Cathedrale the the the theroughe sun never fully rose in the Rift. Instead, the sky above them pulsed like a dying heart, veined with violet lightning and patches of void-black where even light refused to exist. It wasn't just dark; it was broken.
Juno stopped in her tracks, her rifle trembling slightly in her hands. "I hate this place," she muttered. "Every time I blink, it feels like the horizon shifts."
Kai stared forward, his eyes narrowing. He wasn't wrong every few seconds, the landscape ahead rearranged itself like a corrupted file struggling to render. Mountains bent sideways, rivers flowed upward into nothingness, and floating shards of glass-like terrain spun silently in the air.
"This is the Null Rift," Reiss confirmed, scanning the console strapped to his forearm. His voice carried a note of awe and fear. "It's… not technically part of the system anymore. It's where all corrupted threads of reality are dumped. A digital graveyard."
"Yeah," Mira said, her hand never leaving the hi of her plasma blade. "And we just walked into it."
Kai had been silent since the fight with Ozymandias, but now Mira noticed his hand trembling. She grabbed his wrist. "Kai. You're not okay."
He flinched, pulling away, and for a split second his veins glowed faintly with the same black-red color Ozymandias had radiated.
"I said I'm fine," he snapped, but his voice carried a distortion like two voices speaking at once.
Juno froze. "What the hell was that?"
Reiss's eyes widened. "Oh no. That's… residue."
"Residue?" Kai asked, his fists tightening.
"Ozymandias left something inside you," Reiss explained grimly. "It's like a root infection. If it grows… it won't just kill you, Kai. It'll redestabilisingo something like it."
The group fell silent.
Kai exhaled sharply. "Then we find a way to fix it," he said, stepping forward. "We don't have time to argue."
But Mira's gaze lingered on him. You're changing, she thought, but said nothing.
As they descended into the Rift, the terrain grew stranger.
They walkcolourssssssoss a plain of fractured glass-like ground, each step echoing like footsteps in a cathedral. Beneath the transparent surface, Kai could see faces, distorted and screaming, trapped like bugs in amber.
Juno noticed them too and stumbled back. "Tell me those aren't real people."
"They were," Reiss muttered. "Old players. Failed constructs. Anyone who breaks the system's rules and isn't erased gets… dumped here. Their data rots until it becomes part of the Rift."
Mira frowned. "We're standing in a graveyard."
"Not just a graveyard," Reiss corrected. "A warning."
Suddenly, one of the faces in the glass shifted its eyes snapping open. A jagged hand erupted through the surface, grasping for Juno's ankle.
"Move!" Mira shouted, slicing the hand off with a clean strike of her blade. Black smoke hissed from the severed appendage as it dissolved.
Kai's jaw tightened. "This place wants us dead."
They weren't alone for long.
As they reached a broken ridge, a hollow scream cut through the air. Shadows rose from the ground, forming into humanoid shapes with jagged, splintered heads. Their movements were unnatural like broken frames in a glitching video.
"Wraiths," Reiss hissed. "Don't let them touch you!"
Kai didn't hesitate. He raised his sword, and with one swing, he sliced through the first Wraith. It shattered like glass but from its shards, two more rose, hissing.
"Great," Juno muttered, firing bursts from her rifle. The bullets tore holes through the creatures, but each time, their bodies rewound, reforming as if nothing happened.
"They don't die normally," Mira said, her blade glowing brighter. "You have to burn them out of reality."
She and Kai fought back-to-back, slashing at the Wraiths while Reiss activated a pulse from his console, sending waves of destabilizing energy through the air.
Juno, still firing, yelled over the chaos. "How many of these things are there?"
"Too many!" Mira replied, cutting down another one.
In the midst of the fight, Kai felt something snap. His sword flared but not with the usual silver light. Instead, it burned black and red, the same colors as Ozymandias.
"Get… out of my way!" Kai roared, his voice warped. He slashed through three Wraiths in a single strike and they didn't reform. They simply ceased to exist, erased like corrupted files.
The others froze.
"Kai," Mira said cautiously. "What was that?"
He looked down at his hands. His skin was marked with black veins, glowing faintly. He didn't have an answer.
Once the Wraiths were gone, the group regrouped.
Reiss's console pinged, showing a single blip far ahead. "There," he said, pointing to a jagged mountain in the distance. "That's the Rift Core. If we can reach it, we might be able to purge the infection in Kai or at least stabilize him."
They began their climb. The mountain wasn't stone; it was a spiral of broken metal and shifting fragments, as though the system itself had vomited up its failures.
At the summit, the,y found a door.
No, not a door. A hole in reality, shaped like one. Through it, they could see only endless white.
"This is it," Reiss said. His voice was trembling. "The path to the Core."
Kai stepped closer. He felt the pull of some,thing on the other side, somethin,g ancient, waiting.
As Kai reached out, the white void rippled like water, and a voice echoed from the other side.
"Child of threads… you carry the mark of Ozymandias. Do you seek to destroy the system, or become it?"
Kai froze. "Who are you?"
"I am what remains of the first user," the voice replied. "The Architect was not the beginning I was. And I know what waits at the root. If you enter, you will not return unchanged."
Mira placed a hand on Kai's shoulder. "Don't listen. We don't know what's on the other side."
Kai's jaw tightened. "We're going through," he said finally. "We don't have a choice."
The group stood at the threshold.
