My name is Volt. Three days ago, I was scavenging for parts near Stability HQ's security perimeter in Downtown Lighthouse City when the world... glitched. That's the only word for it. Reality tore apart like cheap fabric, a momentary fracture in the world that shouldn't have been possible. One instant I was scavenging, the next I was falling through—tumbling into fifteen days of hell compressed into what was a heartbeat for the world outside. No supervisor, no team, no status screen. Just me—a 27-years-old guy without an unlocked status, a blank—in an F-tier rift with no training or equipment. Nobody knew I was here.

  What's worse: time moves differently here. Each second outside is a day inside this fractured reality. I'm living through weeks while the real world experiences mere moments. Rescue wouldn’t arrive in time.

  I'm writing this on a salvaged notepad, hand shaking; huddled in what used to be a corner office fourteen floors up. The building outside doesn't exist in the real Lighthouse City anymore—was demolished five years back. But here, it stands. Sort of.

  I looted whatever twisted version of food and water I could find but I am running low and the atmosphere of the rift is wearing on me. The sky never changes. Static-filled gray, like an old monitor stuck between channels. Everything flickers. The streets below are recognizable versions of Downtown, but wrong. Buildings lean at impossible angles. Textures shimmer and swap. My vision occasionally tears, showing code fragments instead of reality.

  I've learned fast because I had to.

  The first day nearly killed me. Stumbled right into a cloud of what I now call Exhaustion Mites—microscopic parasites that drain you by just existing nearby. Didn't see them until it was too late. My body felt like lead within minutes. Barely survived by climbing a fire escape, gasping for breath that wouldn't come.

  Found a corroded metal pipe in a maintenance closet. It's my only weapon.

  I hid in an abandoned workshop for two days, but now I had to move - time was running out. The streets buzzed with static energy, pulsing like a heartbeat. I stepped over cracked pavement, my pipe clenched in both hands. The abandoned storefronts around me flickered, their signs morphing every few seconds. One moment, Eli’s Electronics was there; the next, it was Glitch Mart, flashing in unnerving green text.

  I didn’t see the approaching Time Fray at first. It was subtle—a rippling shadow against the gray sky. It hovered in the middle of the road like heat distortion, a predator in plain sight if you knew where to look. My breath caught as it noticed me. A soundless digital scream pierced my ears, a visceral horror echoing in my mind.

  I had no choice. There was nowhere to go. My back pressed against the shut door of a half-rendered café. The static in the air churned, and I gripped my pipe tighter.

  The creature lunged, glitching forward in abrupt bursts. I swung wildly, instinct taking over. The pipe connected with something solid—a digital crunch that sent feedback rippling through my arm. It shimmered, bending at unnatural angles, reforming into shape as if mocking my attack.

  I swung again. And again. My muscles burned, and my breath came in gasps. It wasn’t about strategy or skill—it was about survival. Seventeen strikes later, the Time Fray broke apart into thousands of pixelated fragments, fading into a soft hum of background noise. I collapsed to my knees, panting, staring at the space it had occupied. No rewards. No progress notifications. Nothing.

  I've mapped eight blocks of this fractured copy of Downtown. The rift is circular, approximately 250 meters across. Beyond the edges is just... nothing. A wall of dense static I can't penetrate.

  The next day I found my first "clean" Data Node—a computer terminal that doesn't flicker or glitch. Something stirred when I touched it. The static in the air lessened momentarily. I've marked it on my crude map. Something tells me they're important.

  What I feared happened on day seven, I had just finished salvaging copper wire from a half-rendered office building. No warning. No telltale static charge in the air. Just sudden, violent disruption.

  The data storm hit like a physical wall—horizontal sheets of crackling code slicing through reality itself. One moment I was stepping over rubble, the next I was drowning in digital noise. My vision fragmented into pixels, my inner ear screaming as up became down, then sideways, then nowhere at all. I vomited, the limited contents of my stomach hanging suspended before me in defiance of whatever passed for gravity in this nightmare.

  I clawed at the ground—or was it the wall?—fingers scraping against concrete that flickered between solid and intangible. My pipe slipped from my grasp, clattering against surfaces I couldn't identify. The storm lasted exactly twelve seconds. I counted them like heartbeats, the only constant in a world gone mad.

  When clarity returned, so did true terror.

