remnant."
Ren's stomach sank. A remnant—a piece of code, a fragment of an old reality, preserved in isolation, forever trapped in a loop. These remnants weren't supposed to be active. They were supposed to be dormant, memories of a world that no longer existed.
The figure stepped closer, its presence becoming more solid. It raised one hand, and in the air before them, data shards began to swirl into existence—fragments of code suspended in mid-air.
"You... are not part of the protocol," it hissed, its voice glitching. "You… don't belong here."
Ren's heart hammered in his chest. "What are you talking about?" he demanded, his tone sharp, trying to make sense of the entity's cryptic words. "We're just trying to survive!"
The figure's form flickered violently. It shuddered, as if caught between multiple layers of existence. "Survival? No... Survival is not for you. The protocol... is broken. You are the error. The 404."
Ren's blood ran cold. The 404. The error code that had become synonymous with this world—the constant reminder that things were wrong, that they had never been right.
"We are the 404?" Ren echoed, the realization hitting him hard. "We... are the mistake?"
The figure did not respond. Instead, it raised both hands, and the air itself seemed to distort in response, swirling violently. Shards of data rained down from the sky, glinting like broken glass, and Ren instinctively raised his hands to shield himself.
A ripple of energy emanated from the figure, and in that moment, the ground began to fracture. The very foundation of the cavern trembled, as if it were being split apart by an invisible force. The air buzzed with an unnatural energy, and the orb—still pulsing gently in the distance—flared in response, casting eerie, shifting shadows across the walls.
"You... should not be," the remnant hissed again, its voice now growing stronger, more coherent. "You are the infection. You must be deleted."
Ren's mind raced. The remnant's power was building, the very structure of the world around them collapsing under its influence. The orb's pulse was accelerating, syncing with the entity's rhythm.
"We need to get to the orb," Ren said urgently, his eyes darting between the entity and the unstable energy building in the cavern. "We can't let it—"
Before he could finish, the remnant's voice cracked through the air once more.
"No. You will not leave. You will not escape the error. You will be part of it."
With a final, deafening shriek, the remnant launched itself forward, its form elongating like a wave of corrupted code. The ground beneath Ren's feet shook violently as the world around them fractured into glitches, cracks of unstable data spreading across the cavern floor.
Ren's eyes widened in horror as the reality around them seemed to twist. They had no more time. They had to fight—or they would be erased.