The world inside The Hatchery seemed to shrink, the cacophony of whispers and dealings fading to a distant hum. The only things that existed were the table, the empty chair, and the man's eyes. They were a calm, unnatural cyan-blue, the color of a winter sky in a digital world. There were no pupils, just a steady, deep glow. Kaelen felt a chilling, invasive sensation, as if his own code, his most intimate interface with the Codex, was being scanned, read, and judged. The command in the book was clear: APPROACH. It was an order disguised as an invitation, and Kaelen knew he had no choice but to obey.
With a heart hammering against his ribs in a rhythm his own internal system registered as [Status: High Anxiety], Kaelen took the first step. Every movement felt sluggish, deliberate. He could feel Lyra's gaze on his back, a protective, tense presence in the crowd. She was his strongest chess piece, but he was walking into a game whose rules he didn't even know. The man didn't move as Kaelen approached, the murmuring of the hall seeming to quiet as he passed. The man's composure was absolute, that of a statue that had sat in this forgotten corner since the beginning of time.
Kaelen sat in the flimsy wooden chair opposite him. The silence stretched, heavy with meaning. Kaelen glanced at the man's hands, at the wordless book. He tried his Read on the man himself, a desperate gambit to gain any kind of leverage. The result was a wall of pure denial.
Entity: [CLASSIFIED] Class: [CLASSIFIED] Threat Level: [ERROR: Immeasurable] Status: Observing…
It was like trying to read a book's title through a lead cover. For the first time, his fundamental ability had utterly failed.
The man smiled, a minimal twitch of the lips that didn't reach his cyan eyes. "Entropy Level: 6.0%," he said. His voice was calm and uninflected, yet each word resonated directly in Kaelen's mind, bypassing his ears entirely. "You're getting sloppy, Archivist. Leaving such an obvious trail."
The word "Archivist" hit Kaelen like a physical blow. It was his identity, his past, the key to how all of this began. "Who are you?" Kaelen asked, his voice emerging steadier than he felt.
"I am the question you should have asked before you opened the book," the man replied, his head tilting slightly. "I am the consequence of curiosity. Some call me a Moderator. Others, a janitor. Think of me as the antibody for a very specific disease. The one you carry."
"I'm not a disease."
"No? You are an 'Initiation Anomaly.' A rare and highly unstable event where a sentient being, through a key-artifact like the Codex you carry, gains unauthorized write-access to reality's source code. You're not using magic, Archivist. You're hacking existence. And every command you run, every little 'Edit,' leaves data debris behind. That is your Entropy. A stain that corrupts and destabilizes the System."
The torrent of information was overwhelming, but Kaelen clung to every word. Initiation Anomaly. Key-artifact. Write-access. They were terms from a world he could barely conceive of. "So you're like a Guardian? You've come to delete me?"
The man made a sound that might have been a chuckle. "Comparing me to a Guardian is like comparing a surgeon to a leech. Guardians are automated antivirus programs. Brute-force, inefficient, and loud. They follow the Entropy trail and try to sterilize the source. I, on the other hand, am here to assess the nature of the infection. Do you pose an existential threat to the stability of this regional… 'server' of reality, or can you be made… useful?"
"Useful for what?"
"To clean up messes, of course," the Moderator said. "Your 'other sharks,' as my message mentioned. They are the Paradox Hunters. Entities, some of them former Anomalies like you, who have learned to consume Entropy. They hunt new initiates to steal their artifacts and their power. Your 6.0% Entropy signature isn't just a flare for the Guardians. It's a dinner bell for the Hunters. And there is already one in this city, drawn not by you, yet, but by another, much larger system flaw."
Kaelen felt a profound cold settle in his stomach. He wasn't the one being hunted. He was the bait for a much larger predator.
"What do you want from me?" Kaelen asked.
"I want you to clean up your own mess, and perhaps a few others along the way," the Moderator said, his expression turning serious. "There is a 'Reality Loop' running in the sewers beneath the Textile District. A temporal event is stuck on repeat, generating a massive amount of background Entropy. It is what's attracting the Hunter. The Guardians can't fix it; they aren't designed to solve paradoxes, only to eliminate their sources. But you… you with your 'Edit' access, you can enter the loop, find the broken variable causing it, and 'debug' it."
It was a mission. An impossible task given by an incomprehensible entity.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I revoke your access," the Moderator said, his voice losing all inflection. "I quarantine you. I wipe your memory and leave you a vegetable in the back of this den. And then the Hunter will come, and without your power, it will dissect you out of curiosity. Or, perhaps, I will simply hand you over to the Hunter as a gesture of goodwill. Your cooperation is not requested, Archivist. It is the only variable that ensures your continued survival."
The ultimatum hung between them, cold and absolute. Kaelen felt the walls of his reality closing in. He had escaped the library, a place of fixed rules, only to find the outside world was a prison with far more complex and deadly ones. The Moderator was no friend. He was a ruthless system administrator. Kaelen was a faulty program with two options: become a useful debugging tool, or be uninstalled.
The irony was crushing. He, who had gained the power to rewrite the world, was now being forced to work as its janitor. His fantasy of power had morphed into a sentence of cosmic community service.
He thought of Lyra. The message had said to come alone. Did the Moderator know she was here? Of course, he did. He probably saw the link between them, the lines of code that bound them in their flight. The order to come alone wasn't about security; it was a test of obedience. An implicit threat. The Moderator didn't even need to mention her to remind Kaelen of who truly held the power. He wasn't a player. He was a pawn. But even pawns could topple kings if they made it to the other side of the board. And right now, the only path forward was through this "Reality Loop." His archivist's mind was already working the problem. A loop. A repeating event. That implied a cause, a start condition, and a failure in the end condition. It was a puzzle. And if there was one thing Kaelen knew how to do, it was solve puzzles based on information.
"How do I find this loop?" Kaelen asked, tacitly accepting the mission.
"Your Read already feels it, even if you don't know what to look for," the Moderator said. "You feel that background static in the city? That hum of 'wrongness' that led you to the Paladin? Follow it to its source. In the Textile District sewers, you will find an area where time itself seems to stutter. The entrance will be marked by a symbol: a circle biting its own tail."
Ouroboros. The symbol of infinite repetition. It was a clear, almost theatrical signpost.
"And the Hunter?"
"It is still circling, trying to pinpoint the source of the disturbance. If you are fast and quiet, you can get in, solve the problem, and get out before it realizes what has happened. Your reward will be your survival, and a decrease in your own Entropy level. The System rewards maintenance."
"And if I fail?"
"Don't," the Moderator said, his voice making it clear there was no second chance.
He closed his wordless book, the gesture seeming to finalize the conversation. He stood, his presence feeling both overwhelming and utterly insignificant, as if he could vanish into the crowd at any moment.
Kaelen felt one last question burning in his throat. "Wait. How do I find you again? How do I contact you?"
The Moderator paused for an instant, not quite turning back. A glimpse of those cyan eyes met Kaelen's.
"Don't worry, Archivist," he said, and his physical form began to fray at the edges, dissolving into thousands of cyan light pixels that faded into the air. "I'm always watching my favorite anomaly."
In a blink, he was gone. The chair was empty. The book had vanished. It was as if he had never been there at all.