The first tremor wasn't from the ground. It came from reality itself—a ripple that made the sky shiver like fabric tugged too tight. Then the world split.
The guardian rose from the fracture, and Riven's breath caught in his throat.
A skeletal titan of jagged metal and cascading streams of raw numbers clawed its way upward, towering until its shadow swallowed the warped forest whole. Its body glitched constantly, like reality couldn't decide what shape it was supposed to take—sometimes smooth, sometimes fractured, sometimes gone.
Its skull-like head cracked open, and the roar that tore out wasn't sound but raw feedback. A high-pitched scream of broken signals that rattled Riven's bones and made his teeth ache like nails dragged across his nerves.
Kaelith staggered back, hands flying to her ears, grimacing as if someone had stabbed her brain. Even Sir Quacksalot toppled sideways into the grass, wings flapping helplessly against the invisible weight of the noise.
A system window bled across Riven's vision.
[System Alert: Guardian of the Broken Code Detected]
Classification: Catastrophic Entity
Threat Level: Impossible
Riven squinted at the word. "Impossible? That's cute. Love the optimism. Guess that's the devs' polite way of saying: bend over and die."
The titan moved. One massive hand lifted, each finger a blade forged of raw binary. With a casual swipe, the world cracked. The ground split like glass under a hammer, fragments of soil and stone breaking loose, weightless, drifting upward into the sky where they spun slowly—like gravity itself had given up.
Kaelith reacted instantly. Three arrows appeared between her fingers. She loosed them in one smooth, desperate motion. They streaked through the air, glowing with digital flame.
The guardian didn't even flinch. The arrows reached its skull, then shattered into dust—dissolving midair as though erased from existence.
"Yeah," Riven shouted over the resonant static. "That looked expensive."
Kaelith's jaw clenched. Her voice came out sharp, strained. "This isn't a fight we can win."
The guardian bent lower, and suddenly its chest split open, and with the crack came a thousand red eyes blinking into existence, lighting up like warning beacons on a reactor core. They all locked on Riven.
A new alert flickered across his sight.
[Target Acquired: Anomaly Riven Arclight]
[Directive: Eradicate Error]
Riven threw his arms up. "Why is it always me?!"
The answer came as a beam of pure static screamed across the battlefield. Riven dove, rolling just as the blast annihilated the space where he'd stood. It didn't burn or explode—it simply deleted. Grass, dirt, even the air itself vanished, leaving a raw black void as if that slice of the world had never existed.
Riven stared wide-eyed. "Okay, cool. So it's not just killing me—it's uninstalling reality."
Kaelith fired again, but the arrows warped, curving away as though the guardian's very presence rejected them. She spat a curse in a language Riven couldn't place, then sprinted to grab his arm, yanking him upright.
"We have to run!"
"Run where?" Riven shot back, gesturing at the fractured landscape, at the titan filling half the horizon like some apocalypse patch note. "That thing's got cheat codes!"
The shard in his hand pulsed violently, so hot it stung his palm.
[Prototype Shard Integration: 25%]
[Warning: Instability Rising]
Riven's stomach dropped. He could feel the shard's hum vibrating through his bones, a frantic, almost eager pulse. "Guess we don't have a choice," he muttered.
He slammed it against his chest.
"Fine. Integrate, you glitchy piece of junk!"
[Integration Accelerating…]
[System Error: Merge Not Authorized]
[Forcing Override…]
The pain was instant. A spear through every nerve, a wildfire that made his skin crawl like static tearing him apart. His vision broke into jagged frames—one moment upright, the next sideways, then upside down, then nowhere at all.
Kaelith's voice reached him through the distortion. "Riven!"
The guardian swung, a massive blade-finger descending to cleave him in half.
And then—he wasn't there.
Instinct and glitch fused. His body blurred, stuttered out of existence, then reappeared behind the titan, lungs burning, every muscle trembling.
[Echo Activated: Copied Ability – Reality Skip]
Duration: 5 seconds.
Riven doubled over, gasping. "Oh… oh that's—holy crap—that's actually kinda badass."
The guardian's thousand eyes flared, swiveling toward him in perfect unison. Its roar split the air again, this time snapping branches and peeling bark from trees like an invisible shockwave.
