They knew something was wrong the moment the stars blinked out.
Vespera stood on the edge of a floating observatory—one of many they'd helped recalibrate since becoming Official Semi-Authorized Patch Agents of Reality. The sky, a canvas of dancing constellations just moments ago, had collapsed into obsidian. The stillness was too complete, as if the universe was holding its breath. Even the wind had stopped whispering.
Liora joined him, breath visible in the sudden chill. "I don't like this."
Neither did Vespera. He clutched the wrench of paradox tighter. It pulsed in his palm, reacting to a disturbance too deep for words.
Then the observatory cracked—not physically, but dimensionally. Space folded in like a bad origami attempt, revealing a corridor of nothingness. A pulse rippled through them, like reality was trying to cough.
"Third time this week," Liora muttered.
"Might be a record," Vespera said, scanning the edges of the rift. It shimmered with unformed possibilities. "Or a warning."
A whisper escaped the fold: a soundless murmur in their bones, unintelligible but urgent. The observatory trembled like a coin on glass.
They returned to the Core for answers. The entity in the Hawaiian shirt wasn't there. His chair sat empty, a crossword half-finished on the desk.
In his place sat a woman in a leather jumpsuit, silver tattoos moving across her skin like coding scripts.
"I'm Aris. Fracture Specialist."
"Where's the guy in the shirt?" Liora asked.
"Evacuated. He's allergic to timeline collapse. You've triggered Protocol Seven."
Vespera raised an eyebrow. "That sounds important."
"It's the last step before universal fragmentation."
She tossed them a glowing cube. It hovered, rotated, and then projected an image of the Multiverse, fraying like an old rope.
"Localized collapse in five sectors, and it's spreading. Something's threading instability through dimensions like a drunk tailor with too much caffeine."
"Any suspects?"
Aris pointed at them.
"Your previous paradox repairs worked... too well. You've inadvertently stitched emotional resonance into the core matrix. Love, grief, forgiveness—none of those were in the original code."
"So we broke reality with feelings?" Liora asked.
"Essentially."
They had twelve hours to stabilize the fractures before it reached irreversible levels. Aris handed them dimensional tethers, soul-index patches, and what looked suspiciously like a pocket watch made of moonlight.
"You'll need these," she said. "And take the linguistic compass. Reality may not speak your language."
The first tear led to a dimension where gravity was an opinion. They pursued a rogue algorithm in a realm of floating ruins and freefalling memories. Time dripped sideways. Thoughts echoed before being spoken.
Vespera was nearly crushed by a collapsing logic pillar, saved only by Liora flinging him a grappling hook made of unresolved questions.
"Next time," she said, swinging beside him, "don't insult the architecture."
"It insulted me first."
The algorithm fled into an unstable timeline, cackling in binary. They followed.
It led them through zones of emotional bleed: one moment, they were laughing at a joke they'd never told; the next, they were sobbing without reason. Memories slipped in and out like static.
"Don't trust the sadness," Liora muttered. "It feeds on nostalgia."
Vespera nodded, clutching her hand. "That explains the clown crying in the thunderstorm."
They cornered the algorithm in a hall of recursive mirrors. It wore Vespera's face.
"You grieved wrong," it said. "You cheated death."
"I adapted," Vespera growled, slamming the wrench into its reflection. The room shattered. The tear healed.
In the second fracture, they found themselves on a crystalline ocean that sang in Morse code. Beneath the waves swam a data kraken—an ancient creature storing corrupted code in its tentacles. Islands floated midair, shimmering with illogical geometry.
Their skiff was shattered by a memory storm. Vespera screamed as the wind filled his mind with alternate lives—futures where he never met Liora, pasts where he died too soon. Liora anchored him with a kiss, brief but grounding.
They plunged into the depths, pursued by remnant sharks with teeth like shattered dreams. The manual written in feelings flared when opened—she read it aloud, voice trembling. Her words turned into emotional flares, blasting the creatures back.
"That used a whole chapter," she said. "Let's hope we don't need emotional growth again."
"Or buy a second copy."
They reached the data kraken's lair, where it sang forgotten lullabies from broken timelines. Vespera offered it a memory of Liora's laugh. The kraken purred and released the corrupted core.
"Two down," Liora said. "Eight to go."
Eight hours remained.
Next, they entered a cube-world where time moved sideways. To speak was to age; to move was to forget. They stood still for an hour, communicating through blink patterns and shared touch.
A central node floated above the void—an unstable philosophy engine, endlessly debating with itself. It flickered between logic trees, collapsing under paradoxes.
Vespera climbed a spiral of frozen choices. At the top, he whispered a contradiction: "To exist is to remember forgetting."
The engine shuddered. Then blinked. Then collapsed into a golden marble.
He caught it. "That's one fixed."
But the fix caused ripples—reverberations that triggered a timeline echo. They found themselves standing beside alternate versions of themselves.
"We chose different paths," the other Vespera said.
"Some worse," said the other Liora.
"All valid," Vespera replied.
They merged memories, sealing the echo. The marble stabilized.
They returned to the Core for recalibration. Aris greeted them with grim news.
"One more tear, deeper than the rest. A true knot in the weave. We need a jump into Pre-Reality."
Liora paled. "That's where ideas go to die."
Aris nodded. "And where unmade truths fester. It's a thought-virus, and it's using Vespera's unresolved trauma as a vector."
He stared. "Come again?"
"It's your grief. A version of you clinging to what never was. It's spreading."
They held hands and jumped.
Pre-Reality was silence incarnate.
They floated in formless potential, chased by beings that never were: aborted ideas, failed plots, forgotten gods. A half-finished villain offered them tea before unraveling into metaphor.
They passed a city of discarded characters, all begging to be remembered. Liora paused by a woman who looked like her but older, sadder.
"You're who I might've become," she whispered.
"I'm who you never let yourself be."
They left, hearts heavier.
At the center of the fog was the knot—a tangled, pulsing thread of Vespera's own memory. A choice he never made. A world where Liora stayed dead.
It throbbed with pain.
"We have to unmake it," Aris said. "Or everything unravels."
"That's me," Vespera whispered. "A version of me. The one who never let go."
"It's poison," Liora said. "But it's your poison."
He stepped forward. The knot screamed.
He touched it. Memories flooded him: empty empires, sleepless nights, whispered regrets. He screamed back. Then—he forgave himself.
The knot unraveled.
Light returned.
They awoke back in the Core.
Stars twinkled again. The multiverse breathed.
Aris approached, smiling—just slightly. "We've never seen a dual-forgiveness override stabilize a protocol breach. You two are... unique."
Vespera looked down at his hands. The wrench of paradox had fused with his skin, glowing with a calm, golden light.
"So, what now?" Liora asked.
"Now," Aris said, turning toward a new portal blinking into view, "we begin Phase Two."
Behind her, the screen lit up with an alert:
NEW ANOMALY DETECTED — SOURCE: UNKNOWN — PATTERN: SENTIMENTAL ANOMALY INVERSION
The Core rumbled faintly, as if waking from a long nap with a bad dream still clinging to its mind.
Vespera and Liora exchanged a glance. Then a smile.
"Let's go break more things the right way," she said.
He kissed her forehead. "Together."
Somewhere, far from the Core, a system blinked back to life.
And a folder quietly updated:
D'ANGELIS-LIORA: UPGRADED STATUS — REALITY ENGINEERS
Stamped: TRUST WITH CAUTION.
And handwritten beneath:
THEY FIXED THE TEARS. BUT WHAT ELSE DID THEY AWAKEN?