**[System Reboot Complete.]**
**[OS Version: 1.0 (Safe Mode)]**
**[Current HP: 65%]**
**[Mana Capacity: Unstable]**
Vex wakes up to the smell of burning copper and mildew.
She's lying on a mattress, but the mattress feels... sticky. She looks down. It's not fabric. It's a textureless grey polygon block that's clipping through the floor.
"Ugh," Vex groans, sitting up. "Who coded the collision detection in this sector? The juniors? Definitely the juniors."
She rubs her eyes. Her left arm—the one that was flickering earlier—seems solid now. She flexes the fingers. There's a split-second lag between thought and movement. 200ms latency. Annoying, but playable.
"You are awake," a deep voice says.
Vex looks up.
She is in a cathedral. Sort of. The ceiling is the underside of a city street—she can see cobblestones and sewage pipes hanging overhead. The walls are made of smashed buildings fused together by corrupted data.
Kael is sitting on a crate nearby, sharpening his sword. He's discarded the ruined top half of his tuxedo, sitting shirtless with his armor plating stacked next to him. His torso is covered in scars—both old battle wounds and new burns from the Palace escape.
"How long was I out?" Vex asks.
"Three days," Kael replies. He doesn't look at her. He tests the blade's edge against his thumb.
"Three days?" Vex stands up fast. Vertigo hits her. She grabs a pillar for support. The pillar vibrates. "I need caffeine. And a status report. Where is Seraphine?"
"Scouting the perimeter. The Royal Guard is sweeping the Upper Slums. We are in the Deep Pits."
Kael finally looks up. His grey eyes are dark, rimmed with exhaustion.
"The Discarded have been bringing you offerings," he points to a pile near her bed. Dead rats. Shinies. Broken gears. A half-eaten loaf of bread. "They think you are hibernating to gather Holy Power."
"Holy Power," Vex scoffs, picking up a rusted gear. "I was defragging my hard drive. Big difference."
"To them, it is the same." Kael stands up. He looms over her, his shadow stretching long in the dim light of glowing moss. "Elara has declared martial law. The Emperor has placed a bounty on your head equal to the GDP of a small kingdom. And they are saying..."
He hesitates.
"Saying what, Kael?"
"They say the Witch of the Void has come to unmake the world."
Vex drops the gear. It clangs against the stone floor.
"Well, their PR department is working overtime." She brushes past him. "Come on. Let's see who my new roommates are."
"Vex," Kael grabs her wrist.
His grip is warm. Calloused.
"Did you?" he asks quietly. "Unmake the world?"
Vex looks at his chest. At a scar just above his heart. A pixelated, jagged scar that shouldn't exist on a human.
"I reset the server," she says. "Twice. Because the economy crashed and the demon spawns were bugged."
"We are not numbers to be balanced," Kael hisses. "I had a sister in the first cycle. I remember her laughing. I thought it was a dream. But she existed, didn't she? And you... you hit 'Reset'."
The anger is there. Raw and justified.
Vex could lie. She could say it was necessary to save them from corruption. She could use her high Charisma stat to bluff.
But she looks at the man who jumped into the trash bin for her.
"Yes," she says. "I deleted her."
Kael flinches.
"And," Vex continues, stepping closer until she's pressing against his bare chest, forcing him to look down at her. "I deleted myself. I lost everything too, Kael. But here's the difference. I brought you back."
She pokes his chest hard.
"I rebuilt this world. I wrote every line of code that makes your heart beat. I painted the sky you look at. I am not the villain for fixing a broken save file. I am the janitor cleaning up the mess."
"And what happens when this save file breaks?" Kael whispers. "Do we disappear again?"
Vex stares into his eyes.
"No," she lies. Or maybe hopes. "Not this time. Because this time, I'm stuck inside with you. If the ship sinks, I drown too."
Kael searches her face. The tension between them is thick enough to cut. It's not just anger. It's desperation. It's the shared trauma of two people realizing their reality is fragile.
He releases her wrist.
"Then fix the ship, Admin," he says hoarsely. "Before Valorian burns it down."
***
**[Location: The Court of Glitches]**
**[Population: 400 Discarded]**
The main cavern of the Deep Pits is crowded.
Creatures that were once human huddle around trash fires burning with green and purple flames. It looks like a leper colony designed by Salvador Dalí.
A woman with a blacksmith's apron has an anvil fused into her left hand. A child floats three inches off the ground, vibrating uncontrollably. An old man is speaking, but his text bubble appears above his head instead of audio coming out.
When Vex walks in, silence falls.
Then, a murmur. Like a wave crashing.
