Rain began to fall again, soft and colorless. The drops didn't feel right—too slow, like gravity itself was hesitating. Adem stood by the window for a long moment, just watching them hang mid-air before sliding down the glass.
The light in his veins pulsed once, faintly answering the rhythm of the storm.
He pulled on his jacket, shoved his dead phone into his pocket, and pushed open the door. The hallway smelled like burnt metal and dust. Half the lights flickered, half were dark, and somewhere below, a car alarm cried in a broken loop.
Every step echoed too long.
At the ground floor, the lobby was empty except for the doorman's chair, turned toward the exit. A newspaper lay crumpled on the floor. The date on it was still yesterday's.
When Adem stepped outside, the first thing he noticed wasn't the silence. It was the color.
The sky was split down the middle—left half a deep gray, right half a faint red glow that looked like dawn bleeding through a wound. The city lights flickered in two rhythms. Somewhere distant, the air rippled like heat haze, bending the outline of buildings.
He whispered, "So this is what 'merge' looks like."
> [System Notice: Dimensional overlay detected.]
[Zone Classification: Unstable - Type B]
The words bloomed quietly in his mind, this time gentler, almost conversational.
He frowned. "Type B? What happened to Type A?"
> [Restricted Information.]
"Of course."
He started walking. The streets were nearly empty, but not abandoned. He saw movement behind windows—people sitting perfectly still, eyes open but blank, as if caught in frozen time. Cars idled without drivers, engines humming softly though no keys were in them.
The world was awake but not alive.
At the corner of the next street, he found the first real sign of life: a girl crouched beside a shattered vending machine, scavenging snacks into a backpack. She looked up sharply when he approached, holding what looked like a metal rod.
"Hey—" he began.
"Stay back," she snapped. Her eyes glowed faint blue for a heartbeat. "You one of them?"
"One of who?"
She hesitated, then lowered the rod. "Guess not. You still look… real."
Adem exhaled slowly. "I could say the same. Name's Adem."
She nodded slightly. "Naya."
They stared at each other a moment—two people from the same city suddenly strangers to it.
He gestured toward the red-tinged sky. "You've seen this before?"
"Not this. But the messages, yeah. They started whispering in my head about an hour ago. Said something about synchronization. I thought I was losing it."
He blinked. "So it's not just me."
She gave a short laugh that wasn't quite amusement. "You think I wanted a system? I was just buying ramen."
A faint tremor rolled through the street. The air thickened. Both turned at once. A shadow was moving at the far end—something human-shaped but wrong, its outline flickering like a bad hologram.
Naya whispered, "Corrupted?"
Adem felt the hum rise in his chest. The light under his skin flickered again, matching the creature's movement.
> [Warning: Entity Class - C1 Detected.]
[Defense Protocol Available.]
"Here we go again," he muttered.
His hand lit up, lines of gold tracing his fingers. The blade formed, thinner than before, sharper. The creature noticed, gave a distorted shriek, and lunged.
Naya reacted fast. She raised her rod—it expanded, transforming into a curved baton glowing faintly green. When she swung, the air rippled. The creature staggered, its form tearing at the edges.
Adem followed through, slicing down through its chest. The blade passed through soundlessly, leaving light instead of blood. The thing dissolved, fading into static that drifted upward and disappeared.
> [Entity Eliminated.]
[Experience +30.]
[Synchronization: 15%.]
He stared at his hand. The blade dissolved, leaving faint burn marks on his palm. "Experience points? Seriously?"
Naya wiped her face with her sleeve. "You get messages too?"
"Yeah. Feels like some twisted game."
"Except no one told us the rules."
They stood there, breathing hard. Around them, the city's hum deepened, buildings flickering between forms again. In one moment, the street was empty; the next, it was a narrow market lined with stalls made of crystal and steel. He blinked and it was gone.
Naya shivered. "I think it's getting worse."
Adem nodded. "The merge's still expanding. The system said something about zones. Maybe we're inside one."
She squatted to pick up a fallen snack wrapper, her hands shaking slightly. "You sound too calm for this."
"I've read too many stories like this," he said quietly. "Didn't think living one would feel this empty."
He looked up at the sky again. The red glow had spread. Somewhere far above, two shapes overlapped—a city of glass suspended in the clouds, faint but visible through the split.
> [System Update: New Quest Generated.]
[Objective: Locate the Nexus Core.]
[Reward: Stability Access - Tier I.]
He read it twice. "Nexus Core?"
Naya frowned. "You got a quest?"
He nodded. "You didn't?"
Her silence answered for her.
Then the world shifted again—harder this time. The buildings bent inward, as if gravity had reversed for a moment. The sound of grinding metal filled the air.
> [Warning: Zone Collapse Imminent.]
Adem grabbed Naya's hand. "Move!"
They ran. The pavement fractured underfoot. A car rose into the air, spinning before dissolving into shards of light. The red glow bled brighter, swallowing the skyline.
Behind them, the creature they'd killed was reforming, its data fragments twisting into a new, larger shape.
Naya glanced back. "Tell me you've got another trick!"
Adem didn't answer. He felt the hum surge in his chest again, deeper than before—something old, powerful, and not entirely human. The voice inside him, the one that wasn't his, spoke for the first time since the merge.
"Let me handle this."
He hesitated for only a second. Then he whispered, "Do it."
Light exploded outward. His vision went white, the ground vanished, and for a heartbeat, he felt weightless—no, shared. Two minds, one body, both burning.
When the light faded, the creature was gone. The street was cracked but still standing. Adem knelt in the center of it, smoke curling off his jacket. His eyes glowed faint gold before fading back.
Naya stared at him, wide-eyed. "What the hell was that?"
He forced a weak grin. "A partnership, I guess."
> [Synchronization: 22%.]
[System Notice: Secondary Consciousness Awakening.]
The hum quieted. Rain began again, slower than before.
Naya sat down on the curb, breathing hard. "If this is a game, it's rigged."
Adem looked up at the flickering sky, the two worlds layered like mismatched reflections. Somewhere above, lightning forked sideways, cutting through both realities at once.
He whispered, mostly to himself, "Then I'll learn the rules before they kill us."
The system answered softly.
> [New Objective: Survive the Next Dawn.]