  They circled me—seven Phase Flickers. Insect-like abominations with segmented limbs and bodies made of translucent code. One perched on a fallen beam three meters to my right, mandibles clicking. I blinked, and suddenly it was on my shoulder, its weight crushing. I screamed, swinging wildly, hitting nothing but air as it reappeared across the room.

  Another materialized behind me, its cold limbs wrapping around my throat. I drove my elbow backward, connecting with chitinous armor that gave way with a sickening crack. It shrieked—a sound like dial-up internet distilled into pain—before flickering away.

  I scrambled for my pipe, fingers closing around the cold metal just as two more Flickers converged on me. One moment they were at opposite sides of the room, the next they were inches from my face. I swung in a desperate arc, the pipe passing through empty space as they teleported again.

  My back hit the wall. No escape route. Three Flickers materialized directly in front, forming a perfect triangle of death. I couldn't track them all—their movements followed no logic, no pattern I could discern. One appeared above me, dropping onto my shoulders. Its mandibles tore into my jacket as I rolled, slamming it against broken drywall. It shattered into code fragments that burned my skin on contact.

  Two more lunged simultaneously. I ducked, feeling their claws slice air where my head had been. Fighting them was like boxing shadows—impossible to anticipate, to counter. I needed a strategy.

  The air pressure changed subtly. Another data storm approaching. Forty-seven seconds. The rhythm of this place. I'd use it.

  I feinted left, then dove right, putting distance between us as the Flickers recalculated. Twenty seconds to storm. I grimly counted down as they closed in again, teleporting ever closer, jaws snapping. Ten seconds. Five.

  The storm hit just as they lunged, their forms disintegrating into the chaos. I closed my eyes, endured the vertigo, and prayed I'd still be alone when it cleared.

  A bit later I found a second Data Node in this alternate reality version of Stability HQ. I managed to cleanse it by connecting it to the first with the cable I had salvaged. The air feels... different now. Lighter. The Memory Eater—according to my wrist implant that's what these data fragments call the thing controlling this place—seems agitated. Good.

  On day nine I ventured towards an abandoned subway station. It seemed safe enough—concrete walls, limited entry points, defensible. I'd set up a temporary camp near the old ticket booth, rationing the stale water like substance I'd found in a vending machine that flickered between existence and non-existence. My ribs ached from an encounter yesterday, purple bruises blooming beneath torn clothing.

  I heard it before I saw it—a rhythmic clicking, like damaged code running on repeat. The sound echoed off the curved tunnel walls, impossible to pinpoint. I gripped my pipe tighter, scanning the shadows.

  It emerged from beneath a derailed subway car—a Glitch Crawler. Unlike the minor enemies I'd faced, this thing had presence. Authority. Its body resembled a massive insect, constructed entirely of glowing wireframe geometry, legs articulating with precise, unnatural movements. It stood as high as my waist, mandibles clicking as its hollow eyes locked onto me.

  "Elite," I whispered, the term surfacing from somewhere deep in my memory. The real danger in rifts.

  It moved faster than physics should allow, skittering across the ceiling before dropping directly in front of me. I swung hard, the pipe whistling through the air—and passing straight through its body as if it weren't there. The momentum threw me off-balance, and the Crawler struck, its wireframe leg slicing a clean gash across my forearm.

  Blood flowed freely as I stumbled back, regaining my footing against a fallen support beam. The creature advanced methodically, its form occasionally glitching—pieces of it appearing to layer over themselves before snapping back to normal.

  I swung again. This time the pipe connected, sending shockwaves of disruption through its wireframe body. The Crawler emitted a harsh digital screech that made my teeth vibrate. Encouraged, I struck again—only for my weapon to phase through empty space once more.

  A pattern. There had to be a pattern.

  I circled the creature, testing, observing. Each time my attack phased through, the Crawler's form briefly flickered with misaligned geometry. I counted silently, tracking successful hits versus misses. One miss for every five hits. Twenty percent phase chance.

  The Crawler lunged again, its wireframe body contorting impossibly as it attempted to flank me. I retreated up the station stairs, gaining higher ground. Blood from my arm left a trail of wet footprints. The Elite followed, its movements becoming more erratic, harder to predict.

  When it charged again, I was ready. Instead of defending, I went all-in unleashing a barrage—six consecutive swings delivered in a brutal rhythm. Two phased through harmlessly, but four connected solidly, sending fractures through its digital exoskeleton. The Crawler's form destabilized, chunks of wireframe breaking off and dissolving into static.

