Kael didn't mean to break the lights.
He was just walking.
Down the corridor from the bunks to the mess hall nothing mystical about it.
No focus, no anger, no intent.
Just boots on the floor and his hands in his coat.
The lights should've stayed on.
But they didn't.
One by one, the overhead strips buzzed, flickered, and blinked out behind him.
Like he was dragging a shadow of silence in his wake.
By the time he reached the end of the corridor, half the sector was dark.
He looked back.
It was like a wall of black had swallowed the past ten seconds of his life.
"Okay," he muttered. "That's new."
A hatch opened beside him.
A worker stepped out with a toolbox, paused, and squinted.
Then he locked eyes with Kael.
"Shit," the man whispered, backing away. "No, man. Not today."
Kael opened his mouth to say something, but the guy was already gone footsteps pounding in the opposite direction.
He hadn't even spoken.
Sector B2 wasn't much better.
A group of maintenance drones jittered mid-flight, one of them spinning wildly before smashing into a bulkhead.
Another stalled midair and dropped like a stone.
Sparks danced across the floor.
Kael didn't touch anything.
He didn't even glance at the machines.
Yet he could feel them pull away.
Not in fear machines didn't feel.
But in rejection.
Like the code running their behavior couldn't stabilize while he was nearby.
Like his presence warped their source logic.
A woman by the nutrient tanks clutched her head.
Her child started crying.
Both turned as he passed.
Kael didn't slow down.
He rounded a corner and found Rhass waiting.
"You're leaving a trail," Rhass said.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're existing. That's enough."
Kael clenched his jaw. "Great. I'm a damn biohazard."
"No," Rhass said. "You're the update. The system just doesn't know what to do with you yet."
"Funny, neither do I."
Rhass turned and started walking. "You want answers, you need to come deeper."
"Deeper than this?"
Rhass didn't reply.
They took the old elevator manual crank, no AI interface.
Kael eyed the rusted panel. "How far down does this go?"
"Technically? Past legal doctrine."
"Comforting."
The elevator whined as they dropped.
Each level they passed looked more like an excavation site than a temple stripped cables, corroded metal, murals half-buried in dust and glyphs from forgotten languages.
Kael traced one of the markings with his finger.
"What is this?"
"Old code. Before the Order."
"There was something before the current code?"
Rhass nodded. "Before the Saint Codex, before the Quantum Choirs, before all the noise and meditation you had architects. People who built systems without needing to believe in them."
"And what happened to them?"
"They built a prison. And called it enlightenment."
The lift groaned to a stop.
Rhass stepped off.
Kael followed.
The chamber they entered didn't have walls in the traditional sense.
Just a vast plane of smooth black glass, endless in every direction.
Threads of code like veins of starlight wove through the air.
And in the center floated a coffin.
At least, that's what it looked like at first.
Then Kael realized it wasn't sealed.
It was breathing.
Faint, slow expansions of the structure, as though the thing inside hadn't decided if it was dead yet.
"Saint Veon," Rhass said quietly. "First Compiler. Last Rewriter."
Kael circled the structure, cautious. "So what is he now?"
"Echo. Consciousness uploaded into the Temple's substructure. What remains of him leaks through the system like static."
Kael stepped closer.
A flicker of static flared across the threads.
Then a voice.
"Compiler. Misaligned. Disruptor."
Kael jumped back.
Rhass raised a hand. "He recognizes you."
"Not sure that's a good thing."
"Your coherence is null. Your code is recursive. You do not harmonize. You rewrite."
Kael frowned. "So I've been told."
"You are a ripple in root code. A pre-event echo. A correction before collapse."
"I don't get what any of that means."
"You were not meant to be born. And so, you cannot be stopped."
Kael turned to Rhass. "So what this guy just floats here spouting riddles for the rest of time?"
"He used to be clearer. But when he tried to alter the Code directly, the backlash split his mind into fragments. Now he speaks across temporal layers. Sometimes he makes sense. Sometimes he doesn't."
Kael took one last look at the coffin. "He makes me nervous."
"Good. That means you still have boundaries."
Back on the upper floors, things were not quiet.
Kael hadn't even made it through the corridor before the rumors started hissing past him like steam leaks.
"That's him."
"He's the ripple. The walking fault."
"They say he walked past a monk and the man started bleeding from the ears."
"No, worse he stood near a grav-rig and it reversed polarity."
Kael tried to ignore them.
But the more he walked, the worse it got.
Light panels blinked out overhead.
Drones pulled away, refusing to come near.
Even the air felt... nervous.
Like it was holding its breath.
He turned a corner and ran straight into a technician.
The man staggered back, scanner clutched in one hand. "You.."
Kael raised both hands. "Easy. I'm not here....."
The scanner pinged.
Then exploded in the guy's hand.
Glass and sparks flew.
The man screamed and dropped it, blood on his palm.
Kael backed away. "I didn't do that."
The technician looked up, eyes wide. "You didn't have to."
Later that night, Kael stood on the Temple spire highest point on the dome, just under the projection layer.
The stars above flickered like cheap LEDs.
He didn't trust them.
Not anymore.
Rhass joined him, silent.
Kael spoke first. "How far does this go?"
"What do you mean?"
"The Code. The Strings. This rewrite thing. How deep does it run?"
Rhass took a breath. "All the way. Space. Time. Identity. You think you're real? You're a function call. An event tied to a probability ratio and a name tag."
"That supposed to help?"
"No. It's supposed to show you what you're about to break."
"You think the Order will let me live?"
Rhass didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
Far below, deep in the Temple core, something moved.
A pulse.
A blink of red light.
In the mainframe room, ancient logic cycles spun up.
Warning tags cascaded across the central console:
SYSTEM ALERT: Uncoherent Recursive Pulse Detected
COMPILATION STATUS: Active
INTEGRITY RISK: Critical
REQUESTING EMERGENCY SAINT CONSENSUS...
A monk stepped forward, robes crackling with embedded glyphs.
"Can he be stopped?"
The AI's voice came like thunder wrapped in silence.
"He is not a variable. He is the rewrite."