Kael didn't run.
Not because he was brave. Not because he was stupid.But because the system was watching, and fleeing meant confirming its suspicions.
So he stood, breath calm, pulse steady——while the glass around him shimmered like a veil made of lies.
The reflection was gone now. No copy. No glitch. Just him, and the silence that came after a scream no one else heard.
[System Notice: Unauthorized entity detected in Zone: Core Mirror.][Trace level: 89%. Imminent Lockdown in T-minus 00:01:58]
He exhaled.
Less than two minutes before the system executed a "lockdown," whatever that meant in a world where even reality felt corrupted.
Kael turned away from the mirror's remnants. His boots crunched over fractured code, the tiles beneath his feet flickering between stone and wireframe. The walls were beginning to pixelate again.
"Where would I go," he whispered, "if I was never supposed to be here?"
He reached into his jacket. Not for a weapon. But for the tiny shard he'd pocketed back in Chapter 4—the glitched piece of memory he hadn't dared to plug into his neural port.
Until now.
The shard buzzed faintly, as if resisting his grip.
[Warning: Foreign Data Detected. Executing Manual Override Will Result in Sanction.][Execute Anyway? Y/N]
He pressed Y.
Pain bloomed behind his eyes. Not a sting—an unraveling. Like his thoughts were being unzipped from inside out.
MEMORY STREAM INITIATED
A corridor. Blue lights humming. People in white coats—faces blurry, but they all looked scared."Why is he active again?" someone said."His sequence was locked—this shouldn't be happening."Then a voice, clearer than the rest:
"You don't understand. He wasn't just deleted. He was exiled."
Kael gasped, falling to his knees.
Exiled.
That word clung to his spine like static.
[System Notice: Trace Level 92%. Lockdown in 00:01:12]
The system was accelerating.
Kael's fingers found the only real thing left in the room: a trapdoor beneath the tiled floor, now flickering like a cheap hologram. He hadn't seen it before. But the shard had. It showed him.
He pried it open.
Below was darkness. Not digital—not glowing blue grids or circuitry.Just real, dirty, forgotten black.
A crawlspace.A tunnel.Maybe a grave.
He didn't hesitate.
He dropped into the unknown.
The tunnel stank of oil, mold, and burnt data.
He crawled for what felt like minutes, knees scraping, the walls so narrow his shoulders ached.There were no system notices down here. No flashing UI. Just his own thoughts.
And then—
A whisper.
"You shouldn't be alive."
He froze.
It wasn't the system. It wasn't his echo.It was… a voice, in the tunnel.Real. Raspy. Coming from ahead.
Kael crawled forward.
The tunnel opened into a chamber that looked like an abandoned server room, except it was filled with bones.
Human skulls. Ribs. Digitized spine remains woven with old-world wiring.Everywhere he looked, the dead stared back—mouths open like they died mid-scream.
And at the center of it all:
A man.Tall, gaunt, wrapped in broken wiring like a robe. His face was made of cracked porcelain and steel, with a dozen small screens flickering across it.
"You've finally fallen," the man rasped. "Exile."
Kael stepped forward, swallowing bile.
"You know me?"
The man didn't laugh. His eyes blinked—once, twice—and the screens across his face rearranged.
[ERROR: FILE NOT FOUND][ERROR: FILE NOT FOUND][KAEL][EXILE][GLITCHED ENTITY CLASS-0]
"You were the first," the man said. "The first they tried to erase."
Kael's heart pounded. "I don't understand. Why?"
The man's fingers twitched.
"Because you asked questions. Because you noticed the code bleeding through the world before anyone else. Because you remembered."
Flash.
Another memory hit him like a sledgehammer.
He was in a white room. No windows. No sound. Strapped to a metal chair.A voice said:
"This isn't reincarnation, Kael. It's reconstruction.""You're not being rewarded. You're being rewritten."
Kael staggered.
"I was… what? A test subject?"
The man nodded slowly. "You were meant to fail. To be corrupted and discarded. But your code never settled. It kept changing."
Kael gritted his teeth. "So they tried to kill me."
"No," the man whispered. "They tried to forget you."
The walls of the chamber buzzed. System signals were getting closer.
[Trace Level: 97%][WARNING: SYSTEM CLEANSE IMMINENT]
"They're coming," Kael said, turning.
The man didn't move. "Let them."
"I'm not ready to die," Kael said.
"You're not here to die. You're here to break them," the man replied.
He pointed to the far wall, where a shattered mirror reflected nothing at all.
"Behind that is the Backdoor. The place where deleted code dreams."
Kael didn't ask questions. He ran.
The closer he got, the louder the system warnings became.
[Trace Level: 99.1%][Final Warning: Unauthorized Exile Entity Crossing Forbidden Boundary][All Cleanser Units Deployed]
The mirror cracked more with each step.
He raised a fist.
And punched through it.
The world blinked.
Kael opened his eyes.
He was standing in a field.
Green. Open. Peaceful.
The sky was... too perfect. The wind looped the same breeze every five seconds. Birds chirped in identical patterns.
"This isn't real," he whispered.
A voice behind him said, "No. But it's yours now."
Kael turned.
The man was gone.
In his place stood a child—his own younger self, maybe ten years old, but eyes glowing red with system code.
"You broke the simulation," the child said. "Welcome to the Unloaded World."
Kael stared.
"The what?"
"The place where stories go before they're born. The world outside of fate."
The child smiled.
"You were never a villain, Kael. You were the glitch that made the story real."