  It wasn't retreating. Elites don't retreat. It reoriented, calculating a new approach, its damaged body reconstructing segments even as others failed. I didn't give it the chance. Another six-hit combination, pivoting around its flank. Five connected this time, and the Crawler's structure couldn't maintain integrity.

  It collapsed inward, folding in on itself before bursting into a shower of pixels that stung my skin like tiny electric shocks. Where it had stood, only a small pool of corrupted code remained, glitching occasionally against the concrete.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I slumped against the wall, breathing heavily, calculating my wounds against my dwindling supplies. My body was failing. No status screen means no regeneration boosts. No mana. No special abilities. Just flesh and bone and will. My arms were covered in lacerations which I bound with strips of my shirt. Infected, probably. The cut would need binding. The bruises would have to heal naturally. But I'd learned something valuable: Twenty percent phase chance. Six attacks. Four hits minimum. Those numbers were the difference between life and death.

  As the days progressed, I cleansed more Data Nodes; I was at four now. I connected them in a crude network. Each time, the Memory Eater screamed—not audibly, but I feel it in my teeth, in my bones. The digital echoes are changing too. Instead of fragments, I hear full conversations. Citizens worried about rift activity. Stability agents discussing containment protocols. This rift is a memory. A broken, corrupted memory of my home.

  By day eleven I finally found the fifth Data Node. This one was guarded by a Rift Scavenger—humanoid, multi-limbed, hungry. It nearly took my arm off. I led it into a Logic Loop—an area where time repeats every six seconds. Watched it get stuck, attacking the same spot over and over. I counted twenty-seven repetitions before I could circle around and cleanse the node.

  The Memory Eater revealed itself briefly today. Shapeless mass of digital corruption, like television static given form. It screamed when the fifth node connected to my network. Then it was gone, leaving only a fading imprint on my retinas.

  Exhaustion is constant now. Every step feels like wading through concrete. But there's a pattern to this place. A rhythm. If I move with it instead of against it, I can conserve energy.

  It was day thirteen when I found data logs in the sixth node. This rift formed when Stability HQ's servers suffered a quantum fluctuation. A slice of Downtown, populated by digital echoes of its systems and citizens, cut off from reality. If it collapses—if I fail—these corrupted echoes will flood back into the real Downtown. Mass data corruption. System failures. Deaths.

  My pipe broke fighting a Glitch Crawler. I fashioned a new weapon from broken glass and wire. It cuts my hands when I use it.

  The seventh node was hidden in what would be the Central Bank in real Downtown. Heaviest concentration of monsters I've seen. I used the environment—the constant reality shifts—to my advantage. When walls flicker, sometimes you can slip through. Timing was everything.

  All seven nodes are cleansed now. Connected. Ready.

  The Memory Eater is weak. I can feel it.

  I have run out of time. It was day fifteen the last day before collapse I could feel it with the pressuring building around me. The rift was about to break. If that happened everything in it would swarm me.

  I'm writing this as a record, in case I fail. In case someone finds this notepad in the real world after the rift breaks.

  My plan was simple and desperate. The nodes formed a circle. The Memory Eater had to manifest. I'll overload all seven connected nodes simultaneously by disabling the surge protector with my wrist implant. The power spike should force the monster into physical form.

  I've been eyeing a Reality Tear for three days, waiting, measuring, calculating. Unlike the rest of this broken downtown, it doesn't glitch or flicker. It's the opposite—a constant: a jagged, lightning-bright crack hanging in mid-air between what used to be the Lighthouse City Bank and a half-rendered café. The space around it warps and bends, as if reality itself is being pulled into its maw.

  Reality Tears are wounds in the fabric of the rift—places where the simulation breaks down completely, where raw code bleeds through. Standing near one feels like being slowly dissolved from the inside out, your body taking persistent damage just from proximity. But I need what's inside.

  With my glass shard braced against the crack's edge, I pry it wider, my muscles screaming in protest. Through gritted teeth, I reach in and snap off a shard—a jagged, crystalline fragment of unfiltered reality-code. The moment my fingers close around it, agony lances up my arm. It burns white-hot, crackling with energy that scorches my palm and sends tendrils of pain shooting through my nervous system. Imagine grabbing a live wire while standing in water. Now multiply that by ten.

  But I don't let go. I can't. It's my only hope against the Memory Eater.

