The forest smelled wrong.
Not rotten, not foul—just wrong. Like someone had taken the essence of "generic forest" and bottled it, then sprayed it evenly across a blank canvas. The scent was faintly sweet, artificially chlorophyll, clinging to Erevan's nostrils and refusing to leave. Goosebumps crawled across his arms as he took an uneasy step forward.
Every tree stood at the exact same height. Every branch bent at the exact same angle. Leaves rustled in identical rhythms, the sound perfectly looped—as though the forest itself had been copy-pasted from a template and nobody had pressed "finish." Every bird call was synchronized, pitch-perfect, and eerily cheerful.
Erevan stopped mid-step, rubbing the back of his neck. "Okay," he muttered, voice low, almost to himself, "this is Disneyland vibes. The kind where Mickey rips off his head and there's no guy inside." He swallowed hard, trying to ignore the hollow buzzing at the edge of his perception.
Kaelith moved carefully beside him, bow half-raised, fingers taut against the string. Her silver eyes scanned the uniform treeline, sharp and calculating. "This is manufactured," she said, her voice almost a whisper. "I can feel it. The energy here… it's shallow. Hollow."
Erevan's stomach knotted. "Shallow… like my patience for this world right now."
Sir Quacksalot waddled a few feet ahead, dipping his wing into the unnaturally straight river. The surface glitched into binary code for a heartbeat before snapping back, as if embarrassed by its own imperfection. The penguin looked up at Erevan, tilting its head.
"Yeah, yeah, I see you, buddy. You're too happy for this horror theme." Erevan kicked a small rock. It rolled exactly five feet, stopped dead, and then teleported back to its original spot. "Perfect. This place is officially cursed," he muttered, crouching to inspect the glitchy ground.
Kaelith's eyes narrowed. "It's not cursed. It's unfinished."
"Unfinished?" Erevan repeated, voice trembling slightly despite his sarcasm.
"Like a painting left half-done," she murmured, her gaze sweeping the identical horizon. "An experiment. A prototype."
The words crawled down Erevan's spine like ice. He swallowed, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickling.
The forest rustled—not from wind, because there was none, but from the subtle sound of code rearranging itself. Branches shuffled almost imperceptibly. Leaves shimmered in sequence, like a screen refreshing line by line. And then, figures emerged.
At first, Erevan thought they were villagers. Ordinary NPCs. Maybe they were harmless. But as they stepped closer, something in his chest twisted. Their faces were… wrong. Blurred at the edges, like someone had copy-pasted stock images onto polygons. Their bodies were stiff, movements jerky, synchronized. Their eyes were empty placeholders, pale circles that didn't reflect light.
Erevan's pulse quickened. "Okay… nope. Not okay."
Kaelith's bow tightened in her grip. "They're not alive. They're constructs."
Sir Quacksalot quacked happily, oblivious, waddling between the "villagers" and the river, but even the penguin's cheerful noise echoed too perfectly, as though mirrored by the forest itself.
The villagers blinked—or rather, their eyes refreshed like a browser page. Then, in perfect unison, they spoke:
"Welcome… traveler… please enjoy… your… stay."
Erevan froze mid-step. His stomach lurched. "Nope. Nope. Nope. Absolutely not."
Kaelith didn't hesitate. She loosed an arrow into the nearest construct. The arrow struck true, piercing the chest of the figure—but instead of blood, it shattered into pixel shards, only to reassemble almost immediately.
"They don't stay down!" Kaelith shouted, eyes wide.
Erevan jabbed a finger at another approaching figure, muttering under his breath, "Perfect! Just what I needed—immortal mannequin zombies!"
The villagers continued moving toward them, glitching closer every time Erevan blinked. Their voices layered into a horrible chorus:
"Stay… stay… stay…"
Erevan's hands flexed into fists. "Great. Now I'm fighting Microsoft Office errors."
The system chimed.
[Survival Condition: Impossible]
[Directive: Locate the anomaly.]
"Yeah, thanks for the tip, system!" Erevan yelled, stepping back cautiously.
Sir Quacksalot flapped his stubby wings, releasing a puff of frost. Two villagers froze mid-step, shattering into glassy fragments that scattered across the grid-like grass. Erevan's eyes widened. "…Quacksalot, you absolute legend," he muttered, crouching low.
But the shards reassembled. The villagers stood again, smiling unnaturally wide, teeth misaligned. Nothing seemed to hurt them.
Kaelith grabbed Erevan's arm, voice tense. "We need to find the anomaly. Now."
They bolted through the forest, villagers glitching after them, reappearing just close enough to send a jolt of panic through their veins. Each tree they passed was identical, mirrored endlessly. The river twisted in impossible shapes, like someone had copied sections of water and pasted them at random.
Erevan's chest burned. "This place… this place is a damn maze," he muttered, glancing around frantically. "And I hate mazes."
Kaelith stopped suddenly. Her gaze was locked on the patterned ground beneath their feet. "No. Look," she whispered.
Erevan followed her eyes. The dirt was arranged in perfect squares, like tiles on a digital grid. In the center of one, a crack ran jagged and faintly glowing.
"That's it," Kaelith breathed. "The anomaly."
The villagers froze mid-step, heads snapping toward the glowing crack as if tethered to an invisible string. Their smiles vanished instantly. Their voices twisted into a synchronized warning:
"Not… allowed."
The ground shivered under Erevan's boots. The crack widened, spilling jagged beams of glitch-light into the artificial forest. Something began to crawl out—
And Erevan staggered backward.
It wasn't a villager. It wasn't a monster.
It was him.
