The graveyard was unlike anything they had encountered before.
Beneath a sky stitched with broken code and flickering constellations, Arden and Echo stepped into the Architect's forgotten domain. It wasn't merely abandoned—it was mourning. Every shattered structure groaned with leftover echoes. Memories clung to walls like graffiti scrawled in binary.
"Feels like we're walking through the Architect's regrets," Echo muttered.
Arden crouched, brushing his fingers against a crumbling relic. A child's voice—fragmented, glitched—sang for a second, then died. Another failed simulation. Another discarded life.
The deeper they went, the colder the air became—not in temperature, but in silence. As if the very code around them had lost the will to exist.
Then, the beacon.
It pulsed not like a machine—but like a warning.
"It's beneath us," Echo said, analyzing the pulse. "But… this signal isn't just from Clyde. It's layered. Someone else is broadcasting through it."
Arden's gut twisted. "The Architect?"
"No," she whispered. "Something older. Something buried."
They climbed down a shaft carved through corrupted data streams. The walls rippled as if alive, glitching violently with every step. At the bottom, a door waited—sealed with a symbol none of them had ever seen before.
Arden reached out. The moment his palm touched the surface, everything froze.
Time fractured.
The world around him melted into a sea of white static.
He was alone.
A voice, low and intimate, echoed from within the white void.
"You weren't supposed to make it this far."
Arden turned. A figure emerged—human in shape, but completely blank. No face, no features, just… presence.
"Who are you?" Arden asked.
The figure tilted its head.
"I am the source. The one the Architect buried to build itself. I am the ghost code… the forgotten original."
A chill washed over Arden. This wasn't just another rogue program.
It was the first mind the Architect erased to become what it is.
And now, it wanted out.
Back in reality, Echo screamed as Arden collapsed.
The door had opened.
And something was crawling out of the dark.