The flicker was gone in a second—but Kazen felt it burned into his mind like a brand.
That silhouette. It hadn't just watched them.
It had recognized him.
System overlays returned with a cascade of low-priority notifications, each blinking with the same tag:
> SYSTEM ANOMALY: User ID 000 activity detected across layers
> Observation nodes compromised
> Decoding interrupted — Resyncing…
Patchling hovered lower, her voice hushed. "That silhouette... it wasn't just code. It had form data—real data."
Rael drew his blade again, instinctive. "Can it cross into our side?"
Oroth answered without turning. "It already has. That was its handshake."
Kazen opened his menu again. The Origin Trace process had stalled at 76%.
But one new line had been added:
> Link Detected: User 000 — [Proto-Root: K_Origin/Alpha/Ξ]
That last symbol was unknown. The system didn't even have a name for it.
"This whole world," Kazen said, "was a backup copy."
Rael blinked. "A backup of what?"
"My first life," Kazen whispered. "Or maybe my first role. Before I ever logged in… I was part of the code."
Oroth dropped the fractured core, letting it sink into the dirt. "Then the war we're fighting isn't between users and system errors."
"It's between fragments of memory," Patchling added, finishing his thought. "Each one thinking it's the original."
A pulse rippled through the air. Not a sound, not light—just pressure. A shift.
Then another voice spoke, through every player's interface at once.
> SYSTEM OVERRIDE INCOMING
> Authority Node Transfer Detected
> Welcome, User 000 – ROOT ACCESS GRANTED
All of them froze as their surroundings shimmered—turning crystalline for a moment, as if the world was being re-rendered.
And then the silhouette appeared again. No longer flickering. No longer distant.
This time, it stepped through the interface, pixel by pixel, until it stood before them—cloaked in corrupted code, with a face that looked almost like Kazen's.
But older. Worn. Wiser. And deeply broken.
"I am the first system," it said. "And you, Kazen… are my rollback."