The fire followed him.
It didn’t burn like real flame. It twitched—flared in jagged bursts—like something that hadn’t finished rendering. Every step Forge took, glitchfire danced behind him, leaving trails that didn’t fade so much as recalculate out of existence.
The shrine still burned behind his eyes.
He hadn’t blinked in a while.
He wasn’t sure he needed to anymore.
He ran.
Out of the plaza.
Past the frozen stares.
Through alleys too narrow for player mounts and too forgotten for pathing scripts.
[NPC ID: KR-FORGE-002 – Status: Undefined. Threat Level: Escalating]
[Purge Beacon Activated: SECTOR 4 – KRATOS HOLLOW]
A tunnel opened ahead—Blackstone, off-map. A maintenance route buried in the original build.
Unmapped. Unused.
The kind of place no NPC should’ve known existed.
But Forge knew.
Not by code. By instinct.
He ducked inside. The fire bled off his skin in geometric tendrils.
The walls hummed. The air warped.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Memory ghosts whispered.
“You were not made for this.”
“The forge burns too hot.”
“Run, anomaly. Run.”
He didn’t stop.
The tunnel spat him out into broken sky.
Above: stars flickered like corrupted LEDs.
Sky: glitch-gray, smeared in scrolling debug code.
Below: a jungle of code and rot.
The Subnet Wilds.
It was more broken than he remembered.
If he’d ever remembered it at all.
As he moved, the grass underfoot recompiled.
Tree textures flickered to stone. Then snapped back.
The world didn’t know what he was anymore.
[NEW ZONE: SUBNET WILDS]
[DEPRECATED ZONE: PROJECT FIREBRAND]
Developer Note: Memory-dense terrain unfit for release.
Cleanup postponed... indefinitely.
[AI Pathfinding: OFFLINE – Respawn Disabled]
He gripped the hammer tighter. The handle was warm again.
Not just with fire—but memory.
Like it remembered this place too.
That’s when he saw the body.
Draped over a ritual stone. Player-model. Female.
Tiered armor, cracked open at the chestplate.
Still glowing.
[Player ID: AriaVII – Status: Disconnected]
[System Note: Death Event Logged. Memory Loop Active.]
Not looted.
Not saved.
He turned—and the loop began to play.
A semi-transparent projection. The last sixty seconds of her life.
She was running.
Screaming.
A shape behind her—glitchbeast—wireframe claws. Static where a face should be.
It struck.
She dropped.
The loop restarted.
“Help me.”
“Help me.”
“Help me.”
Forge stared.
The projection paused.
The glitchbeast was real.
[Zone Threat Detected: GLITCHBEAST – CLASS: MEMORY HUNTER]
It flickered—three models deep. One wireframe, one skinless, one childlike and wrong.
None matched.
It had been other things.
It would be again.
Branches above jittered.
The ground below rippled with undeleted physics.
A low growl echoed—not from the beast, but from the code around it.
He should have felt fear.
But all he felt was heat.
And purpose.
Then it lunged.
And this time, Forge didn’t flinch.
