The sky above Kael wasn't sky anymore.
It had started to pixelate, fractalizing into shifting data—an aurora of corrupted code—and from beneath it, gravity itself seemed confused. Rocks floated. Trees bent in odd angles. The air pulsed with invisible pressure, like a silent scream stretched across dimensions.
Kael stood at the threshold of the fracture he had opened in the last chapter. The jagged line through the world's reality, humming with raw data, still shimmered behind him. His fingers buzzed faintly from touching it. It had branded something into him—something permanent.
[SYSTEM WARNING: UNRECOGNIZED ENTITY. CODE: "EXILE" STATUS — ACTIVE.]
He didn't flinch this time.
The system had been trying to label him since the moment he woke up here. Villain. Glitched Entity. Anomaly. Now it called him Exile.
He didn't care anymore.
His name was Kael Virellius, and if this world didn't want him… then he'd force it to remember who he was.
Somewhere Between Worlds
Kael wandered forward, leaving behind the broken forest that was no longer bound to physics. Every step forward was like walking through waterlogged data. Places shifted when he looked away. Sometimes his own footsteps echoed before he took them.
In the distance, something towered—a structure unlike anything he had seen before in this realm. It wasn't stone, or wood, or even digital. It looked like compressed memory. It pulsed like a heart trying to forget how to beat.
Kael approached it slowly, fingers brushing against the surface. He felt the world resist.
[ACCESSING RESTRICTED DATA…]
[OVERRIDE ATTEMPT IN PROGRESS…]
[WARNING: THIS MEMORY IS CORRUPT.]
That never stopped him before.
Flashback Triggered
Suddenly, he wasn't standing anymore.
He was falling.
Not physically—but inward, like plummeting into the past. This wasn't one of his usual glitches—no flicker, no static. This was… vivid.
He was sitting in a grand chamber—polished obsidian floors reflecting firelight. A throne room. Not medieval. Not futuristic. Timeless.
He was wearing black gloves. A ring with a crest he didn't recognize glinted on his right hand. Across from him, someone knelt. Someone broken.
"Please… Kael… we didn't mean to erase you…"
The voice echoed. Not out loud. In his bones.
Kael stared at the figure, eyes narrowing. It wasn't just a memory.
It was a conversation he never remembered having.
"Erase me?" he asked, his voice different—deeper, layered, regal, laced with something venomous. "You didn't just erase me. You rewrote me."
The figure trembled.
"You were the Architect. The one who made the original simulations… before the Council decided you were too dangerous."
The words burned into Kael's skull.
Architect.
His pulse stuttered. He tried to move—tried to breathe—but everything was locked.
"I remember ending you," he whispered in the memory. "I remember burning the code that made you possible."
"But you survived," the figure rasped. "Not all of you… but enough to come back."
The Return
Kael's eyes snapped open.
He was on the ground, gasping. The structure had vanished. The memory lingered like ash on his tongue.
He didn't know what disturbed him more: that he had once sat on a throne like a god, or that he might've been erased from existence and still clawed his way back.
His hands shook.
The Architect. The term wasn't metaphorical.
He had built something. This world? A simulation? A prison?
And then… they turned on him.
No wonder the system wanted him dead.
The Others Remember
As Kael continued deeper into this layer of the world, he began to notice… remnants.
Not glitches. People.
Shadows flickering in and out—half-rendered characters that shouldn't have existed. NPCs with no quest markers. Faces that twitched between sadness and madness.
One spoke to him directly.
"You… you're the one who didn't die."
Kael froze.
The figure was childlike, but its eyes were old—too old. It didn't flicker like a ghost. It remembered.
"You were deleted, weren't you?" it asked. "But something stayed behind."
"What are you?" Kael asked, cautious.
"A bug. Like you," it said, then looked up. "But I don't hate you. You were our last chance. The world before this one… it was beautiful. You made it."
"I made it?"
"You made all of us."
It reached out, then dissolved into particles.
Kael didn't know whether to feel guilt or awe.
A New Path Unlocks
[SYSTEM NOTICE: HIDDEN DIRECTORY UNLOCKED.]
["THE VAULT OF ORIGINAL CODE" HAS BEEN REVEALED.]
Kael followed the prompt like a predator scenting blood. Through a corridor made of collapsing binaries, he found himself before a sealed vault. It pulsed with static, each beat matching the rhythm of his heart.
A handprint hovered in the air.
Instinctively, he placed his palm against it.
[RECOGNIZED: KAEL VIRELLIUS // ARCHITECT_ID_00001]
The door melted open.
Inside: silence. Rows of glowing crystal-like cores floated in mid-air, each one a memory, a timeline, a life.
And in the center: a terminal. Old. Pristine. His.
He sat before it.
And for the first time since awakening, Kael felt… whole.
[WELCOME BACK.]
The Decision
The terminal flashed, offering access to everything: deleted scripts, wiped timelines, suppressed identities.
He could see versions of himself:
A tyrant in a golden palace, corrupted by power.
A hero who fell because he loved the wrong person.
A boy who never left Earth, who died in an alley for reasons no one remembered.
So many fragments.
So many lies.
He wasn't just a villain.
He was every version of one.
He reached toward the data stream, fingers hovering.
[DO YOU WISH TO MERGE?]
Kael closed his eyes.
Not yet.
Not until he understood what had broken first.
Final Scene: The Voice Returns
As he turned to leave the vault, the world shuddered. Not like a glitch. Like a presence.
"You weren't supposed to find this, Kael."
The voice.
Not from the system.
From something older.
Kael spun around.
A figure stood at the far end of the vault, cloaked in shadow. Its eyes glowed with understanding.
"You're not just an error anymore," it said. "You're becoming the correction."
And then—
[CHAPTER END]