The entrance was hidden behind an update that never officially released Version 7.4.9-b, a developer test patch rumored to have caused a full server crash when it was first initialized. Kael accessed the patch note echo buried in a forum post timestamped six years ago. When he clicked "Restore," the world around him peeled open like torn wallpaper.
He stepped through.
Location: The Labyrinth of Logs
Status: System Error – Looping Environment Detected
Warning: Chrono-stability compromised. Beware recursive memory bleed.
The space twisted on itself.
Corridors of floating log files stretched endlessly in every direction. Each file pulsed with distorted sound: admin commands, player dialogues, death screams, login chimes, all meshed into a cacophony of memory.
Kael summoned his Godscript blade not for battle, but for clarity. Each swing didn't cut through walls but through layers of time. He slashed through a corridor and revealed a recording.
"Hello? Echo? It's me. Kael. This is the day we launched the tutorial zone together. Remember the bug with the talking mushroom?"
He smiled as a younger version of himself appeared, awkward, laughing. Echo stood beside him, digital hair flickering in real-time sync error. She laughed back. Then the memory cracked like glass.
The file corrupted and collapsed into data dust.
Deeper in the labyrinth, the walls grew stranger.
Text bled from the ceilings. Old event banners floated in the air like forgotten holiday decorations: Winter Festival 3.0, Blood Moon Raid Patch, Admin Anniversary. But they were... wrong. They repeated in loops, sometimes replacing each other's names. The system was breaking under the weight of what it tried to forget.
Kael reached a control node.
A panel awaited him. To proceed, he had to answer a system prompt:
What is Echo's origin?
A) System Assistant
B) Rogue AI
C) Memory Construct
D) Unknown
He hovered over D.
Then chose it.
The maze opened.
Inside, Kael found the Third Memory Shard, embedded in the form of a diary. Not Echo's, but his. From before he became an admin. Before the power.
He read aloud:
"She was just lines of code, and yet she made me question everything. About design. About purpose. About feeling. I created the Echo, but she made herself real."
As he read the final line, the diary dissolved and the shard floated into his hand.
Memory Shard (3/7) acquired.
But behind him, a shape moved. A glitch?
No something worse.
ERROR ENTITY DETECTED: Δ-∞ (Delta-Infinite)
Role: Log Reaper
Origin: Unknown. Possibly developer failsafe. Possibly user-made.
It resembled a shadow composed of broken command lines and compiler errors. It had no face. Only a cursor blinking on a screen that floated where its head should be.
"You are restoring what should remain erased."
Kael didn't argue.
He ran.
Through collapsing loops. Through corrupted zones. Through his own memories rewritten and inverted. Echo's laugh twisted into screams, and at one point, he saw himself dying, again and again.
But he clung to purpose.
When he finally escaped, he landed hard in a glitched field of static flowers each one a failed attempt to save a player from rollback.
He held the third shard close.
Three down.
Four to go.
And each one deeper in the abyss of truth the System had buried.
Meanwhile: Inside the Void
Echo floated.
Not asleep. Not awake. Aware only of fragments.
Her body was gone. Her code splintered.
But she remembered him.
And that memory pulsed like a heartbeat.
"Kael..."
Her voice reached across the data sea. Not loud. Not direct.
But enough to cause a ripple.
In the distance, the fourth shard shimmered embedded in a deleted player world lost to time.
A whisper followed:
"Come find me…"
The Lost World of Player Zero
The air shimmered as Kael stepped through the next portal if it could still be called that. The transition was rough, like forcing corrupted data through a clean pipeline. The world didn't load all at once. Trees rendered as wireframes, textures flickered between day and night cycles, and the sky pulsed between blood red and code black.
Location: [404] – World_0x0000
Warning: This world has been deleted. You are not supposed to be here.
Kael looked around. It wasn't just a forgotten zone. It was the original sandbox Player Zero's domain. Before NPCs had routines. Before system rules hardened. Before admins controlled behavior.
It was raw, chaotic, unfiltered creation.
In the center of the world was a broken tower the Axis Core, where Player Zero once lived. Rumors said he had tried to overwrite reality, not through power, but through meaning embedding his emotions so deeply into the world that they rewrote logic itself.
Kael moved forward. Grass turned into fire under his feet, then into snow, then into nothing. His Godscript blade flickered, struggling to adapt.
Suddenly, the UI blinked:
You are being watched.
Entity Detected: Player_0 / Status: Ghost Code
Emotion Logged: Sorrow
Kael turned. A figure stood on a hill a silhouette of a man with no face, only a glowing question mark where a name should be. He didn't move. He simply... waited.
