The word hung in the frigid alley air: broken.
It wasn't an accusation, but a statement of fact. The way the woman, Lyra, pronounced it sent a chill down Kaelen's spine that had nothing to do with the night's breeze.
His overloaded brain struggled to process the flood of data. Before him stood a Level 52 Paladin, an elite warrior of the highest order. Her Strength statistic—68—was an absurd, cruel joke compared to his own pathetic 8. If she wished, she could turn him into a smear on the cobblestones before his [heart_rate] had time to spike to a new record.
But it was the other line, the one glowing with the ominous red of a system error, that held him paralyzed: Faith: 9 (CORRUPTED).
How did she know? How could one broken variable detect another?
"I don't know what you're talking about," Kaelen muttered, his survival instinct defaulting to the most basic denial. He took a step back, but his shoulders hit the cold brick wall. There was nowhere to go.
"Don't lie," Lyra said, her voice low and flat. She stepped forward, her presence seeming to suck the thin air out of the alley. "I can feel it. It's like a dissonant note in a perfect song. Most people don't hear it; they're too absorbed in the melody. But me… I only hear the dissonances now."
Her gaze was intense, piercing. Kaelen had the unnerving sensation she was looking past his skin, at the code only he was supposed to see.
"Ever since… since everything went wrong," she continued, a flicker of bitterness tinging her voice, "the world has felt different. False. Like a tapestry with loose threads. And you," she jabbed a leather-gloved finger toward his chin, "you're a knot where there shouldn't be one."
Kaelen swallowed hard. She didn't see the System. Not like he did. But her own corruption had made her sensitive to its flaws. She was a faulty antivirus program that had become an expert at detecting other viruses.
[user.kaelen] Attempting Deep Read: [entity.lyra]. [system.kernel] Processing… [system.kernel] Access to recent status logs granted.
New lines of text bloomed beneath her profile, a log of recent, painful events.
Event: Expulsion from the Holy Order. Reason: Failure of the Trial of Faith. Marked as 'Disgraced'. Event: Escape from the Dawn Temple. Pursued by Order Inquisitors. Current Status: Wounded (Minor), Exhausted, Paranoid.
She was a fugitive, too. A broken piece the machine was trying to eject. Just like him. This didn't make her an ally. It just made her equally desperate, which was, perhaps, even more dangerous.
"Leave me alone," Kaelen said, trying to keep his voice steady. "I have nothing to do with your problems."
In a blur of motion, she moved. Her speed was inhuman. A hand shot out, grabbing the front of his archivist's tunic and slamming him back against the wall. The impact knocked the air from his lungs. His [Attribute: Strength] was so negligible he couldn't even struggle against her grip.
"Everyone I meet has to do with my problems now," she hissed, her face inches from his. Her stormy grey eyes searched his, looking for something. "The Order is hunting me. The city guard is looking for a 'dangerous heretic.' And now, I feel a new disturbance in the city, something cold and soulless, and I find you, dripping with the same wrongness. So, you're either going to tell me what you are, or I'm going to start taking pieces off you until I find an answer."
Panic threatened to overwhelm him. He was going to die in this alley. But beneath the panic, his archivist's intellect, now augmented by the Codex, was working furiously. His Strength was useless. His Agility was a joke. But he had a weapon she couldn't possibly comprehend. He had access to her files.
He needed to unbalance her. To shock her so completely that her physical superiority became irrelevant for a crucial moment. He had to show her that he knew more than was humanly possible.
"Your Trial of Faith," Kaelen gasped, the words a struggle. "It was on the twenty-third day of the Pale Moon cycle. The trial was to protect the Flame of Purity. But the Flame didn't react to you. It went out. They called you 'The Soulless Paladin'."
Lyra's grip loosened. Just a fraction, but it was enough. The shock in her eyes was electric, shattering her steel mask. No one should have known those details. They were the deepest, most shameful secrets of her fall.
"How…?"
Kaelen pressed his advantage, his words now flowing faster. "They marked you as 'Disgraced' and were going to 'purify' you at dawn. But Captain Valerius, your mentor, created a distraction. He sacrificed himself to buy you time to escape. You carry his dagger in your left boot. It's the only item you own with the status [Loyalty]."
This time, she let go. Lyra stumbled back, her hand flying instinctively to her boot. Her face, once a fortress of suspicion, was now cracked wide open by disbelief and fear.
"What are you?" she whispered, her voice stripped of all threat, leaving only raw vulnerability. "A demon? A mind reader?"
Kaelen rubbed his chest, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm like you," he said, his mind finally finding the perfect analogy. "I'm a mistake. But I'm not just the error. I'm the man who found the error report. I can read what's broken in the world. I read… your glitch."
Lyra's gaze swept over him, seeing him in a new light. The suspicion was still there, but now it was mixed with a glimmer of something else. A desperate hope. "Can you… can you fix it?"
"I don't know," Kaelen admitted honestly. "I just found out about all this. And right now, I'm more concerned with not being 'deleted' than I am with performing repairs."
It was then that a new sound reached his ears, cutting through the tense silence of the alley. It wasn't the sound of heavy-booted city guards. It was a low, rhythmic hum, almost subliminal. A sound that felt both digital and organic.
Kaelen's Codex reacted instantly, new notifications flashing in bright, urgent red across his vision.
[MAXIMUM WARNING] Entropy Signature (5.5%) detected. [MAXIMUM WARNING] Dispatching Codex Purge Unit.
Entity: Codex Purifier (x3) inbound. ETA: 45 seconds. Primary Objective: Sterilize Entropy source [user.kaelen]. Secondary Objective: Sterilize collateral anomaly [entity.lyra].
"We have to go," Kaelen said, panic returning with full force. "Now!"
"Go where? What is it?" Lyra demanded, her warrior's stance returning as she scanned the mouth of the alley.
"It's not your Inquisitors. It's… system maintenance," Kaelen said, the words sounding insane even to his own ears. "The things hunting me… they're hunting you now, too. My error made yours visible to them."
The humming was growing louder. Lyra could hear it now, her head tilting. She couldn't see the code, but Kaelen knew she could feel the wrongness they emitted.
"The main street is a trap," she said, her tactical mind taking over. "The sewer system. We can get to the lower districts without being seen."
She looked at him, a decision made in her grey eyes. He was a dangerous anomaly, a terrifying mystery. But he was also the only other person in the world who understood that the tapestry was frayed. And his enemies were now hers.
Without another word, she grabbed his arm. Her grip was firm, without hesitation.
"Don't fall behind, error reader," she said, her voice harsh but carrying a new undercurrent of reluctant alliance. "The maintenance around here is hell."
She pulled him toward the darkness at the back of the alley, toward a sewer grate he never would have noticed. They plunged into the underbelly of Aethel, leaving behind the rising, inhuman hum of the Purifiers who were coming to erase their names from the manuscript of the world. The editor and his first syntax error, now partners in flight.