The penguin refused to leave.
Riven Arclight had tried everything short of begging. He'd shooed it, bribed it with crumbs from his inventory, even politely asked if it could just… de-summon itself and go home. But the small creature waddled along happily, wizard hat perched jauntily on its head, quacking every few minutes as though it were casting spells on invisible enemies.
Kaelith's silver eyes narrowed as she trudged through the fractured plains behind him. Her bow stayed ready, but her patience was fraying like a rope left in the sun. "Why is it still following us?" she asked, voice edged with exasperation.
"Temporary companion," Riven said, waving his hand casually, as if the words explained everything. "And temporary could mean ten minutes… or ten years. Who knows with this broken system?"
The penguin sneezed suddenly, releasing a puff of frost that coated Riven's boots. He lifted a foot and squinted at the ice. "See?" he said. "Pure value right here."
Kaelith muttered something under her breath in Elvish, the kind of muttering Riven was fairly certain translated to I will murder you in your sleep.
Ahead, the fractured plains stretched endlessly. The ground split into glowing cracks, spiderwebbing across the earth like veins of pure glitch-light. The horizon itself seemed unstable, tilting subtly and then snapping back as if reality had a poor connection.
Riven tilted his head. "Obelisk of Echoes? That doesn't sound ominous at all."
Kaelith didn't answer. Her silver eyes scanned the horizon, sharp and unflinching. "I've heard rumors," she said finally. "They say the Obelisk doesn't just echo sound. It echoes… souls."
"Cool. Love that. Definitely won't cause nightmares," Riven muttered, a hollow laugh escaping him as he stomped through the jagged terrain. The wind whipped around them, carrying static-charged sparks that made his hair stand on end. The plains groaned beneath their boots, as though the very earth was protesting their intrusion.
Every few moments, Riven caught glimpses of other landscapes bleeding into the plains: a desert, a frozen wasteland, a ruined city of jagged metal towers. They flickered in and out like broken video frames. "Hey, Kaelith," he whispered, "you're seeing that too, right?"
Her silence was answer enough. She didn't even glance at him, eyes scanning for danger, fingers brushing the nock of her bowstring.
The penguin waddled ahead, fearless as ever, hopping over a glowing fissure. When Riven followed, his HUD shook violently. Warning: Instability Zone Entered. All stats fluctuating.
His Strength stat shot from 49 to 122, then plummeted to 3. His HP doubled, then halved, blinking red like it was about to vanish entirely. "Okay!" Riven shouted. "This place is officially a bad idea!"
Kaelith's form shimmered beside him, phasing in and out of existence like a ghost. "Keep moving!" she urged, voice steady despite the distortion around them.
The plains warped beneath their feet. Rocks levitated, grass turned into strings of binary code before snapping back. And the whispers returned—not the Grove's personal, name-calling kind, but edges of sound that scraped at Riven's mind like fingernails on metal. Numbers, codes, patterns.
Kaelith faltered once, clutching her temple. "Something is pushing against my thoughts."
Riven grimaced, shaking his head. "Yeah. Welcome to my life. The system loves head games."
Suddenly, the plains tore open with a deafening rip. A gash of raw static widened before them. From the tear, shapes began crawling out—not monsters exactly, but echoes.
Shadows of warriors—knights, mages, rogues—all glitched and distorted like half-loaded avatars from a corrupted save file. Their faces flickered, some missing eyes entirely, others bearing too many.
The penguin quacked in alarm, flapping its stubby wings as if summoning its own brand of magic.
Riven raised his fists, stepping into battle mode. "Okay, squad goals. Let's do this."
Kaelith loosed her first arrow, piercing the chest of an Echo Knight. Instead of blood, static bled out, fracturing into jagged shards of light. Riven lunged at another, his Strength stat spiking just in time, sending an Echo Mage flying backward in a burst of jagged pixels.
"Yes!" Riven yelled. Then his Strength collapsed again. His next punch landed like a wet noodle. "…I hate this place."
The Echo Mage retaliated, sending a wave of distorted fire forward. Riven dove aside, feeling his HP bar jitter randomly. "Pick a number and commit!" he shouted, exasperated.
Kaelith moved like a wisp of shadow, every arrow finding a weak point with preternatural precision. But there were too many echoes. They poured from the static fissure by the hundreds, heads twitching and bodies shaking unnaturally.
Riven's chest tightened. "We can't fight all of them."
Kaelith's jaw set, determination hardening her features. "Then we don't."
She fired an arrow into the fissure itself. The static rippled violently, sending a shockwave outward. The echoes froze mid-motion, twitching helplessly.
Riven's heart pounded in his chest. System Ping Available. Do you wish to activate?
His hand hovered over the option. Last time he'd used a system feature without thinking, it had nearly deleted him entirely. But the fissure expanded, threatening to consume the entire plain.
A pulse erupted from Riven's chest, a wave of shimmering light that raced outward in concentric circles. The fractured plains shuddered beneath their feet, the gash of raw static screaming as though it had been struck in a nerve. Riven stumbled back, gasping for breath, sweat stinging his eyes, but the Echoed Remnants convulsed, frozen mid-motion like broken marionettes.
