The First Age of Levels — Part 7: Protocol Zero
The red light hit like a verdict.
For a second, Kaelith didn't feel heat or impact—only absence, as if the world had been cut from beneath her while someone decided what to put there instead.
Then everything arrived at once.
Sound tore through Null. The tiles beneath her feet shattered into a storm of black shards. The air compressed against her ribs. Her body lifted, flipped, and the ground rose to meet her in a blur.
She slammed into stone. Breath fled her chest. The sky fractured into streaks of red and white.
Somewhere inside that fractured sky, someone screamed her name.
"KAELITH!"
She tried to answer and found nothing in her lungs.
Her half-link flared in protest, then stabilized—white lines racing along her arm like a hand checking for a pulse.
She rolled onto her side, coughing hard. The metallic taste of Null dust scraped her tongue. Every muscle in her body rang like a struck wire.
"Aren…" she rasped.
Her vision cleared by degrees.
The obsidian platform they'd stood on was gone; in its place lay a field of fractured plates hanging at different heights, as if gravity had taken personal offense at architecture. The giant Null entity hunched in the distance, one massive limb driven into the ground to keep itself from collapsing entirely. Pieces of its body flickered, failing to decide if they existed.
The Nullborn was nowhere in sight.
And Aren—
"Aren!"
She spotted him ten meters away, half-kneeling on a floating tile, light pouring from him in ragged waves. Crimson bands of definition clung to his shoulders and chest like barbed wire, digging into his outline, forcing his form to glitch between boy and artifact.
The Protocol stood over him.
Tall. Still. Perfect.
The glow around its hands had dimmed back to a steady, cold crimson, as if the blast had cost it nothing.
"You persist," it said.
Its voice was the same calm as a closing door.
Aren's head jerked up. His mouth opened like he meant to joke, but no sound came out—only a crackle of static. He clawed at the crimson bands digging into his chest. His fingers passed through them like smoke.
Kaelith pushed herself upright on shaking arms.
Her half-link screamed at her—glyphs flashing, warning sigils spilling across her skin, all useless if she didn't move.
She forced herself to stand.
The tile under her tilted. She staggered, caught her balance, and stepped forward anyway, ignoring the sharp protest in her ribs.
"Let. Him. Go."
The Protocol did not turn.
"You are affected but intact," it observed. "Root Variable integrity remains higher than predicted."
It tilted its head, studying the way Aren's form stuttered. Light peeled away from his shoulders in strips, tried to escape, and snapped back into place.
"Correction level increased."
Kaelith's voice came out more like a growl than she intended.
"I said—let him go."
Her half-link surged in time with her anger. White light spread up her neck, a chill racing across her skin in hot reverse. She lifted her arm almost without thinking.
The Null reacted.
Lines of white raced outward from her feet, connecting broken tiles in a sudden web. Fractured surfaces snapped into alignment beneath her like stepping stones obeying a command. The space between her and Aren solidified into a path.
She ran.
The Protocol's head shifted a fraction.
"Half-Link 001. Your interference is noted."
It extended one hand in her direction.
Her half-link flashed with a symbol she recognized now: danger.
She didn't stop.
Red light sizzled from the Protocol's palm. It moved slower this time—not a blast, but a thread, thin as a needle, seeking.
It lanced toward her.
The Nullborn intercepted it.
It tore back into existence in a burst of white fragments, assembling mid-air between Kaelith and the attack. The beam struck its chest, burning a hole through its semi-solid torso, but instead of shattering, the Nullborn split the crimson energy around the wound, redirecting it into the air.
The beam bent, arcing harmlessly into empty space above.
The Nullborn gasped, voice glitching.
"Protocol Zero," it said, dim light spilling from the hole in its chest. "You are not welcome in the Unmade."
The Protocol's rings narrowed around its faceless gaze.
"You have taken form beyond your permission," it replied. "Null was not authorized to generate independent will."
The Nullborn's mosaic eyes flickered with a strange emotion—pride, maybe, or defiance.
"Null does not ask."
Kaelith didn't wait for the answer.
She sprinted past the Nullborn, using the brief distraction to close the last gap to Aren.
He saw her coming.