  I approach the center of the rift where all seven cleansed nodes converge their energy. My makeshift network has already weakened the beast, but it's still far more powerful than me. As I step into the convergence point, the air distorts violently. The Memory Eater charges me—a massive, shapeless entity composed of corrupted data fragments and static. One moment it resembles a towering humanoid figure, the next a writhing mass of geometric shapes and broken code.

  I've spent days studying its patterns through observation. Every 30 seconds, its resistances shifted in a predictable cycle: 10 seconds vulnerability, 10 seconds of phase immunity, and 10 seconds where it overcharges itself presumably creating a feedback loop when attacked.

  My watch is broken, so I count heartbeats instead. Sixty per thirty seconds. I've practiced this rhythm, internalized it, made it as much a part of me as my own breathing.

  As it got closer, it screamed—a digital howl that distorted my vision and sends feedback screeching through my skull. I push through the pain, watching for the telltale shift in its form—a subtle reorganization of its fragmented geometry that signals vulnerability.

  There. The shift happens. I lunge forward, reality shard extended. The contact is like nothing I've ever felt—code meeting anti-code. The shard cuts through the Memory Eater's form, leaving a trail of dissolving pixels in its wake. My hand holding the shard also begins to decay. The creature recoils, digital blood—lines of red code—streaming from the wound.

  I count under my breath. Seven seconds left in this phase. I need to retreat before—

  Too slow. The Memory Eater's form shimmers, shifting to phase immunity. My follow-up strike passes harmlessly through its body, throwing me off balance. A tendril of corrupted data lashes out, catching me across the chest. Pain explodes through my ribs as I'm thrown backward, skidding across broken concrete.

  No health bar appears. No damage numbers. Just the wet warmth of blood soaking through my shirt and the stabbing pain with each breath. Broken rib, probably. No healing potions, no regeneration skills. Just me, bleeding and vulnerable.

  I scramble behind a collapsed wall, counting furiously. Overcharge phase now. I can't attack—not unless I want to damage myself with lethal force. Instead, I use these ten seconds to circle, to reposition, to prepare for the next vulnerability window.

  The Memory Eater howls again, its form convulsing as it searches for me. The architecture around us begins to dissolve, reality glitching in its rage, walls flicker in and out of existence. The ground beneath my feet shifts between solid and intangible.

  Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Vulnerable again.

  I emerge from cover, ignoring the fire in my ribs, and drive the reality shard deep into what might be the creature's core. The connection is electric, almost nuclear. The shard burns brighter in my hand, feeding on the raw data of the Memory Eater's essence. My palm blisters and cracks, skin peeling away from raw flesh, but I don't release my grip.

  "One more," I gasp through clenched teeth, wrenching the shard free and staggering back. The Memory Eater convulses, its form destabilizing. Parts of it break off into cascades of falling code. It's weakening, but so am I. Blood loss makes my vision swim. The reality shard has burned nerve endings in my hand that will never naturally heal.

  I count through the next immunity phase, then the overcharge phase, my lips moving silently as I track each precious second. The Memory Eater lashes out wildly, its attacks growing more desperate as its form deteriorates. A data tendril catches my leg, opening a deep gash. I stumble but don't fall.

  Vulnerability window again. With everything I have left, I launch myself forward, driving the reality shard into the exact center of the Memory Eater's mass.

  The world goes white. Then black. Then explodes into a million fragments of dissolving code.

  I find myself lying on my back, staring up at a sky that's no longer static-filled but clear, stabilizing. The shard in my hand has shattered, leaving only crystalline dust that sparkles as it dissolves into nothing. My blood mingles with the Memory Eater's digital essence on the cracked pavement.

  But I'm alive. By the razor-thin margin between perfect timing and death—I've survived.

  The rift began to stabilize immediately. The Firewall Fracture—a massive tear in reality at the center of Downtown—sealed itself as the Memory Eater died.

  My body begins to heal, floating before me, words I never thought I'd see:

  [STATUS SCREEN UNLOCKED]

  [ATTRIBUTES UNLOCKED]

  [Force: 1, Power: 1, Speed: 1, Mana: 1, Vitality: 1, Defense: 1, Control: 1]

  My body feels different. Stronger. The cuts on my arms are almost gone. I had access to mana now, I could feel it. The trait I received… It was okay.

  [DOMAIN RESONANCE (NORMAL): “The dimensional flow embraces you.”

