The cavern didn't just tremble.
It shuddered, like something enormous was breathing beneath the world.
Dust drifted from the ceiling in slow spirals. The broken crystal still glowed faintly on the floor, its red pulse beating out of sync with Erevan's own heartbeat. Each light ripple warped the air, distorting the edges of the room as if reality couldn't decide what version of itself it wanted to be.
Kaelith swore under her breath. "Tell me that's not—"
The rest of her words vanished when the light in the center of the chamber tore open.
Not flashed, not appeared.
It tore, like the fabric of the world had been peeled away to reveal something raw underneath.
Erevan staggered back, arm thrown up against the glare. The air was filled with the sound of breaking code—fragments of static whispers and high, glassy tones that made his teeth ache.
And from that storm, something began to form.
At first, it was just a shape—tall, thin, vaguely humanoid. Then the details started to bleed in: a body made of fractured light and shadows, a face that flickered between a dozen wrong versions of a human face, never settling for more than a heartbeat.
And when it opened its eyes, the entire chamber went still.
Two points of red, burning through the dark like dying stars.
Erevan forgot how to breathe.
The System flickered across his vision, panicked for the first time.
([Unknown Projection Detected])
([Codex Signature: Fragment Anomaly])
([Warning: Cognitive Hazard – Avoid Direct Eye Contact])
Too late.
The thing looked at him.
And in that instant, he felt it crawl behind his eyes—like his mind had been pulled open and someone else was reading through him, page by page.
He heard whispers.
Not words.
Memories trying to rearrange themselves into something they weren't.
Kaelith's voice broke through the static. "Erevan—move!"
He stumbled back, forcing his gaze away. His vision glitched, literal pixels tearing through his field of view. "It's—looking at me—no, it's—"
He didn't finish. The Projection's hand rose, and the air itself fractured.
A ripple of force swept through the room, flinging both of them off their feet. Stone cracked. The pool of light splintered into crimson shards that hung suspended, frozen midair.
Erevan hit the ground hard, the impact driving the breath from his lungs. His HUD flickered violently.
([HP: 72/100])
([Status Effect: Data Corruption, Minor])
He groaned, clutching his head. His pulse thudded in his ears like a war drum. "Kaelith—"
"I'm fine," she lied through her teeth, nocking an arrow that trembled slightly in her grip. "It's not solid—I can't get a read on it!"
The Projection tilted its head, studying them. Its form glitched, splitting into ghostly afterimages. When it spoke, the sound didn't travel through air—it vibrated inside their skulls.
You shouldn't have come here.
Erevan's blood ran cold. He didn't know how he knew, but it wasn't a threat. It was... pity.
He clenched his jaw, forcing the tremor out of his voice. "Yeah, well, we're kind of bad at taking hints."
The thing stepped forward.
Every footfall echoed wrong—off-beat, lagging a second behind the motion. The ground beneath it warped, pixels sliding like melting ice. Reality bent around its edges.
Erevan backed up until his shoulder hit the wall. "Kaelith, suggestions?"
"Yeah," she whispered. "Run."
The Projection raised its hand again.
This time, Erevan didn't wait. He reached for the fragment in his pouch—the shard that had nearly burned through his palm back in the last chamber. It pulsed now, as if hearing the thing before them.
The System reacted instantly.
([Warning: Fragment Synchronization Attempt Detected])
([Proceed? Y/N])
His thumb twitched over the confirmation.
The Projection's arm came down.
He didn't think. He just shouted, "Yes!"
Light exploded through him. It wasn't pain exactly—it was too much. Like every cell in his body had just been turned into an antenna, and something vast had decided to broadcast through him.
([Anomaly Surge: Activated])
The blast tore across the chamber.
For a heartbeat, Erevan saw the world in outlines—Kaelith's silhouette caught in midair, the Projection's limbs splintering into static, the entire cave frozen in that impossible red glow.
Then the surge hit.
Erevan screamed as the power left his body like a detonating pulse, slamming into the Projection with enough force to shatter the air itself.
The thing stumbled. Its form broke apart in a spray of light, flickering in and out of existence. The cavern's floor split in a spiderweb of red fissures.
And through the static haze, Erevan saw it—just for a second.
A human shape.
Flickering beneath the distortion.
Reaching out to him.
Then it was gone.
