00:06:01
The city skyline shimmered unnaturally.Buildings flickered at the edges, like they were struggling to render.
From the rooftop of a half-collapsed hospital, I watched reality bend in slow motion—ripples like heat distortion, but cold. Silent.
The System had stopped pretending.
[EVENT: SYSTEM CONVERGENCE – PHASE 1]Global Magic Density: 17%Stability Threshold: BreachedChaos Entities: StirringPrimary Variable: Player Zero
That's me.
Ren Ishikawa. Chaos Mage. Soul Weaver.The bug in the simulation that forgot it was a simulation.
Elya climbed up behind me, dusting her coat off with one hand and balancing a long case of enchanted bolts in the other.
"They're calling it a World Echo," she said. "A pulse event. After tonight, nothing will be the same."
"What happens at midnight?"
"The old system fractures. Either we take control of the narrative... or we get rewritten."
She handed me a data scroll, glowing faintly blue.
Faction Report: Whisper Council
Three Echo Sorcerers seen near the Old Core.
Purity Directive deploying drones to Times Square.
Reality Anchor unstable near Columbia University—the origin point.
That's where I'd glitched into this whole nightmare.
Where the world changed.
Where I changed.
And it was calling me back.
The AI buzzed softly. More cautious now.
"You know what happens next, right?"
"I'm Player Zero," I said. "So the first to act... and the first to fall."
"Or the first to ascend."
"Same difference."
Elya and I made our way to the Old Core—once a computer science building. Now, it was wrapped in thorny time-runes and bent steel. Graffiti covered the outside:
"THE CODE REMEMBERS."
As we crossed into the fractured zone, I felt it.Every choice. Every regret. Every cast spell.
The System remembered it all.
[FINAL TRIAL BEGINS IN: 00:04:59]Prepare for Convergence.All Echoes will respond.Memory will become Weapon.Emotion will become Law.Soul may Fragment.
"Are you scared?" Elya asked, torchlight flickering across her face.
"Yes," I said. "But I'd rather die bleeding truth... than live as corrupted code."
We entered the core chamber.
And found the impossible.
A throne.
Made of memory shards. Code threads. Broken thoughts.And seated on it—
Me.
Not the reflection I fought.
Something older. Something... complete.
Eyes glowing with every color of every echo I'd absorbed.
The true Soul Weaver.
"Welcome back," he said with my voice. "You're just in time to choose how this world ends."