Kaelith's eyes widened, her bow lowered slightly as she glanced at him. "You… pinged?"
"I… pinged. Hard," Riven said, chest heaving. "Like, 'delete all ghosts' hard." He gave a wobbly grin, half proud, half terrified that reality itself might now be offended.
The echoes shattered with a deafening crack, fragmenting into glittering shards of static that rained around them like tiny stars falling into broken glass. The gash in the plains slowly closed, quivering, then sealed completely. The ground beneath their feet steadied, solid and real once more.
Riven sank to his knees, chest heaving as the adrenaline finally ebbed. His boots left prints in the glowing cracks that were slowly fading to ordinary dirt. The penguin waddled up, quacking triumphantly, and planted itself on his shoulder, wizard hat slightly askew. "Well… that was new," Riven muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead.
Kaelith knelt beside him, studying the remnants of the echoes. "I've never seen the system do that outside of controlled zones," she said softly, voice low but steady. "You might have… broken a few rules."
"Rules?!" Riven flopped back onto the ground, gazing up at the shifting clouds above. "I didn't break rules. I pinged! I'm literally saving the world." He flinched as a stray shard of static fizzed against his shoulder, leaving a faint scorch mark. "…Okay, maybe just bending them a little."
The system chimed.
Main Quest Progress: Fractured Plains – Stage One Complete
Bonus Reward: Data Key Fragment (1/5)
A small shard floated toward Riven, glowing softly. Crystal etched with shifting lines of code, the fragment seemed almost alive. He rotated it in his palm, eyes narrowing. The code shifted, forming letters—almost words. For a split second, he swore he saw his own name flicker across the surface.
Kaelith's gaze sharpened, silver eyes reflecting the faint glow. "That isn't ordinary," she said.
Riven shoved it into his inventory, muttering, "Nope. Not dealing with that right now. I've survived a collapsing code-plane and a stampede of ghost warriors—I can handle mysterious glowing shards later."
The plains seemed to breathe around them, the distortions softening, the air less jagged. Kaelith rose, checking her quiver and scanning the horizon. "The Obelisk is close."
"How close?" Riven asked, squinting against the static-tinged sunlight.
She pointed. On the horizon, a towering monolith pierced the sky—black stone pulsing faintly with static, its edges bleeding into the air as if the world itself struggled to contain it. A soft hum vibrated through the ground.
Riven exhaled, a mix of awe and sarcastic dread escaping him. "Cool. Creepy monolith straight ahead. Definitely won't scar me emotionally."
The penguin waddled ahead, unbothered, quacking as if announcing its bravery to the universe. Riven chuckled despite the tension. "You know what? I'm naming you Sir Quacksalot. And you can't stop me."
Kaelith muttered under her breath, a quiet incantation—or perhaps a curse. Riven wasn't entirely sure which.
The closer they walked, the softer the whispers returned. Unlike the Grove, they weren't personal yet—but they grazed the edges of Riven's mind, forming strange patterns of sound that felt almost musical. Numbers, codes, fragmented syllables, all layered over a faint, ghostly melody.
Riven shivered, shaking his head. "Yeah… the Obelisk is definitely not your average scenic landmark." He glanced at Kaelith. "You're not getting tired of this yet, are you?"
Kaelith's eyes didn't waver from the looming structure. "I've been through worse."
"Sure," Riven said, muttering under his breath. "Famous last words before we get turned into static spaghetti."
The fractured plains beneath them shifted slightly, tilting subtly as if the world itself was leaning toward the Obelisk. Light from the horizon caught the shards of code embedded in the soil, glimmering like broken stars. The air smelled metallic, tinged with ozone from lingering static energy. Every breath felt like inhaling fragments of a world half-alive, half-digital.
The penguin hopped onto a raised rock, quacking proudly, wings outstretched. "Yeah, yeah," Riven said, "you're the hero again. Can we move on?"
The Obelisk loomed larger now, pulsing faintly in rhythm with a low, vibrating hum that rattled Riven's teeth. He swallowed hard. Every instinct screamed that approaching it would change everything. The whispers, the shifting plains, even the penguin's quacks—the world seemed to hold its breath.
Riven clenched his fists, feeling the weight of what lay ahead. "Well," he muttered, a grin tugging at his lips despite the fear tightening his chest, "here we go. Time to see what secrets the universe hates me discovering."
Kaelith moved beside him, calm and ready. "Stay sharp."
Riven looked down at Sir Quacksalot, who gave him a quizzical tilt of its head, wizard hat sliding slightly over one eye. "Yeah," he whispered, "me too, buddy. Me too."
And together, the trio stepped forward toward the Obelisk of Echoes, the fractured path behind them stabilizing just enough to give the illusion of safety. But deep inside, Riven knew—the hardest part of the journey was just beginning.
"Fine!" he shouted, slamming the Ping option.