They had been walking for hours, navigating through the aftermath of Erik’s system reset. Erik’s body still felt like it was held together by threads, his limbs heavy from exhaustion. Whatever the Architect had done to him during their fight had taken more out of him than he cared to admit.
Lena, on the other hand, seemed unfazed. She moved with purpose, her glowing eyes constantly scanning the horizon for threats. Erik had quickly learned to trust her instincts—she hadn’t kept them alive this long by accident.
“Okay, time out,” Erik said, stopping to lean against a flickering tree. “Are we actually going somewhere, or are we just wandering until the next horrible thing tries to kill us?”
“We’re heading to a breach point,” Lena replied without slowing down.
“A breach point?” Erik asked, panting.
She turned to him, a glimmer of impatience in her eyes. “The system has weak spots—places where the devs’ control doesn’t fully reach. Think of them as backdoors into the deeper layers of the world. If we’re going to figure out what’s really going on, that’s where we’ll find answers.”
“Great,” Erik muttered, straightening up. “Because this day wasn’t complicated enough already.”
The breach point was located in a region Lena called the Echoing Glade. The name felt oddly poetic to Erik, though any illusions of beauty were shattered as they approached.
The Glade was unlike anything Erik had seen before. Massive crystalline structures jutted out of the ground, their surfaces shimmering with reflections that didn’t match reality. When Erik looked into one, he saw his own face staring back—but it wasn’t him. The reflection was distorted, his features warped as though viewed through a cracked mirror.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Erik muttered.
“Good,” Lena said. “That means you’re paying attention.”
As they ventured deeper, the air grew colder. The crystals emitted a low hum, almost like whispers, and Erik couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched.
“Are these… natural?” Erik asked, gesturing to the crystals.
“Nothing here is natural,” Lena said. “The Echoing Glade is a remnant—a leftover piece of a scrapped patch. The devs abandoned it years ago, but the system couldn’t completely erase it. It’s stuck between worlds now, caught in a loop.”
Erik frowned. “A loop? What does that mean?”
Before Lena could answer, the ground beneath them shuddered. A deep, resonant sound echoed through the Glade, like a great bell being struck.
“What was that?” Erik asked, his grip tightening on his sword.
Lena’s eyes darted around, her body tensing. “We’re not alone.”
Out of the shadows of the Glade emerged a figure. At first, Erik thought it was another player, but as it stepped closer, he realized something was… wrong. The figure’s body was patchy and incomplete, its features glitching and flickering like a corrupted file. Its eyes were blank voids, and its movements were jerky, as though it were being puppeted by an unseen force.
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“What the hell is that?” Erik asked, taking a step back.
“A Forgotten,” Lena said grimly, drawing her daggers.
“A Forgotten?”
“NPCs that were deleted by the system but didn’t fully disappear,” Lena explained. “They’re just fragments now, stuck in the Glade, repeating the same corrupted code over and over.”
The Forgotten tilted its head, its blank eyes locking onto Erik. Then, with a distorted screech, it lunged.
Erik barely had time to react, raising his sword to block the attack. The impact sent him stumbling backward, his health bar flashing in the corner of his vision.
“Don’t let it touch you!” Lena shouted, slashing at the creature with her daggers. Her strikes cut deep, but the Forgotten didn’t bleed. Instead, its body fragmented further, pieces of its form dissolving into pixelated shards.
Erik swung his sword, slicing through the creature’s torso. It let out a horrific, static-laden wail before collapsing into a heap of flickering data.
“Please tell me that’s the only one,” Erik said, catching his breath.
Lena didn’t respond. Instead, she pointed ahead.
More figures were emerging from the shadows. Dozens of them.
“You just had to jinx it,” Erik muttered.
The Forgotten swarmed them, their distorted forms moving with terrifying speed. Erik and Lena fought back-to-back, their weapons cutting through the corrupted entities as fast as they could.
“Why are there so many of them?!” Erik shouted, driving his sword through a Forgotten’s chest.
“This is their territory!” Lena shouted back. “You reset the system, remember? Everything’s unstable now!”
Erik gritted his teeth, slashing through another attacker. He could feel the strain wearing on him, his movements slowing as exhaustion set in.
“We can’t keep this up!” he said.
“Then stop fighting like a player!” Lena snapped.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Use your abilities!”
Erik groaned but knew she was right. He reached out with his mind, focusing on the ground beneath the Forgotten. A terminal screen appeared:
[TERRAIN: GLITCHED SURFACE]
[ACTIONS AVAILABLE: DELETE // MODIFY.]
He selected DELETE, and the ground beneath the Forgotten dissolved into nothingness. The creatures fell into the void, their distorted forms disappearing as they plunged into the abyss.
The remaining Forgotten hesitated, their movements faltering.
“They’re afraid,” Lena said, her voice low. “Good. Let’s finish this.”
With renewed determination, Erik and Lena pressed the attack. Erik manipulated the terrain, creating barriers of jagged crystal to trap the Forgotten while Lena darted between them, her daggers flashing.
Finally, the last of the creatures fell, dissolving into a shower of corrupted pixels.
The Glade grew silent once more, the low hum of the crystals returning to the foreground. Erik leaned against a nearby rock, breathing heavily.
“That… was awful,” he said.
“You handled it,” Lena said, though her tone lacked its usual sharpness.
“Barely.”
Lena approached a large crystal at the center of the Glade, its surface glowing faintly. She placed her hand on it, and a terminal screen appeared.
“This is the breach point,” she said. “From here, we can access the system logs. If the devs left anything behind about the glitch, it’ll be here.”
Erik nodded, stepping closer. “What do I need to do?”
“Just focus,” Lena said. “The system will guide you.”
Erik reached out, placing his hand on the crystal. The moment his fingers touched its surface, a surge of energy shot through him, and his vision filled with streams of data.
[ACCESSING SYSTEM LOGS…]
Lines of code scrolled across his vision, accompanied by fragments of audio and video files. Erik saw flashes of the Root System, glimpses of the Architect, and something else—something darker.
A symbol appeared in his mind: [?λ-G].
“What is that?” Erik whispered.
“The glitch,” Lena said, her voice distant.
More images appeared: players gathered in a massive arena, fighting against something monstrous. A towering figure, shrouded in darkness, its body pulsating with raw energy.
And then, a voice:
“Experiment ?λ-G is progressing as planned. Subject integration at 87%. Preparing for full deployment.”
Erik’s blood ran cold.
“What the hell does that mean?” he asked.
Lena pulled him back, breaking his connection to the crystal.
“It means the glitch isn’t an accident,” she said. “It’s a weapon.”