"The User!"
"The Admin!"
"She Returns!"
They don't bow. They *crouch*. It's a submissive posture programmed into the base AI for interacting with deity-class entities.
Grand Mage Cassius—the man with the rock-face—steps forward. His robes are rags, but he holds his staff with dignity.
"You rise," Cassius rasps. The stone growth on his face has spread, covering his left eye. "Does the Source flow?"
"The Source is rebooting," Vex says loudly. She projects her voice. "But I'm awake."
She looks at the crowd.
"Listen up!" she shouts. "I know things look... laggy. I know you've been glitching. But that stops now. Line up. I'm opening a ticket queue."
"Queue?" a man with no legs (hovering) asks.
"A line! Single file! If you have missing limbs, corrupt textures, or logic loops, get in line!"
They hesitate. They look at Cassius.
"Do as she commands!" Cassius booms. "The Repair is at hand!"
A young woman steps forward first. She's terrified. She holds out her hands. Her fingers are fused together into a fleshy paddle.
"I wanted to be a seamstress," she weeps. "But the corruption took my fingers."
Vex looks at the hand. *Polygon fusion error.* Simple geometry fix.
"Give me your hand," Vex says softly.
The woman offers the paddle-hand.
Vex doesn't glow. She doesn't chant.
She visualizes the *Wireframe*. She sees the blue grid of lines defining the woman's skin. She sees where the vertices got tangled.
With a flick of her index finger, she *separates* the nodes.
*SNAP.*
The sound is sickening—like breaking celery.
The woman screams.
But when she looks down, the fleshy paddle has split. Five distinct fingers uncurl. The skin knits instantly as Vex reapplies the texture map.
"Flex them," Vex orders.
The woman wiggles her new fingers. She cries out, falling to her knees, kissing Vex's boots. "A miracle! The Lady of Lines has healed me!"
"It's just geometry," Vex says, pulling her foot away uncomfortably. "Next!"
The line forms instantly.
For the next four hours, Vex works. It's gruesome work.
She rotates a man's spine 30 degrees to fix his hunchback (**[Skeletal_Rig.Align]**).
She deletes a tumor that had a face (**[Remove_Object]**).
She re-assigns a color palette to a man whose skin had turned transparent (**[Texture_Default.Apply]**).
Kael watches from the shadows, arms crossed.
He sees her wincing every time she uses magic. He sees the sweat dripping down her face.
"She is in pain," Seraphine says, appearing next to him on a ledge. The assassin is peeling an apple with a knife that has dried blood on it.
"She is low on mana," Kael corrects. "But she won't stop."
"She likes them," Seraphine notes, taking a bite of the apple. "The broken ones. She treats them better than she treated the Dukes at the ball."
"The broken ones don't pretend to be perfect," Kael murmurs.
Down in the pit, Cassius approaches Vex. The line is finished.
"Me," he says. He points to the rock overtaking his face.
Vex looks at him. **[Diagnosis: Petrified Curse. Magic Overflow.]**
"This one is tricky, Cassius," Vex admits, wiping mana-sweat from her brow. "This isn't just a glitch. This is intentional. Someone cursed you with Earth magic to turn you into a statue."
"Valorian," Cassius spits the name. "When I refused to weaponize the Academies."
"If I remove it... I have to remove the eye underneath. The rock has replaced the tissue."
"Take it," Cassius says. "I have seen enough with one eye."
Vex nods. "Okay. This is going to suck."
She reaches out.
She grasps the stone growth on his face. She channels *Earth* magic—not to grow, but to *erode*.
She accelerates time on the rock. Thousands of years of weathering in a second.
The rock turns to dust. It crumbles away, leaving a hollow socket.
But Vex isn't done.
She reaches into her pocket. She pulls out a tiny, glowing blue marble. *Mana Crystal.*
"Hold still. I'm giving you an upgrade."
She jams the crystal into his empty eye socket.
Cassius screams—a raw, guttural sound. Light explodes from his head.
When it fades, the hollow socket is gone. In its place is an eye made of pure azure energy. It spins with runic circles.
**[Unit Modified: Cassius]**
**[New Trait: Truesight (See Invisibility/Magic)]**
Cassius blinks his new eye. He looks around. He looks at Kael in the shadows.
"I see... I see the code," Cassius whispers. He looks at his own hands. "I see the strings."
"You see the framework," Vex corrects, stumbling back. She's dizzy. Mana bar at 5%. "Use it wisely. Don't look at the sun, you'll go blind."
"Administrator!" Cassius falls to his knees. "We are yours. We are the Patched!"
