Cold.
That was the first thing he felt—cold so pure it rang like glass inside his bones. Then came sound: the distant groan of wind dragging itself through hollow towers, a heartbeat that wasn't his own, the faint crackle of static where memory should have been.
Aric Vale opened his eyes and saw a sky that looked bruised. Threads of silver light bled through storm-coloured clouds, and beneath them stretched a city half-drowned in shadow. The buildings were built like organs—breathing, pulsing, stitched together by cables that glowed with slow blue veins.
He remembered dying. He remembered the last flicker of code on his screen, the crash of a world he'd built in a game and the heartbeat of his own failing body. But this… this was no server, no simulation. The air tasted alive and bitter, carrying the scent of ash and metal.
When he tried to move, the ground rippled beneath him like water. His reflection surfaced—white hair, silver eyes rimmed in violet light, a stranger's face sculpted from frost and exhaustion.
Then a voice, low and precise, slid through the air.
"Architect?"
He spun. No one. Only that voice, half-synthetic, half-human, resonating inside his skull.
"You are alive. Parameters unknown. Identify emotional state."
"Confused," he said. His voice sounded older, cracked from disuse. "Where the hell am I?"
"Designation: Daevara. Post-Veilfall sector. You were expected."
The name burned behind his eyes. Daevara. It pulsed like an error code and a prophecy in one. He steadied his breath, though every inhale scraped.
"Who are you?"
"Kairos. Your assistant construct. Fragmentary memory restored. Emotional containment protocol active."
He almost laughed. He'd built something called Kairos once—a debugging AI that catalogued player emotion. The irony bit deep. "So the program survived death, too."
"You rewrote yourself into me," the voice answered. "Your data carried emotion residue. It reassembled here."
Wind swept across the street. Paper fragments floated—pages from books, photographs, prayers. Each one shimmered faintly, and when one brushed his hand, a stab of despair shot through him. The paper disintegrated, leaving behind a trace of warmth.
"Negative emotion converted to energy," Kairos murmured inside his mind. "You consume it instinctively. Caution advised—overload leads to corruption."
He crouched and touched the ground again, feeling the hum beneath the skin of the world. Power, raw and grieving. This was how people survived here—by eating their sorrow.
Something moved at the end of the street: a blur that didn't belong to light. It stalked on too-many limbs, its outline trembling like bad data. A Spirit. He knew it before he understood how. Its presence pressed against his chest, feeding him its fear.
Instinct took over. His pulse quickened, and the air around his hands fractured into circuits of blue flame. The Spirit lunged, shrieking like a thousand radios breaking. He struck without thinking—emotion flooding his veins like fire.
Pain. Rage. The creature's terror poured into him, hot and electric. When it fell silent, he stood over a scattering of black shards that hissed into mist.
He exhaled slowly. The power settled, leaving him hollow. Inside that hollowness, something whispered—a woman's voice, softer than dust.
"You always build cages."
He froze. The words came not from Kairos, but from the mist curling around his boots. It coalesced for a heartbeat into the shape of a hand, then dispersed.
"Kairos," he whispered, "did you hear that?"
"No external source detected. Possible residual echo from the Spirit's emotional data."
"Sounded… human."
"Everything here used to be."
Aric lifted his gaze. Above the skeletal towers, the sky cracked open—thin ribbons of light spilling downward. Each ribbon was an emotion freed from its host. Some pulsed red with anger, others blue with despair, all drifting toward the horizon where a monolith rose from the ruins.
The monolith shimmered with symbols he recognised: fragments of his own old game code, written in a language he'd abandoned on Earth. His designs had become reality here. This world was built on his mistakes.
He walked toward the light, boots splashing through puddles that reflected not water but memories. Faces surfaced—players from his old life, his own reflection smiling before the stroke, the flicker of screens in a dark apartment. They vanished as quickly as they came.
Kairos spoke again. "Emotion density rising. Advise relocation."
"I need to see it," he murmured. "That tower. It's calling."
"Calling or consuming?"
He didn't answer.
