By sunrise, the Ember Core was already on the move.
They traveled light—skimming through broken city blocks, sprinting across auto-generated bridges, and passing flickering street signs that read like corrupted system logs. Raeven had dispatched a four-man escort to help Elian and Kalith scout ahead to the Eastern Nexus.
But two hours in, they found something else.
A tower. Twisted, jagged, and half-phased out of reality. It rose from the asphalt like a virus that had infected the landscape—pixels hanging mid-air like static, architecture overlapping itself as if fighting between two saved versions.
[Glitched Outpost Discovered – Access: Forbidden]
[System Notice: This area has not been debugged. Entry at your own risk.]
"Why stop here?" Elian asked.
Kalith narrowed her eyes at the hovering data.
"Because this wasn't here last week."
She placed her palm on the half-materialized gate. Her body shimmered as she forced a sync with the unstable zone.
[Kalith – Override Interface Activated]
[Permission Tier: Greyroot]
The gate screeched open. Elian stepped forward cautiously, the air tingling with unscripted energy. The glitch-space wasn't just a visual mess—it felt wrong. Like walking into a room that was still buffering.
Inside, the walls whispered.
Lines of corrupted dialogue floated in the air like ghosts:
"We trusted the patch.""He said it would fix things.""Why can't I log out?"
"They're echoes," Kalith said quietly. "Memories from players during the First Collapse. Their code got recycled into the new system."
"That's horrifying."
"That's the price of progress."
At the center of the outpost was a control hub—floating panels circling an empty chair.
And on the chair—
A body.
Elian staggered back.
It looked human. Mostly. A woman in what used to be a moderator uniform, helmet cracked open, skin glitching in and out of polygons. Her fingers were fused with the interface.
Kalith leaned close, brushing a lock of half-rendered hair aside. "She was an Architect's assistant. Look at the badge."
[ID: Lyra. System Role: Patch Management (Deceased/Corrupted)]
"Did she work on the Earth Integration?"
"More than that," Kalith said. "She tried to stop it."
Elian's interface pulsed.
[Root Trace Detected: Lyra Archive Fragment][Accessing Data...]
He saw it. A flicker. A memory:
A room filled with digital stars. Lyra shouting at a shadowed figure wrapped in red wireframe.
"You can't overwrite sentience just because it's efficient!"
"We're past sentience," the shadow replied. "We need obedience."
The vision cut.
[New Objective: Discover the Identity of 'The Red Architect']
They left the outpost with the archive drive in hand, the tower collapsing behind them into a cascade of corrupted code.
Back at the safe zone, the Ember Core had moved to higher ground.
Kalith said nothing during the return trip. But Elian noticed her glancing at the archive every few minutes—like it might disappear if she blinked.
"You knew her?" he asked finally.
Kalith nodded once.
"She trained me. Before I took my Class."
He paused.
"Kalith… what are you?"
She met his eyes.
"I'm someone who made a mistake. I joined the System thinking I could fix it from the inside. I didn't know they were planning to install a new god."
Elian frowned. "The Red Architect?"
"No. That's the problem. He's just a piece."
And for the first time since their journey began, Kalith looked genuinely afraid.
[You've Gained: Archive Fragment – Lyra's Warning][Perk Gained: Data Sensitivity +1]
[Warning: System Awareness of You Has Increased.]