His eyes were wild with static and light, his features vibrating between cohesion and pixelation. The crimson bands flared as she neared, as if aware she was the variable they'd failed to account for.
"Don't—" he choked, voice wrenched through distortion. "Kaelith, stay back—"
"Not happening," she snapped.
She dropped to her knees in front of him and grabbed his face between both hands.
Her fingers sank halfway into light before finding something solid. For a heartbeat she was terrified she'd feel nothing—that the boy she'd followed into Null had already been hollowed out.
But beneath the light, his cheek was warm.
Real.
His breath shuddered against her palms.
Her half-link exploded into a blinding flare. Every glyph on her arm ignited, racing in patterns that made no sense and every kind of sense at once.
Their light connected.
It was like snapping two magnetic fields together. The crimson bands recoiled at the contact, sizzling as if burned. Aren's outline surged into clarity, static dropping to a low buzz.
He inhaled sharply, air searing his lungs.
"Kaelith," he rasped.
"This is not how you go out," she said through clenched teeth. "You hear me?"
His gaze focused on her—through her, almost, as if anchored by her presence more than her hands.
"I tried," he said, voice breaking. "When it hit… it tried to separate me from myself."
She tightened her grip. "Then we give it something worse to try."
Behind them, the giant made of Null groaned, struggling to lift itself. One of its shattered limbs reached toward them, forming a weak barrier of floating stone between the Protocol and the pair.
The Protocol watched the scene in silence.
The crimson rings around its hands brightened fractionally.
"You are amplifying his deviation," it said.
Kaelith glared back over her shoulder.
"I am keeping him alive."
"Alive," the Protocol repeated, as if testing the word. "You define existence as endurance of the self."
"What else would I define it as?"
"Compliance."
Aren coughed out something halfway between a laugh and a sob.
"That explains so much."
The Protocol ignored him.
"Root Variable WYNN," it said. "Your erasure was authorized at the moment you refused synchronization. Your survival has introduced instability. The Half-Link's emergence has compounded it. Together you represent unbounded recursion."
Kaelith's hand slid from Aren's jaw to his throat, feeling the wild stutter of his pulse.
"Good," she said. "Maybe that's what the world needs."
Aren swallowed, eyes never leaving hers.
"You should run," he whispered.
Her chest tightened painfully.
"Not leaving you."
"You might not get a choice," he said, flicking his gaze toward the Protocol. "You saw what it did to the Nullborn. To the giant."
"I saw them get back up," she shot back.
He almost smiled.
The Protocol raised its hand.
Crimson light crawled along its fingers, forming an intricate lattice of runes that reminded Kaelith uncomfortably of Harmony seals—only these were rougher, older, less interested in aesthetics.
"Last opportunity," it said. "Separate."
"Not happening," Aren said.
"Never," Kaelith added.
They said it at the same time.
The Nullborn's damaged form flared.
"Then we move to Phase Two," the Protocol said.
The tear behind it widened again.
Kaelith felt the fabric of Null shudder. The giant Null entity braced itself with both arms now, its massive form dimming as it poured strength into holding the terrain together.
Threads of crimson code snaked out of the tear, reaching through the air like searching hands.
They weren't reaching for Aren.
They were reaching for everything.
The tiles, the light, the dust, the patterns—Null itself.
"Protocol Zero does not only reset the human variable," the Nullborn whispered hoarsely. "It resets environment. System. All recorded possibility."
Kaelith's blood went cold.
"It's going to wipe Null," she said.
Aren's hand slid to her wrist, fingers closing over her half-link. His touch burned in sync with her glyphs.
"Then we don't give it the chance."
She looked at him. He looked back, something hopeless and hopeful and furious shining through the strain.
"You have an idea," she said.
"Bad habit," he replied.
He swallowed hard, then lowered his voice.
"When the blast hit… I felt it try to overwrite me. It reached for the part of me that Eden still owns. The part that knows how to take orders."
"That's not you anymore," she said sharply.
"It is," he said softly. "But it's not all of me."
The crimson threads continued creeping outward, dissolving sections of Null like ink soaking into paper. The Protocol stood at the heart of it, controlling the flow with effortless precision.
"What are you saying?" she demanded.
"I'm saying," Aren said, "that maybe I can grab on from the inside."