  Hazard Detection: Sense environmental hazards within 50m

  Resilience: 50% reduced negative effect magnitude and damage taken from environmental hazards.]

  [TRAIT UPGRADE AVAILABLE] [YES/NO]

  There it was—the System's bait. A power upgrade hovering in my status screen, pulsing with potential and warning. The standard DOMAIN RESONANCE trait glowed a muted blue, but beside it flickered something darker—a crimson variant that promised more, but at a cost. A curse component representing the instability of the dimensional barrier, the cause for current state of the world.

  I stared at it, fingers trembling, my body still weak from the Memory Eater's assault. The basic trait wasn't enough. Not after what I'd been through. I wanted more.

  The cursed variant would mark me. Everyone knew the statistics—80% of blanks who accepted cursed traits didn't survive their next three rifts. Those who endured... they became the ones who made impossible possible. I did the calculation in my head, weighing probability against need. Factoring in what I'd learned about myself in this fractured echo of Downtown. The math was brutal but clear.

  My hand reached out, selecting the crimson option before doubt could interfere. The System would have its price, and I would have my power. Fair exchange in a world that offered nothing for free.

  [TRAIT UPGRADED]

  [DOMAIN ENGINE (CURSED): "The dimensions bend to your will, but the cost is etched into the land—and into you.”

  Hazard Detection: Sense environmental hazards within 50m

  Resilience: 50% reduced negative effect magnitude and damage taken from environmental hazards.

  Active Abilities: 10m radius, 60s cooldown, 60s duration per use, 10% mana cost per activation each

  Negate Hazard: Completely nullifies environmental anomalies

  Invert Hazard: Reverses hazard effects

  Amplify Hazard: Triples hazard intensity

  Create Hazard: Manifest environment-matched hazards affecting all entities indiscriminately

  Consume Hazard: Restores 25% Health, 25% Stamina, and 25% Mana. Lockout: No natural regeneration of these resources while on cooldown.

  Curse: Fracture Engine - Accumulate 1 Fracture Charge per Negate/Invert/Amplify/Create/Consume Hazard use (max 3). At 3 charges: Charges are consumed, creating a chaotic dimensional fracture pulling an unstable amplified hazard from another dimension which persists for a limited duration and affects all entities indiscriminately.]

  When I opened my eyes, I was standing exactly where I'd fallen through fifteen days ago—right at the edge of Downtown near where I'd been scavenging from the tech disposal unit. The Memory Eater was gone. The rift had collapsed. And I was... back.

  I barely had time to process my surroundings before a Stability response team appeared before me with speed only possible for higher tiers, their armor pristine and equipment gleaming—a stark contrast to my blood-stained, tattered clothing. They scanned me with obvious confusion, looking from their devices to me and back again. Their expressions shifted from routine procedure to bewilderment.

  "That's impossible," one muttered recalibrating his scanner. "You're showing F-tier clearance markers, it has only been seconds since detection.”

  “Check your scanner, the temporal markers are out of this world, must have been the HQ shielding.” added another agent.

  They exchanged worried glances and began executing some containment protocol, speaking in clipped technical terms I didn't understand. One called for authorization as another scanned him, shaking his head in disbelief.

  I check my notifications again. There was one I purposely ignored.

  [RIFT CLEARANCE REWARDS ADDED TO DIMENSIONAL STORAGE]

  Total Cores: 4 F-Tier (1 boss + 3 elites): 4 × 99 = 396 credits

  Static-Infused Alloy (×8): 15 credits/unit = 120 credits

  Data Node Fragments (×7): 30 credits/unit = 210 credits

  Crystallized Exhaustion (×12): 5 credits/unit = 60 credits

  Dimensional Shears: 3× standard material value = 90 credits

  [CURRENT VALUES CALCULATED BASED ON NETWORK DATABASE]

  [STATUS INITALIZATION DETECTED SOLO CLEAR BONUS DENIED]

  Total Value (Network): 876c

  "Rewards? I'd forgotten. But there they were, in the dimensional storage I hadn't known I possessed: almost 900 credits. A fortune earned by surviving hell. I swiped through the list, my gaze lingering on Crystallized Exhaustion. Pieces of the mites that almost killed me, now worth five credits each."

  Dancing on the edge of ruin, I finally understood what it meant to be alive; I will not yield to this broken world.

  My name is Volt. I'm an F-tier raider, and I'm just getting started.