Juno swallowed hard. "So, we just… walk into the glitch door?"
"Pretty much," Reiss said, trying not to look terrified.
Kai turned to his team. "Once we step through, there's no going back. We stick together. No matter what we see on the other side."
Mira nodded, her gaze steady. "We're with you."
Kai took a deep breath, then stepped into the void.
The world around them shattered like glass.
—
The Core Nexus
The first thing Kai felt when they stepped through the void door was weightlessness.
For a moment, he thought they were falling, but when he opened his eyes, there was no ground beneath them, only an infinite expanse of white, with shards of broken reality floating like islands in an endless sea.
"Where… are we?" Juno whispered, her voice barely carrying. Even the sound seemed muted here, like they were speaking inside a dream.
Reiss checked his console, but the screen flickered with static. "I can't get a read on this place. It's like we've stepped outside the framework of the system itself. No coordinates, no time-stamp… nothing exists here."
Kai floated forward, instinctively reaching out with his hand. As he moved, invisible platforms formed beneath his feet glowing lines of code that materialized with every step. "It's like the system is writing the path as we walk," he muttered.
"That's not comforting," Juno replied, clutching her rifle tighter.
Suddenly, the white void rippled again. A voice the same one they'd heard before spoke, but this time it came from everywhere.
"You have crossed into the Core Nexus. Here, the system's foundation is both alive and dead. What you face next will determine whether you are erased… or rewritten."
Mira's hand went to her blade. "Show yourself!" she demanded.
"I am not something you can see," the voice said calmly. "But I can show you… pieces."
The void darkened, and suddenly fragments of memory images began to float around them like holograms: scenes of cities crumbling, the Architect building the system piece by piece, and players being pulled into the digital world against their will.
Kai's heart clenched when he saw an image of Ozymandias standing beside a throne of broken code, laughing.
The air around Kai thickened, and then he heard it not the calm voice of the Nexus, but the harsh, venomous voice of Ozymandias inside his head.
"You can feel it, can't you? My power in your veins. You think you can resist me? You're already mine."
Kai winced, clutching his head. Mira turned to him immediately. "Kai! Talk to me!"
"I'm fine," he lied, his voice strained. "Just… keep moving."
But deep down, he wasn't sure. Every time Ozymandias's voice spoke, something inside him responded.
The floating platforms ahead shifted suddenly, merging into a vast arena suspended in midair. At the center of it, a black sphere hovered, crackling with static.
"The Core Nexus must test all who enter," the voice announced. "To pass, you must face your own fragments."
"Fragments?" Juno asked, frowning.
The black sphere split open and from it, four figures stepped out.
Kai's blood ran cold.
They were copies of the team's dark, twisted mirror images with glowing red eyes and jagged silhouettes.
"Great," Juno muttered. "Evil us. Because this day wasn't bad enough already."
The fight began instantly. Kai lunged at his shadow copy, their blades clashing with sparks that sounded like static tearing.
His double smirked. "You think you're the hero? You're just as broken as I am."
"Shut up," Kai growled, striking harder. But every hit he landed on his shadow caused a flare of pain in his own chest, as though their bodies were linked.
Mira was facing her own copy of a version of herself without restraint, moving with terrifying precision.
"I don't have time for this," Mira hissed, blocking a series of blows.
Juno, meanwhile, struggled to keep up with her shadow, which wielded a twisted version of her rifle that fired dark plasma shots.
"Reiss!" she shouted. "A little tech magic would be great right now!"
Reiss, ducking behind a glowing platform, frantically worked on his console. "I'm trying! These things are tied directly to your mental states. If you give in to fear or anger, they get stronger!"
Kai's shadow suddenly grabbed him by the throat, slamming him into the floating ground. "You want my power," the shadow hissed, its face flickering into Ozymandias's sneering grin. "You need me."
Something inside Kai snapped. His black-red aura flared again, and he let out a roar that didn't sound entirely human. He shoved his shadow away with a blast of corrupted energy.
"Kai!" Mira shouted. "Stop! That's not you!"
But Kai didn't hear her. His corrupted energy was burning through everything around him even the platforms began to crack.
Seeing him like this, Mira made a decision. She ran forward and slammed her blade into the ground between them, sending a shockwave that cut through both Kai and his shadow.
"Kai!" she yelled, grabbing his shoulders. "Look at me! You're not Ozymandias. You're not him."
For a moment, Kai's eyes flickered, the black-red glow faded just enough for him to see her face.
"Mira…" he whispered.
With that hesitation, Kai's shadow dissolved into static and the other shadows began to weaken as well.
Within minutes, the team had destroyed their copies. The black sphere at the center of the arena cracked and dissolved, leaving only silence.
"You have passed the first trial," the Nexus voice said. "But your corruption grows, Kai. If you do not master it, you will become the next Ozymandias and your friends will have to kill you."
Kai said nothing. His grip on his sword tightened.
The arena dissolved, leaving a single narrow bridge of light ahead.
Reiss adjusted his console, his face pale. "That was only the first trial. There are two more before we can reach the Core."
"Then we move," Kai said, stepping onto the bridge. His voice was steady, but Mira could see the turmoil in his eyes.
As they walked, the white void began to ripple again, and faint whispers echoed all around.
"Is it me," Juno muttered, "or does it feel like something is watching us?"
"It's not just watching," Reiss said grimly. "It's… learning from us."