The crowd erupts. "THE PATCHED! THE PATCHED!"
Vex slumps onto a crate. "Worst guild name ever," she mutters.
Kael is there instantly, handing her a waterskin. "Drink."
"Thanks, Mom," Vex takes it, draining the water.
"You gave him a Magitech eye," Kael says, watching Cassius stare at the walls with wonder. "Technology that has been lost for an era."
"I invented Magitech," Vex says tiredly. "I just haven't released the expansion pack yet. He's early access."
"You are changing them. Weaponizing them."
"We need an army, Kael. Valorian has Legions. I have a bunch of people with glitches. I need to turn those glitches into features."
***
**[Location: Sector 7 Perimeter]**
**[Threat Level: Imminent]**
A horn blasts.
Not a clumsy orc horn. A clear, piercing silver trumpet.
Seraphine drops from the ceiling. "We've got company. Royal Guard Clean-Up Crew. And... they brought the Big Dog."
"Elara?" Kael asks, reaching for his sword.
"Worse," Seraphine grimaces. "General Marcus. The Stormborn."
Vex swears. "General Marcus is a Level 60 Tank. He has 90% Magic Resistance. He's designed specifically to kill mages."
"Then I will take him," Kael says.
"No," Vex stands up, swaying. "He'll flatten you. He has a mythical hammer."
A booming voice echoes from the tunnel entrance above.
**"CITIZENS OF THE SLUMS. SURRENDER THE GLITCH. AND YOU WILL BE SPARED. HARBOR HER, AND YOU WILL BE PURGED."**
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Heavy footsteps. Mechanized footsteps.
General Marcus enters the light. He is enormous—eight feet tall in steampunk-magitech power armor. Steam hisses from vents in his shoulders. He wields *Earthshaker*, a hammer the size of a tombstone.
Behind him, fifty Royal Guards with flamethrowers.
"Flamethrowers," Vex groans. "Since when do they have flamethrowers? Valorian is tech-rushing."
The Discarded whimper. They shrink back. They remember being purged before.
Marcus raises the hammer. "Burn it out. Start with the sick."
A soldier triggers his flamethrower. A stream of alchemical fire shoots toward the woman Vex just healed.
"No!" Vex steps forward.
But she doesn't have to.
A wall of ice erupts from the ground. Not clean, blue ice. *Corrupted* ice. Black and jagged.
It blocks the fire.
Vex looks to her left. A skinny boy with one arm is holding out his hand. His "missing" arm is manifesting as a phantom limb of pure frost.
"Don't touch her!" the boy screams.
The Discarded are stepping up.
Cassius walks forward, his new electric-blue eye glowing like a spotlight.
"You seek to burn the Broken, Marcus?" Cassius asks. His voice echoes weirdly. "But we do not burn. We crash."
"Abominations," Marcus sneers. He swings his hammer at Cassius.
Cassius doesn't dodge. He... lags.
The hammer passes through Cassius as if he isn't there. Then Cassius "snaps" back into existence behind Marcus.
**[Skill: Packet Loss Teleport]**
"Attack!" Marcus roars. "Kill them all!"
The battle of Sector 7 begins. And it is chaos.
Vex watches, stunned.
The Discarded aren't fighting like NPCs. They're fighting like *glitches*.
The seamstress touches a soldier. Her "Separation" logic applies to his armor. His breastplate falls apart into constituent polygons, leaving him exposed.
The hovering man zooms forward at incorrect speeds—clipping through walls and tackling soldiers from inside the stone.
The floating child screams, and gravity in a ten-foot radius inverts. Five soldiers fall *upward* onto ceiling spikes.
"They're using their bugs," Vex whispers, awestruck. "They're weaponizing physics errors."
Kael is in the thick of it. His *Synthesis Sword* cuts through Guard armor like butter. He guards the civilians, his shield absorbing flamethrower blasts.
But General Marcus is a problem.
He activates **[Overdrive]**. His armor glows red. He spins the hammer, creating a whirlwind that sucks the glitches in.
"Enough!" Marcus roars. He slams the hammer down. **[Earthquake]**.
The floor shatters. Cassius is thrown back. Kael is knocked off his feet. The ceiling begins to crumble.
Marcus charges Vex.
"Administrator!" he bellows. "Your trial has expired!"
He raises the hammer. Vex tries to summon a shield.
*Mana: Empty.*
"Crap."
She braces for impact.
But impact doesn't come.
A dagger hits Marcus's eye slit. *Ping.* Seraphine, distracting him.
Marcus flinches, swiping at the rogue. Seraphine dances away, laughing.
"Over here, Tin Man!"
