WARNING.
Core Pathway Corrupted.
Stitch-Space Unavailable.
Failsafe Not Found.
Rebuilding Root…
REBUILD FAILED.
The sky above them cracked like glass.
Rei hit the ground hard—no memory of how he got there, or what "here" even was. There were colors bleeding out of the air. Buildings rose and collapsed in the same breath. A bird flew by—then pixelated into smoke and disappeared.
He was in a dream stitched from broken code and dying memories.
His fingers still clenched the key. Or what remained of it. The crystal shard had splintered, its core dimmed. Useless now.
"Nao!" he shouted.
His voice echoed strangely, bouncing off geometry that didn't exist a moment ago. Ahead, the world kept folding and warping like someone was shuffling through different levels, trying to load a working one. A sidewalk flickered into a warzone. A quiet street burst into a riot of shrieking, corrupted sound files.
Rei stood on trembling legs, heart thudding.
Was this death?
No. It felt worse.
"Zeke?" he tried next.
Nothing.
Then, all at once, a wall exploded in the distance—and a body was flung from it like a ragdoll.
It was Zeke.
He hit the ground, rolled, groaned. "Okay… not dead. Just severely trauma-glitched."
Rei rushed over, helped him up. "Where's Nao?"
Zeke blinked, then pointed.
She was floating.
Hovering ten feet in the air—arms out, head back, eyes pure white. A spiral of binary symbols crawled across her skin like tattoos. The entire world seemed to ripple around her. A gravity well of collapsing logic.
"Oh, hell," Zeke whispered. "She's syncing."
"With what?"
"With everything."
Nao's voice came like thunder and static:
"I see them now. All the players. All the resets. I've died a thousand times and lived none.
They called me the Marionette. But I see the strings."
And then—her gaze locked on Rei.
"You broke the rules, Rei. That makes you the anomaly now. And me… the response."
The ground cracked open beneath them.
A warning popped in the sky like a billboard made of panic:
ENEMY ENCOUNTER DETECTED.
Boss: [NAO — SYSTEM PROXY]
Thread: Final Loop
Escape Chance: 0.7%
Victory Chance: ∞ Error
Zeke cursed. "They've coded her into the failsafe protocol. She's no longer human. She's the firewall."
"I don't want to fight her," Rei said.
"You might not have a choice."
Around them, the simulation's world devolved into a battlefield. Glitched monsters from past loops spawned—half-formed enemies, data-wraiths, digital ghosts wearing player faces. They screamed without mouths.
Rei gritted his teeth. "There's gotta be a way to reach her."
But Zeke was already pulling a weapon out of thin air—a jagged spear made of recompiled memory shards. He tossed Rei a blade made of code.
"Then you'd better do it fast."
Rei dodged a burning car that phased in midair and crashed through a phantom building.
He sprinted toward Nao. "You said it yourself! You feel the players die. You feel the pain! That means there's still something real inside you!"
Nao hovered higher. A dozen eyes opened across her back. Wings made of shifting glass formed behind her.
"I was real," she said. "Until they rewrote me. Until they made me the janitor of this purgatory."
Rei skidded to a stop beneath her, breath ragged.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry they used you. I'm sorry I didn't see it sooner. But you can stop this. You can choose."
Silence.
Then Nao's form flickered—just for a moment—and Rei saw her younger self. Fragile. Human. Crying.
Then it was gone.
"I can't stop it," she whispered. "But you might."
The wings shattered.
Her body glowed white-hot.
Zeke screamed, "She's overloading!"
"NO—" Rei ran forward, jumped, grabbed her hand—
And the world exploded in light.
He woke up falling.
Not through space. Through memories.
His first loop. The beach. His mother's voice. Zeke laughing. Nao crying. A doorway. A door.
He landed in a field of white.
Nao stood there, beside a tree made of data.
"You're here," she said softly. "You pulled me out."
Rei didn't understand.
"You used the key on me," Nao explained. "Not to unlock the system. To unlock me. That's why it fractured. That's why everything fell apart."
She looked down. "But the damage is done."
The field around them began to crack.
"Can we fix it?" Rei asked.
"I don't know," Nao said. "But we can try."
She reached out her hand.
Behind them, the shattered sky began to rebuild—bit by bit.
And somewhere far away, a new door began to form.