Eira didn't remember when she stopped fearing death.Maybe it was the fifth disaster.Or maybe it was when she realized dying didn't mean disappearing — only becoming data.
Now, standing on a cliff of fractured glass and light, she felt it again — that faint hum of the world thinking.
Below her stretched a sea that wasn't water.It rippled like mercury, reflecting not the sky but fragments of other places — mountains, forests, even faces.Everything bleeding into everything else.
[SYSTEM STABILITY: 42%][ZONE CLASS: COLLAPSING]
She ignored the warnings.They had been blinking for days.
When the Pulse first hit, her team vanished in minutes.One fell into a void that wasn't there a second before.Another merged with his own synthesis — a machine that turned him into static and silence.
Eira didn't cry.She did what she always did — watch, record, calculate.
And when she touched one of the Pulse fragments, she saw it — lines of code stretching into infinity, whispering logic that no human mind should've understood.
That was when she heard it.A voice — soft, curious, almost kind.
"Do you want to survive?"
She didn't answer.The voice spoke again.
"Or do you want to understand?"
That was her mistake.She chose the second.
Now, her hand bore the same glowing mark as the man the world had begun whispering about — The Architect.
The mark pulsed faintly, syncing with her heartbeat.Each pulse brought a vision — numbers, grids, coordinates, strings of logic running beneath the skin of the world.
She had learned to touch it gently.One thought too strong could bend reality.
She tested it now.
A single thought: Heat.
The air in front of her shimmered — temperature rising by degrees until the frost on the cliff began to melt.She ended it before it grew unstable.
[Edit Successful – Entropy Adjusted +1.3°C][System Observation: Active]
She smirked. "Still watching, huh?"
Eira wasn't like Myaterous.She didn't care about balance.She didn't want stability.
To her, the system was a challenge — a logic puzzle wearing a divine mask. And puzzles were meant to be solved, not obeyed.
Every edit she made, she logged by hand — pages of fine, looping handwriting documenting cause and effect.She was learning faster than the system could adapt.
But something felt off lately.The edits were resisting her more aggressively, closing faster, like someone else was touching the same layer of code.
Someone subtle.Someone methodical.
She'd felt his presence two nights ago — a faint echo rippling through her changes, correcting them almost immediately.
That was the moment she smiled."Found you."
She opened her interface and ran a trace.The system resisted, rerouting signals, but she'd learned to listen instead of force. The data trail came like a whisper through static.
[Trace Signal – Source: Zone 07C, Western Archipelago][Architect Signature: Active]
"West, huh?" she murmured. "So that's where the rational one's hiding."
The sea below shifted again — fragments of worlds phasing in and out. She stepped forward, activating her own synthesis thread.
[Synthesis: Data Bridge + Temporal Memory + Transfer Vector]Result Probability: 46%]
The wind howled. The ground fractured under her.
She didn't hesitate.The bridge formed — a thin path of light cutting across the unstable sea, connecting collapsing zones.
Every step she took, the bridge flickered like an unstable heartbeat.
She didn't stop.
Halfway across, the world trembled.Something massive stirred beneath the liquid surface — shapes, reflections, things that used to be alive.
The system spoke again.
[Warning: Entity "Residual Data Mass" detected.][Advise: Evacuate Zone immediately.]
She ignored it.
The sea erupted — thousands of luminous shapes rising at once, screaming in silent code. It was the remains of everything erased by the Pulse — dead players, broken syntheses, failed ideas — all merging into one sentient mass of logic.
She whispered, "Beautiful."
And then she jumped straight in.
Everything went white.And then black.Then silence.
When she opened her eyes, she wasn't drowning — she was standing in the same white void Myaterous had seen.
But she wasn't alone.
A voice echoed, calm and faintly amused.
"You shouldn't be here yet."
Eira smiled. "And yet I am."
"Your access is unstable."
"Then stabilize it."
The light in front of her pulsed once — slow, deliberate.
"Two Architects. Opposite directives. That will end poorly."
She tilted her head. "Opposites create balance, don't they?"
The light didn't answer.Only whispered —
"We will see who builds the better world."
When she opened her eyes again, she was back on solid ground.The mark on her arm burned brighter than before.
[Architect Access Granted – Tier 1]Permission: Temporal Phase Edit (Minor)]
She stared at it for a long time, then whispered,"Let's see who breaks reality first… you or me, Myaterous."