The air still hummed with leftover static where the Threadkeeper had vanished.
Violet sat slumped beside the broken arch of the Threaded Temple, her breath shaky, skin clammy with sweat. A faint glow still flickered under her skin, like system light trapped beneath the surface.
[STATUS: Rewrite Surge Cooling Down]
[RP: 8/8 | STABILITY: CRITICAL]
Tyler stood nearby, tense and silent, his eyes never leaving her.
"You scared the hell out of me," he said at last.
She let out a shaky breath, trying to ground herself. "That makes two of us."
The silence stretched.
Only the rustling of code-threaded wind through ruined vines kept them company. Neither of them knew what to say. How could they?
A system god had just shown up.
And left.
Unchallenged.
Violet glanced at her interface, half-expecting some kind of reward or achievement. There was nothing.
Just a new notification.
[FATEBOND LEVEL UP – TYLER JACKSON]
Shared Thread Activated
You and Tyler may now sync system cooldowns, boost Rewrite resonance, and stabilize each other in zones of distortion.
Emotional resonance threshold: 70%
Warning: Side effects may occur if Thread Sync exceeds safety levels.
She stared at it.
"Shared Thread," she murmured.
Tyler read it over her shoulder and raised a brow. "Sounds cozy."
"You're not funny."
"I wasn't trying to be."
They started walking.
Neither of them wanted to linger near the Threaded Temple now. The place felt too awake.
Every shadow watched.
Every whisper carried weight.
They moved north, into the jagged ruins of the Silent Expanse, a no player zone filled with glitched terrain and abandoned event code. Tyler said it was safer ironically because most of the Sanctifiers wouldn't dare chase anomalies into a dead layer.
That night, they made camp beneath the fractured remains of an inverted tower its foundation was in the sky, its peak buried deep in the ground.
Violet stared up at the stars.
Some flickered unnaturally.
Were they even stars anymore?
"You okay?" Tyler asked, joining her on the collapsed wall where she sat.
"No," she admitted. "But I'm getting used to it."
He sat beside her.
Not close.
But not far.
"Back in the temple," she began, voice quiet, "when the Threadkeeper showed me those memories… I felt like my brain was being opened like a file. Like everything I am was just... waiting to be read."
"It probably was," Tyler said. "Fatebreaker code was designed for neural retention. You store system data differently now. The lines between player, system, and self are gone."
"Am I even human?"
The question hung in the air.
Tyler didn't answer right away.
Instead, he looked at her with something quiet and vulnerable in his expression.
"You still bleed."
She turned toward him.
"And you still care."
He looked away. "That's the dangerous part."
Later that night, as Violet drifted off near the fire, the Shared Thread pulsed between them visible only in the faint glow that shimmered in their synced HUDs.
[EMOTIONAL RESONANCE: 73%]
[STATUS: LINK STABLE]
[PASSIVE BONUS UNLOCKED: Dual Pulse – Damage output increases when both parties are under 40% HP.]
She didn't know what that meant.
Not really.
But she felt it.
A thread.
Tethering her to him.
And she wasn't sure she hated it.
SYSTEM LOG: UNAUTHORIZED THREAD DETECTED
CLASS: Fatebreaker (Anomaly)
SUBCLASS: Voidweaver.exe
ADMIN RESPONSE: PENDING
FLAGGED BY: Threadkeeper Unit 1A
Auto-response triggered:
"Deploying Nullkeeper to Zone Theta-9.
Priority: Thread Severance."
Meanwhile, in a Sanctifier tower miles away...
Commander Arklis's last recorded fight replayed again and again in the Archive Room.
Lines of code glitched.
Footage looped where it shouldn't.
In one freeze-frame, Violet hovered mid-air, glowing like a system rebirth.
The High Inquisitor frowned.
"A Fatebreaker," she muttered. "Alive?"
She turned to the robed observer behind her.
"Send the Nullkeeper."