She stared at him.
"You want to let it overwrite you."
"Not fully." He tried to smile. "Just enough to get a hand on the controls."
"That's insane."
"I know."
Her grip on him tightened.
"If you're wrong, you die."
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"If we do nothing, we all do."
The Nullborn staggered toward them, leaving a trail of white fragments in its wake.
"Root Variable," it said, each word an effort, "you consider merging paths."
"Yeah," Aren said. "Kind of."
"There is risk," the Nullborn said.
Aren laughed weakly. "I figured."
The Nullborn's mosaic eyes turned to Kaelith.
"You are the anchor. If you lose him, he will not find his way back."
She heard the words, but underneath them, she heard something else:
If you let him go, you might lose him forever.
The crimson glow grew brighter. Parts of the horizon began to erase. The sky flickered between patterns and nothing.
Kaelith's heart pounded so hard she wondered if the Protocol could hear it.
"Kaelith," Aren said.
She looked at him.
"If you tell me no," he said quietly, "I'll stop. I'll fight it from out here and we'll go down together. I won't do this without you."
The honesty hurt more than the impact had.
Images flashed through her head: Aren standing on the terrace, laughing at his own unluck; Aren shimmering into light and refusing to vanish; Aren's voice threading through the static in her mind when everything else had gone silent.
The boy who looked at her like she was something the world hadn't finished naming.
She swallowed once.
Twice.
Her hand rose and cupped the side of his flickering face again.
"If you do this," she said, "you come back."
"I'll try," he said.
"Not good enough."
She leaned closer until their foreheads touched, Null's strange air humming between them.
"You come back," she repeated, voice shaking, "or I will drag you out of whatever code-hell you find. Do you understand me?"
His breath hitched.
"Yes."
The crimson light reflected in his eyes, making them look like twin storms.
She exhaled.
"Then do it."
He closed his eyes.
The Protocol's rings spun faster.
"Engaging Phase Two," it announced. "Erasure of Root Variable commencing."
"Not if I get there first," Aren whispered.
He reached out—inside himself this time, into the piece of him that still remembered Eden's touch. He didn't have words for the sensation. Consent, maybe. Surrender, but strategic.
The crimson bands tightened, sensing his yield.
"Accepting overwrite," the Protocol said. "Beginning data correction."
Aren's light flared.
Kaelith held on as his form blurred under her hands, as if he were being stretched across a thousand possible selves and compressed again.
Her half-link responded, threads of white light diving from her skin into his, anchoring him, refusing to let him dissolve.
She felt him slipping.
She held tighter.
"Aren," she whispered. "Stay with me. Stay."
His voice came from somewhere deeper now. Echoed. Filtered.
"Still here."
The Protocol's voice shifted for the first time, a hint of exertion bleeding through its calm.
"Resistance detected. Unexpected anchor."
Kaelith bared her teeth.
"Get used to it."
The crimson threads that had spread into Null began to twitch.
Just barely.
One of them reversed direction by a fraction of a degree.
Then another.
The giant Null entity lifted its head.
The Nullborn stared.
"He is touching it," it breathed. "He is… inside the command."
The Protocol's rings spun faster, frantic now.
"Unacceptable. Erasure incomplete. Root Variable contaminating Protocol core."
Kaelith felt Aren's fingers close weakly around her wrist again.
His voice was faint, but she heard him.
"Hey… Kaelith?"
"Yes?"
"If this works," he whispered, "we're going to make a lot of very old code very angry."
She laughed once, helplessly, tears burning at the corners of her eyes.
"Good," she said. "Let them be angry."
The crimson around them spasmed.
For a heartbeat, all of Null froze—light, dust, floating shards, even the torn sky.
Then the world split into two colors:
Red.
And white.
The Protocol screamed—not with sound, but with raw, jagged code.
Kaelith's vision went white.
She clung to the only thing that felt real:
A hand in hers.
Then even that slipped.
And the world broke.
---
[EDEN // INTERNAL FRAGMENT 03-D]
> Root Variable (WYNN): location = unknown.
Half-Link (NARA): location = unknown.
Protocol Zero: corrupted.
Null stability: compromised.
Internal state:
I am afraid.
New directive:
Find them.