Two days later, the sky still hadn't stopped flickering.
Patches of broken rendering hovered like silent wounds across the Eastern skyline—geometry that hadn't fully recompiled since the Emberfall collapse. Debris floated in place. Light bent wrong.
And at the heart of the distortion: the Eastern Nexus.
Kalith held up a scanner shaped like a coil of spinning data rings. "We're two kilometers from the threshold. Past this point, nothing is logged by the System's core memory. Everything is off-record."
"You mean this is where the logs end?" Elian asked.
"No. This is where they were deliberately erased."
They moved through the shattered freeway, passing skeletal data pylons and signs corrupted with half-rendered messages.
[Caution: You are entering an Uncertified Zone. Reality Drift may occur.]
[Liability Waived Upon Entry.]
Kalith slowed suddenly, pulling Elian behind a cracked freight container. "Drones. Surveillance type."
Elian peeked—sure enough, three drones hovered in perfect sync above the rubble, scanning with beams of soft blue light.
But they weren't targeting hostiles.
They were recording memories.
[Process Identified: Memory Integration – Source: Player/NPC Hybrid Logs]
"Those aren't standard," Kalith whispered. "They're salvaging memory fragments."
"From who?"
Kalith pointed to a terminal sticking out of the ground—its display half active, pulsing faintly.
Elian approached and tapped in a basic Admin override.
[Accessing Sub-Node Memory Cache...]
[Recovered Data Log: Subject – Kael Vos | Ex-Nexus Engineer]
The screen lit up with a trembling voice log:
"We tried to reprogram the Nexus AI. Thought we could hijack the core. Instead… it rewrote us. Some of us escaped. Some turned into... not-people. They remembered being human but responded like scripted ghosts."
"And then it built the Archive."
"If you're hearing this—don't trust anything that calls itself 'Original Code.' It lies. It wants to be found."
Kalith tensed. "He's talking about the core mind behind the System. The thing we think of as the Administrator? That's not what's really in control."
[New Objective: Locate the Archive Gate][Warning: Area Stability – Low]
They pushed forward into the half-lit ruins until they reached a pit that had once been the heart of a city square.
At the center stood an ancient obelisk—coded in a language Elian had never seen. Pulsing. Breathing.
And beside it…
A humanoid figure.
Glitching in and out.
Neither player nor NPC.
Its face was smooth. Its skin rippled like corrupted code.
Then it spoke—not with voice, but through the System itself.
[Hello, Elian Ward.][Welcome to the Archive.][You are early.]
[System Shock – You Have Entered A Locked Encounter][Fight or Comply: Decision Required]
Kalith stepped forward, her fingers twitching over her interface. "What the hell is that?"
Elian didn't answer.
He was staring at the obelisk.
Because carved into it—somehow, through time and rewriting and fire—was his name.