Erevan's stomach twisted. The figure before him… it had his shape, his messy hair, even his jacket. But its face was blurred, shifting constantly, like a corrupted file struggling to load. Its eyes flickered in binary, switching between 0s and 1s in a rapid, maddening rhythm.
[Anomaly Detected: Echo Prototype – Subject Erevan]
Threat: Unknown
Reward for Defeat: High
Kaelith's breath hitched, eyes wide. "It's… you."
Erevan swallowed hard, stepping back. His fists clenched instinctively. "Yeah, but… less handsome," he muttered under his breath, trying to calm the rising dread in his chest.
The Echo Prototype tilted its head, mimicking his gesture almost perfectly. Then it spoke—his own voice, layered and off-key, echoing unnaturally.
"You… should… not… exist."
Erevan's heart pounded like a drum in a war march. "Okay. Now I'm officially creeped out," he muttered, tucking Sir Quacksalot under one arm. The penguin quacked indignantly, oblivious to the existential horror unfolding.
Without warning, the prototype lunged, moving faster than the artificial villagers ever had. A jagged blade of raw, shifting code formed in its hand, slashing toward Erevan. He barely dodged, feeling the edge tear through a nearby tree. Splinters fell and rearranged into cubes before disappearing entirely.
Kaelith loosed arrows, but each curved midair, deflected as if the Prototype were swatting them away like insignificant gnats. Its focus was laser-sharp, entirely on Erevan.
Erevan gritted his teeth. He activated Glitch Step, teleporting behind it with a surge of energy. His fist slammed into its back.
[Damage Dealt: 0]
Erevan staggered back, blinking in disbelief. "…What—"
The Prototype shimmered, turning its faceless head toward him. "I… am… you."
Erevan's chest tightened. He stumbled, tripping over the perfect square grid of the forest floor. The villagers shrieked, their placeholder faces twisting grotesquely.
"Correction… correction… correction…"
The system chimed urgently.
[Critical Choice Triggered]
Option 1: Destroy the Echo Prototype
Option 2: Absorb the Echo Prototype
Warning: Consequences irreversible
Erevan's stomach dropped. He stared at the options hovering in his vision. Absorb? As in… put this nightmare inside me?
Kaelith grabbed his arm, voice low but urgent. "Erevan, whatever you choose, choose quickly. It's not going to stop."
He swallowed. His fists trembled. Every instinct screamed to fight, to destroy, to survive. But the thought of absorbing a version of himself… the very idea twisted his mind like a looped code snippet. What would it mean? Would he lose himself? Become corrupted beyond repair?
The Echo Prototype advanced, blade dripping static. Its movements were glitchy, almost cinematic, skipping frames unpredictably, but it moved with intent, a predator stalking its perfect reflection.
Erevan's mind raced. If I destroy it… I might erase this anomaly, sure. But… part of me will be gone. Maybe part of me that I didn't even know existed. He glanced at Kaelith, eyes wide and panicked. She nodded, silently urging him to act.
He clenched his teeth. "Fine," he muttered, voice low and determined. "Let's see if the system's sense of humor kills me today."
Erevan reached deep, calling on every ounce of control he had over the glitching world. Energy crackled, tendrils of code whipping around his fists. He hesitated for a heartbeat—then…
He absorbed it.
The world convulsed. Reality trembled. The forest rippled, tiles of the ground twisting, the trees vibrating in perfect sync. A wave of energy shot from the Prototype into Erevan, burning cold and hot at the same time, flooding his senses. His vision fractured, multiplied, mirrored, until he saw himself from every possible angle—every past, present, and corrupted future.
He screamed internally, trying to organize the flood of data. Thoughts overlapped. Memories tangled with lines of code. Every glitch, every failed summon, every hacked fight he'd ever had pulsed through him.
Sir Quacksalot quacked, small but determined, and the penguin's frost puff stabilized the swirling chaos around them, giving Erevan the slightest anchor to reality.
When the energy finally receded, Erevan collapsed to his knees, panting. His HUD stabilized, blinking uncertainly, stats fluctuating but intact. He felt… different.
Kaelith knelt beside him, eyes wide and cautious. "Erevan… what… what did that do to you?"
Erevan swallowed, running a hand through his hair, disoriented. "I… I don't know. I feel like… like I just downloaded myself into a corrupted save file and… rebooted it?"
The forest remained silent. Too silent. Even the villagers—now static remnants—stood frozen, their glitchy faces unreadable. The binary river rippled gently, the code fragments shimmering faintly in response to the energy still lingering around him.
A faint message appeared in the corner of Erevan's vision:
[System Notice: Anomaly Absorbed. User now carries Prototype Data. Warning: System stability compromised.]
Erevan's stomach turned. The system wasn't merely broken anymore. It was watching him, calculating, waiting, and possibly planning something far worse than any Patch Hunter or Echo Prototype.
He looked at Kaelith, voice grim but tinged with humor. "Well… at least I'm more terrifying now. Maybe the devs will leave me alone for a minute."
Kaelith didn't laugh. Her silver eyes scanned the unnaturally perfect forest. "We're not done yet. This place is a prototype… incomplete, but alive. And something tells me… it's learning from you."
Erevan exhaled shakily, patting Sir Quacksalot's head. The penguin quacked, frost puffing once more, tiny but defiant.
Erevan muttered, "I swear, if we survive this… I'm naming my next summon 'Chaos Chicken 2.0.'"
The Prototype forest hummed around them, perfect yet false, and Erevan realized with a shiver: the world wasn't just broken—it was evolving. And he was now part of that evolution.