The sky over Eternum split into two competing render cycles—half daylight, half void. As D.J. and the Guild of Rejects followed the fractured bridge away from the observatory, patches of unrecompiled terrain tore and resealed under their feet. Sometimes the world lagged for whole seconds, then lurched forward as if catching up on lost time.
Ryan stopped first, narrowing his eyes at the horizon.
"You feel that?"
Madison nodded grimly.
"Latency spikes. Everywhere. Something big's rewriting the base engine."
Toro planted his golem like a sentry.
"Rollback incoming."
"Rollback?" D.J. asked.
Madison chewed the inside of her cheek.
"When devs clean memory leaks, they roll back the server images to a stable point. If you're data created since that checkpoint…"
Ryan finished for her.
"You get erased. Reverted like you never existed."
A blinding red alert pulsed through all their HUDs.
> [ALERT: SYSTEM ROLLBACK – SANDBOX REVERT INITIATED]
> Zone Integrity: 42% and falling.
"MOVE!" Ryan barked.
---
They sprinted across the length of the collapsing bridge. Segments vanished behind them, dissolving into a void of white light. Every step bled frames from the environment; sound turned into distortion. D.J.'s heartbeat synchronized with the cube's pulse inside his hand—fast, unstable.
Toro hurled his golem forward, then grabbed both D.J. and Madison, bellowing as he leapt the last intact stretch. The three of them crashed onto a section of solid terrain, rolling behind a ridge. Ryan came last, sliding in just as the bridge blinked out entirely.
A silence followed.
Then the world around them shimmered into stillness—objects, wind, even particle effects freezing in place.
Madison's voice broke the working hush.
"Partial freeze-frame. We're stuck between rollback phases."
Toro's eyes flickered dull orange.
"Meaning?"
Ryan stared at the sky where static lines hung motionless.
"Meaning we're ghosts until the process completes—then nothing."
D.J. clenched his fists.
"Helia would've warned us. Why didn't she—?"
"She said they knew where you were," Madison interrupted. "Maybe this is their warning."
---
The cube shivered to life again in D.J.'s palm, thrumming with blue radiance. Words appeared in translucent script across his vision.
> OVERRIDE CHAIN DETECTED
> User: D.CROSS [Glitchwalker] Authorized to Initiate Save-State Anchor
> Cost: Unknown
Ryan grabbed his shoulder.
"You can't just push buttons on system-level commands!"
D.J. stared into the fractal patterns swirling through the cube.
"Either I anchor this, or rollback erases all of us."
Madison hesitated.
"Anchor means saving the current configuration. But the cost—what if you lose more of yourself?"
He smiled faintly.
"Guess I'll be easier to like once I forget my bad jokes."
Then he drove the cube into the ground.
---
Light exploded outward—rings of code freezing, stabilizing the terrain within a hundred-meter bubble. The rollback wave hit the boundary like a tide slamming glass. The noise was deafening, a thousand error chimes overlapping.
Toro shielded his face as data storms crashed against the barrier.
"It's working!"
Madison yelled above the cacophony,
"He's overwriting rollback commands manually! That's—impossible!"
Ryan glanced at D.J., who knelt in the center of the light, shaking violently as lines of code erupted from his skin like streamers.
"Yeah," Ryan muttered. "And it's killing him."
D.J. felt his consciousness flicker—memories unraveling faster this time. Birthdays, names, the face of his old boss, the smell of cheap coffee—slipping away like sand through fingers made of data. He screamed, a silent digital roar, as the cube's pulse merged with his heartbeat.
For a moment, pure stillness.
Then the rollback stopped.
> SYSTEM MESSAGE:
> Sandbox Rollback Interrupted – Conflict Source: User_D.Cross
> Integrity Lock Created: Zone marked as "Glitch Safe-State #01."
The world restarted with a violent jerk. Colors solidified, sound returned, the air filling again with a faint mechanical wind.
D.J. collapsed face-first, breath ragged. Madison caught him, running a diagnostic scan with trembling fingers.
"Brainwave sync stable, but short-term data loss…" She grimaced. "He just nuked another piece of himself."
Ryan knelt.
"What did you forget this time?"
D.J. blinked, exhausted.
"I… don't recognize this place. Were we already friends before this?"
Ryan swore under his breath.
"We are now."
---
Helia's voice slipped through the comms again, softer this time.
"Glitchwalker. You anchored the world. Clever, but dangerous. Every interference strengthens monitoring protocols."
D.J.'s vision steadied enough to see her projection reappear—mere outline this time, formed from static snow.
"What do we do next?" he asked her.
"You survive. Move south to the Spire's lower lattice. My core fragment lies there. But be warned—the rollback's failure drew attention from administrative guardians."
Madison frowned.
"Admins? As in NPC moderators?"
Helia's head tilted.
"No. As in human developers who inserted their neural threads into code-space years ago. Ghosts with permissions limited only by imagination."
Ryan's jaw tightened.
"You mean the devs that got trapped when the beta collapse happened?"
"Yes," Helia replied. "Some didn't leave. Some couldn't. And they consider you—especially the Glitchwalker—a virus against their creation."
Static overwhelmed her voice before she could continue.
---
They made camp at the edge of the stabilized zone. The light between rollback and not‑rollback shimmered, forming a visible dome overhead—thin as glass, but palpable.
Madison stared at it while stirring her usual questionable stew of code-stabilizing herbs.
"Congratulations, D.J. You just created our first permanent base."
Toro anchored repair drones to the ground.
"Glitch Safe-State," he said approvingly. "Name fits."
Ryan paced restless strides.
"A home's nice, but those dev-ghosts Helia mentioned? If they're awake, we've got bigger problems."
"Why?" D.J. asked.
"Because if they think they're gods," Ryan said, "and you're a bug rewriting their reality, they'll come to patch you out themselves."
D.J. stared up at the shimmering dome. For a heartbeat he thought he saw something above it—a shadow like a man-shaped silhouette of pure command script, watching.
He shivered.
"Let them try."
---
Later—
Sleep came in fragmented dreams of code waterfalls and empty white corridors. Somewhere deep in his neural feed, another voice, colder than Helia's, whispered:
> "Unauthorized Save-State detected. Begin corrective rollback."
> "Target: Glitchwalker."
> "Priority: Immutable."
D.J. jolted awake in darkness, breath catching against his lips. The dome of light overhead rippled like disturbed water.
At its edge stood a figure—half real, half erased—wearing the insignia of Eternum's admin division. Its voice came as synthetic distortion.
"User D.Cross. You were not meant to exist."
Before D.J. could reach for the cube, the world glitched into silence once more.