Layer Seventeen
— The One Who Was Named Incorrectly
The moment space flipped, Draft instinctively tightened her arms around Xiao Bai.
There was no fall. Instead, it was something far stranger—as if something unseen had lifted them upward, or as if they'd been picked up from behind and held suspended in midair, paused briefly for inspection.
Not an inspection of their bodies. But an inspection of what they were.
Xiao Bai felt impossibly light in her arms. Not the weight of flesh, but something closer to a blank sheet of paper, or a concept that had yet to be defined.
The next second, the world unfolded.
There was no sky. At least, not in any way she understood "sky." Above her, countless massive pages churned like an inverted sea, endlessly flipping over one another. Their edges were torn, yellowed, curled with age. They were covered in dense writing—crossed out, overwritten, rewritten again and again. Ink layered upon ink, dark and pale marks overlapping, some places scraped down until only paper fibers remained.
The sound of turning pages was quiet, but constant. Sha— sha— Like countless voices whispering in unison.
The ground was carved with words as well. Names. Codenames. Numbers. Functions. Classification tags. Some were complete and clear. Some broken and incomplete. Others violently erased, leaving only half a trace behind.
Standing among them, Draft felt a sharp illusion rise within her. It wasn't that she was reading the names. It was—the names were confirming her.
She took one step forward. The carvings beneath her feet lit up faintly. Several lines of text shook loose like dust, floating up beside her feet, then slowly rising to cling near her sleeves, her wrists, her shadow.
"Intruder."
"Variable."
"Unarchived entity."
"Human juvenile."
Each label carried no pain as it approached. Instead, a strange sense of rightness seeped through her skin and into her thoughts. That doesn't sound wrong… does it?
The moment the thought formed, Draft's breath caught sharply. No. It was too easy.
She raised her hand to brush them away—and realized the words weren't sticking to her. They were layering over her outline, pressing her into a mold that had already been prepared.
Xiao Bai let out a low sound. Not a warning. Annoyance. Its tail flicked lightly. The names that had been drifting toward it froze midair, as if flagged by something as illegal input—then shattered instantly into fine motes of light and vanished.
Draft froze. Only then did she notice something crucial. —the names were avoiding Xiao Bai. Not being repelled. But—unable to attach.
One line of text tried to cling to Xiao Bai's shadow. "Mountain God."
The next second, the word twisted violently, fractured apart, and a faint error tone rippled through the air. Xiao Bai was clearly displeased. Its ears flattened for a brief moment. Its tail struck the ground with a heavy thud.
And in that instant, the rule revealed itself. Not as a voice—but as a cold, complete, unquestionable certainty pressed directly into Draft's mind.
Every existence must possess at least one valid designation. Unnamed entities are considered unstable.
Use of aliases is permitted, but will result in random memory loss.
Refusal of naming will result in abnormal status marking.
Draft felt her heart sink, little by little. She looked down at Xiao Bai. It gazed back at her, eyes clear and sharp, untouched by any attempt at definition.
In that moment, she understood. This wasn't a place that forced you to accept a name. It was a place that made you voluntarily surrender who you were.
She took out her pencil. Here, it felt unusually solid—as if it had finally found the environment where it belonged. The tip met resistance as it moved through the air.
She wrote an alias. A meaningless one. Weightless. A name no one would remember.
The moment the last stroke settled, the surrounding names retreated like a tide pulling back. She took a few steps forward. The rules let her pass.
But the price came almost immediately. Inside her mind, a small piece of memory collapsed. It didn't vanish. It simply—became irrelevant.
She tried to recall it, only remembering that she once had a very private, very small habit, but nothing more.
Cold crept up her spine. An alias was not a lie. It was an exchange.
She stopped. Lifted her gaze to the endless flipping registry. On one of its pages, she saw a familiar name.
"Mu Jiu."
It had been written. Then violently crossed out. But above the scratches, it had been written again—the handwriting unusually clear.
Beside it, a calm and merciless record: Record Valid. Source: External Cognition. Self-Identification Strength: High.
Draft's fingers tightened. This meant Mu Jiu had not been erased by chance. He had been firmly fixed in a recorded state.
As she processed this, the entire Name Layer trembled. The target was clear. Not her. Xiao Bai.
Conceptual labels began to surface. No longer simple names—but functions.
"Guardian."
"Totem."
"Residual Old God."
"System Redundancy."
They did not approach, but hovered as if passing judgment.
For the first time, Xiao Bai's emotions spilled outward. It leapt from Draft's arms and placed itself in front of her, body taut, tail fully spread.
On the ground, its shadow stretched and twisted. And once again, Draft saw it—the outline of a human form.
Tall. Straight. Still.
Not threatening. But—undeniably real.
Xiao Bai let out a low growl. The text in the Name Layer immediately spiraled into chaos. Pages flipped faster and faster, as if the system were recalculating.
Draft did not hesitate again. She raised her pencil. She did not write a name. In the air, she carefully wrote a single line:
"This space is left blank."
Not I have no name. But—you have no right to fill it in.
The world fell silent for a moment. The rules continued to operate—but hesitated for the first time.
Abnormal Entity. Naming process cannot be completed. Memory integrity: maintained. Risk level: increased.
She was allowed to proceed. Not because she obeyed—but because she refused to be reduced.
The space began to rise once more. Just before the world flipped again, Draft heard a faint log entry, as if recorded from behind the world itself:
Record Addendum. Unnumbered entity ×1. Non-replicable entity ×1. Recommended transfer: — Function Evaluation Layer.
Xiao Bai returned to her side, tail flicking lightly, almost like a sneer. "They're starting to panic," it seemed to say.
The world inverted.
Layer Seventeen — Complete.