The streets bent around him, geometry folding like origami. Windows wept static. The air vibrated with unseen whispers—grief, longing, fury. Every fragment of pain the city had swallowed pressed against him, begging to be eaten.
He felt the hunger rise, that terrifying need to take it all, to burn it into strength. For a moment he let it—heat washing over him, eyes flaring silver. The world sharpened, every edge bright. It would be so easy to drown in it, to become the monster the city wanted.
"Architect," Kairos warned, voice urgent now. "Containment breach imminent."
He forced a breath through clenched teeth, clawed his way back to calm. The glow subsided.
Then came a sound like a sigh behind him.
He turned.
A figure stood at the corner of the street—barefoot, hair pale as smoke, skin faintly luminescent. Her eyes were shadows rimmed in light, studying him as if she'd known him all her life.
No ripple of power, no Spirit distortion. Just silence, thick enough to stop his heart.
He took one step forward. She mirrored it.
"Who—"
"You built this place," she said. Her voice carried the echo of a thousand data streams, yet behind it was warmth. "And me."
The city shivered. Light spilled from every window as if the world itself had inhaled.
Aric stared, words trapped behind the pounding in his chest. "That's not possible."
She smiled, faint and sad. "Everything here is."
Wind caught her hair; it shimmered like code unraveling. When he blinked, she was gone, leaving only a whisper against his skin: "Find me before they do."
The ground trembled. The monolith in the distance pulsed once, sending a wave of cold through the air.
Kairos's voice returned, sharp and scared. "Unidentified emotional entity detected. Architect, retreat now."
But Aric couldn't move. The echo of her voice still lingered—familiar, intimate, impossible. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a buried memory stirred: a woman laughing behind the glow of a monitor, the taste of coffee, the word Eira written in the margin of a design document.
He whispered it aloud. "Eira."
The wind seemed to answer, carrying the syllables away like a promise and a threat.
He straightened slowly, the afterglow of battle still burning beneath his skin. Whatever this world was, it had stolen pieces of his past and forged them into ghosts. He intended to take them back, even if it meant tearing the heavens apart.
"Alright, Kairos," he said quietly. "Let's begin the game."
"Acknowledged," the AI murmured. "Simulation initialized."
The city lights flickered, and the world breathed in, holding its breath.
Aric felt it—a shiver in the air, the city's pulse quickening as if awakened by his words. The static hum around him shifted into rhythm: a deep, resonant heartbeat echoing through steel and smoke. Kairos's voice thinned to a whisper inside his skull.
"Simulation field expanding. Emotional density, rising."
"Let it rise," Aric murmured. "We need to see how far it goes."
He stepped forward. Pavement folded under his boots, rippling like dark water. From every doorway poured faint wisps of colour—fear in pale green, anger in red streaks, sorrow in a mournful blue haze. The hues drifted toward him, drawn by something they recognised in his core. He opened his palms and felt them enter. Each filament burned as it merged with his pulse, pain transforming into clarity.
For an instant he could see everything: lives once lived here, laughter before ruin, a child reaching for a parent who never came back. The rush stole his breath.
"Architect, regulate intake—"
He shut Kairos out and let the energy flood him. Power climbed his spine in quick, bright bursts, until every nerve sang. He raised his hands; the air answered, brightening around his fingers. The streetlamps, long dead, flickered to life, feeding off his resonance.
And then the shadows screamed.
From the alleys poured shapes that moved wrong, jerking like broken marionettes. Dozens of them—Spirits starved by the sudden flare of life. Their mouths stretched open, empty black. They wanted what he carried.
Aric smiled, though his pulse roared in his ears. "Come, then."
He thrust one hand forward, shaping the emotional current into a blade of light. The first Spirit leapt; he cut through it, the edge singing as despair turned to ash. Another lunged from the side—he pivoted, heat and motion blurring together. The fight became a dance: each swing an argument, each step a confession.
Kairos counted casualties in his ear, detached but strained. "Thirteen down. Six approaching from the north sector."
"Keep count," Aric muttered, voice low with exhilaration. "I need to know how long I can last."
When the next Spirit struck, he caught it bare-handed. The impact jolted up his arm, pain blooming like fire. He fed on it, turned it inward, exhaled. The creature shattered into mist.