He hit the ground hard, gasping, the world snapping back into motion all at once. The light dimmed, the hum softened, and for the first time since the tear opened, there was silence.
His body trembled. His mind buzzed with afterimages.
Kaelith's voice reached him from somewhere close. "What—what did you do?"
He swallowed hard, eyes still locked on the fading light. "I think... I hit it."
The silence didn't last.
It cracked open like glass under a hammer.
The Projection's body convulsed, shattering into a thousand afterimages before reforming all at once. Its scream wasn't sound—it was data tearing, an electronic howl that made Erevan's vision warp into a thousand sharp-edged colors.
Kaelith staggered back, covering her ears even though it didn't help. "You said you hit it—what the hell did you hit it with?!"
"I don't—know!" Erevan shouted over the static storm. "It's not—it's not staying down!"
The cavern trembled again. The broken crystal shards floating around them began to spin faster, drawn into a vortex of red light around the Projection.
Each piece flared, fragments of code twisting through the air like glowing script trying to rebuild itself.
([Anomaly Surge Residual Detected])
([System Instability at 37%])
The number ticked upward.
Erevan's heartbeat pounded to match. His skin felt like it was buzzing with electricity, the residue of that surge still coiling under his ribs, itching to burn again.
The Projection straightened. The static around its face condensed, and for a second, Erevan swore it smiled.
Then it moved.
Faster than anything human, its hand lashed out—Kaelith dove aside just as the air folded where she'd been standing. Stone vaporized into glowing dust.
"Kaelith!"
"I'm fine!" she yelled, already rolling up to one knee and firing. The arrow shattered mid-flight, the light bending away from the creature like it refused to touch it.
Erevan gritted his teeth, sparks snapping off the fragment in his hand. "Come on, come on…"
He reached for that pulse again—the same one that had responded before. The crystal pulsed once, faintly, but this time the System's warning came faster:
([Energy Reserves Depleted])
([Further Surges Risk Neural Collapse])
He barked out a shaky laugh. "Yeah, well, that's kind of the theme tonight."
The Projection blurred again—no footsteps, no motion, just there, its hand driving through the ground where he'd been a second ago. He dove behind a fallen slab, chest heaving, fragments of data still raining from the ceiling.
Kaelith landed beside him, face streaked with dust. "If you're about to tell me you've got a plan—"
"I was really hoping one would show up mid-fight," Erevan cut in, voice trembling with manic energy. "No luck so far."
A sharp laugh escaped her despite everything. "Good. I'd be worried if you suddenly started making sense."
The creature's distorted arm sliced through the stone, cutting their shelter clean in half. Both of them flinched back as shards flew.
Erevan's ears rang. His HUD flickered. The corruption meter spiked.
([Data Corruption: Moderate])
([Perception Error Detected])
For a heartbeat, the world glitched. Kaelith's shape split in two, walls blinked out and back in, the ground under him flickered between stone and black void.
He clamped a hand over his temple, shouting, "It's rewriting the environment!"
Kaelith's reply was half a scream: "Then rewrite harder!"
He didn't know what that meant. But maybe the fragment did.
He pulled it out again, fingers shaking. The red glow had deepened into a violent crimson, pulsing in sync with the Projection's core. Something about it called to him—terrifyingly familiar.
"Erevan—don't—"
He was already doing it.
The world roared.
The fragment flared, its light searing through his veins as if it had found a direct path to his soul. He felt the code unravel around him—no, through him—and for an instant, he wasn't sure if he was standing in a cave anymore or inside some broken engine of a god.
([Anomaly Surge: Overclock Initiated])
The blast erupted outward.
The Projection's body convulsed again, its form dissolving into pure static. The entire chamber cracked—columns buckling, ceiling splitting, chunks of stone falling like a collapsing cathedral.
Kaelith screamed his name, her voice barely audible over the chaos. Erevan barely heard it—his focus locked on the creature flickering in front of him, half-phased, glitching like corrupted light.
He drove the surge through the connection, forcing every ounce of that impossible energy straight into the distortion.
The cavern wailed.
For one impossible second, everything froze again. Light, sound, motion—all caught in a suspended pulse. Erevan stood in the middle of it, body trembling, the world flickering between red and white.
He saw Kaelith reaching for him through the haze.
He saw the Projection collapsing, layers of its face flickering like broken memories.
He saw, in the deepest part of the light, a shadowed figure reaching back.
