Arinvale had changed.
Subtly.
Terrifyingly.
NPCs now paused mid-sentence. Street lamps flickered despite no power disruptions. I saw a bird flying in loops—exactly the same path, over and over, like a GIF stuck in corrupted code. Traders in the market repeated the same line of dialogue. A blacksmith near the eastern gate pounded a sword that never changed shape.
The system was glitching.
And I had caused it.
---
The moment I stepped back into the safehouse, the tension rippled like static. Lira looked up from her notes, blinked twice, and said nothing. Ayla was leaning against the wall near the entrance, arms crossed, eyes heavy with conflict.
She spoke first.
"What happened down there?"
Her voice was low, laced with concern.
Her blade wasn't drawn—yet—but her fingers hovered near the hilt. A reflex. Not because she wanted to hurt me, but because she feared what I might have become.
I raised my hand. A black shimmer clung to my fingers, warping the air. The Veil didn't ripple like it used to. It obeyed me now—no rituals, no words.
Just will.
Her eyes widened.
"That's not Veil magic," she said.
"No," I replied. "It's something else."
Kael stepped out from the hallway, scowling. "You broke something. I can feel it in the air. The rules are slipping."
"They are," I confirmed. "And it's only going to get worse."
Lira slowly approached the table where I had laid down the old map of the undercity. She placed a crystal orb above the parchment and whispered a binding chant. Glyphs illuminated the lines.
"You returned through a path that didn't exist on any layer. Not even the Shadow Plane. You were outside the map... outside the structure. Elias, do you know what that means?"
I nodded. I knew exactly what it meant.
"I was in the Null Layer. The code beneath the code."
"That place is forbidden," she whispered.
"Not anymore."
---
That night, I tested one of the new skills I had gained: **Reality Deny**.
I stood on the rooftop, staring at the stars glitching slightly in the sky. A section of the heavens shimmered unnaturally, a square of stars flickering with a timing mismatch, like a poorly rendered texture in a simulation.
I picked up a stone from the edge of the roof and threw it into the air.
Then I activated the ability.
> **\[Skill Activated: Reality Deny]**
The stone never came down.
It didn't fall.
It didn't float.
It simply ceased to exist.
Not phased. Not hidden. Not cloaked in shadow or light.
**Unwritten.**
> **\[Entropic Instability: 5%]**
I felt the world ripple in response. Something groaned in the ether, like an ancient hinge turning.
A pulse of energy echoed out from the place the stone had vanished, and in its wake, silence fell. The city grew still.
And then... I saw it.
A figure.
No footsteps. No breath.
It stood across the street, veiled in static. Its cloak flickered between colors that didn't exist. Its face—if it had one—was a void. Faceless, featureless, and yet *aware*.
I blinked.
It was gone.
My skin crawled.
---
"You saw it, didn't you?" Lira asked later that night, when I returned to the cellar beneath the sanctuary.
"The Unseen. The ones who monitor the code from beyond the bounds."
"I don't know what it was," I admitted. "But it was watching."
She looked disturbed. "They only appear when rules are violated at the core level. You've not just bent the system, Elias. You're rewriting it."
"And it's rewriting me."
I showed her my palm.
A new glyph had appeared there. Not ink. Not carved. A rotating symbol, changing shape with every heartbeat. And it hurt. A constant, dull ache like my flesh resisted holding the truth.
> **\[Trait Acquired: Fractured Echo]**
> "You exist in partial synchrony. Reality sees multiple versions of you simultaneously. +10% dodge, +??? anomaly drift."
> **Warning: Trait may destabilize if exposed to linear causality events.**
Lira swallowed hard. "This is... blasphemy to the system. But brilliant."
---
Later, in the silence of my chamber, Ayla sat beside me.
She didn't speak.
Not for minutes.
Then, softly, she said, "Do you still feel like Elias Black?"
I looked at her.
"Some days," I said.
"And other days?"
"I feel like... someone remembering who Elias was."
She took my hand, carefully avoiding the glyph.
"Then I'll remember for you."
---
The next morning, the city wept.
System-wide rain poured, though no clouds hung in the sky. Notifications flickered in the corner of everyone's vision—**\[Global Event: Cascade Drift Detected]**. No one knew what it meant.
But I did.
I had taken the first step into a layer not meant for players. Not for NPCs. Not for even the Architects.
The game world had noticed.
And something within it was waking up.
Watching.
Waiting.