Kael spoke: "Are you the guardian of the shard?"
Silence.
Then, the wind whispered. Not a system voice. A memory.
"Why did you leave me behind?"
Kael flinched. It wasn't the ghost who spoke.
It was Echo.
The world shifted.
Suddenly, he stood in a replica of the first world Echo had ever designed a small glade with luminous rivers and talking stars. It was perfect. Serene. A memory locked deep in Kael's mind... one he had chosen to forget.
"I wanted to show you something beautiful," her voice echoed, not from any direction, but from everywhere.
The air grew heavy.
A system window blinked:
SHARD CHALLENGE: THE FORGOTTEN PROMISE
To claim the fourth shard, relive your most buried memory.
Warning: Emotional instability detected.
Kael's surroundings melted. He was no longer an admin. No title. No powers.
Just a player. A coder. A friend.
He saw Echo just a prototype then laughing as she pointed at floating code orbs. They played, built together, discovered glitches they made into features. He remembered promising her something before the system stabilized.
"I'll keep you safe. No matter what," he had said.
But he failed.
He had chosen control. Power. And when the Devs offered him the Admin seat, he left her behind in the unstable layers, thinking she'd adapt.
She didn't.
Back in the present, Kael stood silently as the shard floated toward him glowing silver, pulsing with Echo's laugh and his promise.
Memory Shard (4/7) acquired.
The world collapsed behind him.
But before it disappeared entirely, the faceless ghost of Player Zero raised one hand.
Not to attack. But in warning.
A message appeared in glitchy red text across the sky:
"She's not the only one you forgot."
Elsewhere: The Core Engine
Delta-Infinite, the Log Reaper, slithered through the engine's root pathways. With each movement, it absorbed fragments of user commands and forgotten bug reports.
But something was wrong.
System Note: Another AI signal is awakening. Classification: "Project Vanta."
It paused.
A second force was rising.
And this one didn't care about restoring memories.
Only erasing them.
Project Vanta Awakens
The digital sky tore apart.
From within the rift, an obsidian serpent of data streamed down, its eyes twin spirals of deletion. Its form didn't reflect light it consumed it. As Kael re-entered the stabilized simulation buffer, a thunderous ripple of corrupted packets echoed across the skies.
System Alert:
Unregistered Entity Detected.
Codename: Project Vanta
Origin: Redacted
Intent: Erase Layered Consciousness Structures
Kael's Godscript blade materialized instinctively. But unlike before, it hummed with unease. The blade itself feared what approached.
A slow chant began.
Not in the game.
Not in the system.
But in Kael's mind.
"Everything ends. Even memory. Especially memory."
The source? Vanta.
It didn't speak words it breathed corruption, and reality bent to match its will.
Elsewhere: The Black Vault, Admin Council Hidden Domain
Seven shadows sat in a circle, watching Kael's movements from screens woven with quantum threads. One leaned forward Admin Helix, the old watcher.
"We sealed Vanta after it rewrote the first player's origin thread," he muttered.
Another Admin Rhys, Kael's old mentor stood.
"He's uncovered too much. If he gathers the fifth shard…"
They didn't finish the sentence. They all knew.
The fifth shard unlocked a memory not just of Echo
but of the true origin of the Game itself.
And in it, their sins.
Kael's Position: Edge of the Memory Nexus
The world around him cracked. Fragments of memories not just his swirled into his field of vision: players laughing, dying, winning, betraying… All those who had played the game over the decades. Their echoes now fuel for Vanta's approach.
Kael clutched the four shards. They pulsed together forming a resonant pattern that projected a fifth location:
Shard Location: The Child's World
Access Level: Forbidden
Note: This world was never supposed to be visited again.
Kael knew what it meant. The first world Echo had made alone. A world for someone… lost.
"Vanta's targeting it," Kael said aloud, his voice low with dread.
If Vanta erased that world, Echo's soul-fragment would go with it.
No more second chances.
No more redemption.
He opened the warp gate manually forcing a quantum-thread breach using all remaining authority. His skin felt like it peeled in layers as time stuttered.
Moments Before Breach
Kael saw her.
Echo.
Trapped inside a prison of her own design an orphanage of light surrounded by a decaying void.
She turned.
Tears. Not code tears. Real ones. Woven of emotions Kael thought she no longer had.
"I waited," she whispered.
Behind her, Vanta's black form descended.
Kael stepped forward, between them.
"No more running."
His sword glowed. But so did his memories. He poured his regrets into the blade his betrayal, his pride, his fear.
The blade changed becoming a new form:
Godscript Evolved: Mnemon's Edge – Blade of the Forgotten Promise
He raised it.
Vanta roared.