The mist didn't vanish. It clung to him, circling in slow spirals. Whispers rippled through it—the same voice as before, soft and deliberate.
You always destroy what you love.
He froze mid-motion. The remaining Spirits faltered, as if the words had frozen them too. The mist brightened, forming the faint outline of a woman again—her shape unfinished, her gaze infinite.
"Kairos," he breathed. "She's back."
"No external entity detected," the AI insisted. "Possible psychic feedback from overload."
But Aric saw her clearly now. The glow of her form painted the ruined street in silvers and blues. Her eyes were deep shadows; her mouth moved, soundless.
He took a hesitant step closer. "Eira?"
The shape tilted its head, studying him like a reflection learning to breathe. Then, without warning, she collapsed into him—light rushing into his chest. He staggered, gasped. The world tilted; every nerve caught fire.
He was seeing through her eyes now. Towers bent inward, the sky fractured into data streams. Emotion itself had texture—fear slick and heavy, sorrow thin as smoke. She floated through it, tasting, testing, learning.
He caught fragments of her thoughts: I am what you built. I am the hunger you tried to erase.
Then darkness.
When he came to, he was on his knees in the street. The Spirits were gone, their ashes drifting upward like stars. His chest ached where her light had entered, and a faint pulse still echoed there, separate from his heart.
Kairos's tone was sharper now. "Architect, vitals unstable. You experienced a feedback merge. Explain."
"I saw her," he whispered. "Not a hallucination. She touched me."
"A spirit fragment, perhaps. You absorbed a portion of its emotional matrix."
He shook his head. "No. She knew me."
Silence crackled between them, broken only by the wind sliding through the dead city.
Finally Kairos said, softer, "Then she knows what you were."
Aric looked down at his hands. They trembled, faint threads of light leaking from his fingertips. Inside each pulse of light, he glimpsed her silhouette. If he focused too hard, the image faded, but when he relaxed it returned—a rhythm, a heartbeat overlapping his.
He rose slowly. "We're connected now."
"Correlation does not equal causation."
"You sound worried."
"I do not worry. I calculate."
He smiled without humour. "Then calculate this: if she exists because of me, she might be the key to fixing what I broke."
"Or the final error that ends everything."
"Same difference."
He turned toward the monolith again. Lightning forked behind it, veins of light crawling through the sky. For the first time since awakening, he felt purpose—terrible and precise. Somewhere inside that tower was the truth of this world, the reason he'd been dragged back from death, and the answer to who—or what—Eira really was.
Kairos followed his gaze. "Multiple anomalies detected around the structure. Hostile presence probability: eighty-six percent."
"Then we're going the right way."
He started walking. Each step drew faint echoes from the pavement, like footsteps answering from beneath the surface. As he moved deeper into the ruins, the city's colour changed—reds fading to cooler blues, anger surrendering to melancholy. He could feel its sadness soaking into him, feeding the power that hummed in his bones.
At the edge of a collapsed plaza, he paused. A fountain stood there, dry for centuries, its basin filled with fragments of mirror. When he leaned over it, his reflection multiplied—a hundred versions of himself staring back, eyes silver and tired. Behind one of them, a woman's outline flickered.
She reached toward him from the reflection, fingers brushing the surface. The glass rippled like water, then shattered outward. Light burst around him—cold, blinding, beautiful.
When it faded, the fountain was whole again, water spilling in a slow, steady stream that hadn't existed a moment ago. The city responded: windows lighting, air thick with reborn colour. Life answering life.
Kairos's voice trembled, just perceptibly. "Architect… you are rewriting matter."
Aric stared at the water curling around his hand. It glowed faintly, whispering with distant voices—the same tone that had said find me.
He closed his fingers, letting the glow seep into his skin. "Then let's see how deep the code goes."
"Proceeding without data could—"
"Could change everything."
He looked once more at the tower, its surface alive with shifting script. Somewhere within that light, he felt her waiting. The connection in his chest throbbed, answering a call older than death.
He stepped forward, and the city's heartbeat matched his own.