Then the sound came back all at once.
The surge detonated.
A shockwave tore through the cavern, shredding stone and reality alike. The roof began to fall.
Kaelith lunged toward him, grabbed his wrist, and screamed, "Erevan—MOVE!"
And then the world came down around them.
The world was ending in red light and falling stone.
Kaelith's grip was the only real thing left—rough, steady, alive. She dragged Erevan through the chaos, boots sliding on cracking rock as the cavern disintegrated around them.
"Go, go, go—" she shouted, voice breaking into static as the sound distorted midair.
Chunks of ceiling slammed into the ground behind them. The glow of the Projection's dying form pulsed like a heartbeat gone wrong—each flash tearing another piece out of the cavern's structure.
([System Alert: Cave Collapse Imminent])
([Timer: 00:45])
Erevan's lungs were on fire. Every breath tasted like ash and electricity. "You—you call this a tutorial dungeon?!"
"Less talking, more running!" Kaelith snapped, half laughing, half choking as another shockwave sent them sprawling.
He stumbled forward, dragging himself up on instinct alone. Every nerve screamed. His HP bar hovered dangerously low—red and blinking—but his body didn't care. The adrenaline had burned through the exhaustion, leaving only survival.
Behind them, the Projection's roar fractured through the collapsing cave. It wasn't anger anymore. It sounded almost desperate. Like something trying to hold itself together, and failing.
Erevan glanced back—he wished he hadn't.
The creature's form was coming apart. Not dying, not dissolving—just… unspooling, like data strings snapping loose from its core. For a fleeting heartbeat, he saw something human behind the flicker.
And then it was gone.
The explosion that followed wasn't sound—it was force. The cavern floor heaved like a wave, throwing both of them into the air.
Kaelith hit the ground first, sliding through a rain of pebbles and dust. Erevan crashed beside her, his shoulder screaming in pain. His ears rang so hard he could barely think, but he still saw the System flash in front of him through the blur.
([Enemy Projection Terminated])
([Integrity Status: Fragment Contained])
([Reward: System Points +500])
He lay there for a moment, staring at the glowing text hovering above him, barely breathing. Then, like the universe itself remembered gravity, everything started to collapse again.
Kaelith cursed, grabbed his arm, and yanked him toward a sliver of light breaking through a split in the wall.
They burst through it in a spray of dirt and shattered stone, tumbling onto wet soil and open air.
For a second, Erevan thought the world had gone silent. Then the storm above greeted them with a low, rolling growl of thunder.
He rolled onto his back, chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged gasps. The sky was the color of static—deep gray, stitched with violet lightning. The storm hadn't ended. If anything, it was angrier.
Kaelith fell beside him, her breath ragged but steady. She dropped her bow with a clatter and pressed a trembling hand to her forehead. "We made it," she whispered. "Somehow."
Erevan let out a broken laugh that turned into a cough. "Made it? I think my spine's negotiating a surrender."
She almost smiled. "You're alive. That counts for something."
He tilted his head toward her, still half-dazed. "You say that like it's not a miracle."
For a moment, the only sound was the rain hitting the dirt around them—soft, rhythmic, almost comforting after the chaos. But the quiet didn't last.
Something flickered in the corner of Erevan's vision. A final message.
He turned his head toward it, still breathing hard.
([System Warning: Multiple Fragments Detected in World])
([Estimated Count: 6])
The words burned brighter than the lightning above them.
"Six," he murmured, voice barely audible. "There are six more of those things?"
Kaelith didn't answer right away. She sat up slowly, staring out at the storm. The wind tugged at her hair, rain streaking down her face. "Then this isn't over," she said softly. "That thing—whatever it was—it wasn't an accident."
Erevan closed his eyes, exhaling shakily. "Perfect. Just what I needed. Existential dread and muscle cramps."
She laughed—just once—but there was no humor in it this time.
Above them, the lightning forked again, carving the sky open for a heartbeat. In that flash, Erevan thought he saw something moving in the distance—tall, jagged silhouettes flickering like broken shadows on the horizon.
Maybe it was the storm.
Maybe it wasn't.
Either way, his gut told him the same thing the System had.
This was only the beginning.
([Glitch Storm Duration: 38:19])
And as the rain poured down and the light flickered around them, Erevan finally understood what that meant.
They hadn't survived the anomaly.
They'd woken it up.