"Focus!" Vex shouts. She needs mana. Fast.
She looks around. The room is full of burning mana from the flamethrowers. Alchemical fire.
*Mana absorption.*
It's a risky move. Dark magic. **[Skill: Void Eater]**.
"Kael! Seraphine! Clear the blast zone!"
She reaches out with both hands.
"I said," Vex's voice drops an octave. Her eyes turn entirely purple. "I'm the Janitor."
She inhales.
The fire in the room stops burning the walls. It flows toward her. Green, alchemical flames are sucked into her mouth and palms.
It tastes like gasoline and anger.
Her mana bar refills. But it's tainted mana. Volatile.
**[Mana: 200% (Overcharge)]**
**[Warning: Core Meltdown Imminent.]**
"Hey, Marcus!"
The General turns.
Vex is glowing green and purple. She looks less like an Admin and more like a walking reactor leak.
"You like flamethrowers?" she asks. "Let me show you version 2.0."
She clasps her hands together. **[Element Fusion: Plague Fire]**.
She shoots a beam of concentrated rot-fire. It's a green laser.
It hits Marcus in the chest.
His magic resistance kicks in. A blue shield flares.
But Vex pushes more. She pours the corrupted energy of the Glitch Pits into the beam.
"Update your drivers!" she screams.
The beam turns white.
The shield shatters. The metal armor starts to... rust. Instantly.
Magitech armor is alloy. Vex is oxidizing it at super-speed.
The mighty General Marcus takes a step back. Then another. His knees buckle as his armor fuses into a solid, rusted statue of immobility. The gears grind to a halt.
"Suit Failure," a mechanical voice from his armor announces. "Lockdown initiated."
Marcus is trapped inside his own armor. A prisoner in a steel coffin.
Vex stops the beam. She falls to her knees, smoking.
The remaining Guards look at their statue-commander. They look at the army of glitch-monsters.
They drop their weapons.
"Surrender accepted," Kael announces, stepping on top of a fallen flamethrower. "Get out of our city."
They run.
***
**[Victory.]**
**[Faction Reputation: The Patched (Revered)]**
**[Sector 7 Status: Liberated]**
The dust settles.
Vex sits on the ground, hacking up black smoke. Kael is beside her, pounding her back.
"That was stupid," Kael admonishes. "Eating alchemical fire? You could have melted your organs."
"It worked," Vex wheezes. She wipes soot from her mouth. "Did we win?"
Cassius walks over. His electric eye scans the rusted General.
"He is alive inside," Cassius notes. "Do we kill him?"
"No," Vex says. "Prop him up at the entrance. Put a sign on him: 'Tech Support Closed'."
Cassius chuckles—a dry, rasping sound. "As you command, Prime Source."
Seraphine lands next to them. She's grinning, covered in soot.
"We just kicked the Royal Guard's ass with a bunch of cripples and a rusty spoon," she cheers. "That was poetic."
"It's not over," Vex says, sobering up. "That was just a scouting party. Valorian will send a Legion next."
"Then we will recruit more," Kael says. He looks out at the slums, where thousands of eyes are watching from the shadows. "The slums are vast, Vex. And everyone down here hates the Emperor."
Vex nods. She stands up, shaky but supported by Kael.
She looks at her interface. A new notification is blinking.
It's not from the System. It's a Whisper. A private message.
From an unknown sender.
*["Nice display, Admin. You clean up well. But your backend is vulnerable. Check your daughter's file."]^*
Vex freezes.
Daughter?
She doesn't have a daughter. She's an isekai protagonist in an avatar body.
"Vex?" Kael asks, sensing her tension.
"The code," Vex whispers, reading the message again. "Who sent this?"
The message flickers and changes.
*["Coordinates attached: Sector 12, The Orphanage of St. Jude. Ask for Aria. She has your eyes. And your admin privileges."]^*
Aria.
The name rings a bell. A specific, terrifying bell.
Back in the real world, before the crash, Vex had been working on a new NPC AI. A self-learning child unit. Project Name: A.R.I.A. (Autonomous Reality Interface Algorithm).
She never implemented it.
Or so she thought.
"Seraphine," Vex says, her voice trembling slightly. "How far is Sector 12?"
"Deep," Seraphine says. "Red light district. Why?"
"We need to make a pick-up," Vex says. She looks at Kael. "Turns out I might have left some code compiling in the background."
Kael frowns. "More glitches?"
"No," Vex stares at the message. "Family."
**[Hidden Quest Unlocked: Maternal Instincts]**
**[Objective: Retrieve the AI Child before the Void finds her.]**