Kaelith stared at him with something close to horror. "You… moved like it. You used its ability."
Riven straightened, forcing a crooked grin despite the pain vibrating in every cell. "Guess I'm finally learning to cheat back."
The guardian loomed above them, its towering frame forged from jagged shards of crystalline data. Every step it took left ripples across the fractured ground, and each movement hummed with static as though reality itself strained to contain its presence. Its eyes glowed with a cold, unyielding brilliance, locking onto Erevan with a single purpose: erase the anomaly.
The corrupted guardians Erevan had barely managed to defeat were nothing compared to this. This was no mindless glitch. This was a construct of the System itself, a sentinel designed to cleanse what should not exist.
Kaelith's blade trembled ever so slightly in her grip, though her voice was steady.
"This… this isn't like the others. It's fully synchronized with the System. One mistake, and we're erased."
Erevan smirked despite the pounding in his chest.
"Good thing mistakes are kind of my specialty."
The guardian's massive arm swung down. Erevan dove aside, the sheer force of the strike shattering the ground into spiraling fragments of light and rubble. The impact rang in his bones, and for a fleeting second, he wondered if even breathing near this thing was lethal.
The shard embedded in his chest pulsed again. His vision wavered, colors smearing like corrupted code. His limbs felt both weightless and unbearably heavy, his veins crawling with a storm of alien power.
"Not now," he hissed through clenched teeth, clutching his chest.
The guardian charged, moving faster than something its size had any right to. Kaelith darted in, her blade catching the light as she intercepted its strike. Sparks of fractured energy burst around them. The clash left her reeling, boots skidding across the unstable ground.
"Erevan!" she shouted, her voice sharp with urgency. "Control the shard or it will consume you before that thing does!"
Her warning pierced through the haze clouding his mind, but only barely. The shard's whispers twisted into half-formed words, a cacophony of promises and threats. His own voice seemed to echo back at him from somewhere deep within, distorted and cruel.
Power. Unchain it. You are not bound by their rules.
The guardian raised its other arm, gathering a surge of raw, purifying energy. It was the kind of strike that didn't just kill—it erased.
Erevan's instincts screamed. He moved, not entirely of his own will, his body surging with the shard's unstable force. His strike lashed out in a blur, not clean steel but a ripple of corrupted energy, distorting space as it cut across the guardian's arm. The construct staggered for the first time, static crackling across its form.
Kaelith froze, eyes wide.
"That… wasn't normal."
Erevan stared at his own hands, still trembling from the surge. His skin flickered with faint, glitching lines, as if pieces of him belonged to some other reality.
He swallowed hard, forcing a grin even as fear gnawed at him.
"Yeah. Starting to get the feeling I'm not either."
The guardian let out a metallic screech that rattled the air. It wasn't weakened—it was enraged.
The ground fractured further, pieces of the dimension breaking off into the void. Time was running out.
Erevan clenched his fists, the shard pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. The whispers clawed at him, pulling him closer to a choice he couldn't delay.
To survive, he would have to embrace what the shard offered.
Even if it meant losing himself.
The guardian raised its colossal arm again, fractured light burning at its core. The attack it prepared wasn't a strike. It was annihilation. One blow, and this unstable world would crumble with them inside it.
Erevan's pulse hammered in his ears. The shard's whispers grew sharper, no longer faint murmurs but a voice threading through his every thought.
Unleash it. Stop resisting. This is your birthright.
He grit his teeth, sweat dripping down his temple.
"My birthright? More like my funeral."
Yet his body trembled with a terrible truth: part of him wanted to obey. Every second resisting felt like trying to dam a flood with bare hands.
Kaelith rushed back into the fight, her blade tracing brilliant arcs as she forced the guardian's attention away from Erevan. But each clash pushed her further to the edge, sparks flying as her knees buckled under the strain.
"Erevan!" she yelled, her voice raw. "If you have anything—anything—you're holding back, now is the time!"
The shard pulsed, as though mocking the command. His chest burned like it was tearing him apart from the inside, threads of light and shadow crawling across his skin in jagged, glitching patterns.
The guardian's core swelled, brighter, hotter, until the air itself quivered.
Erevan staggered forward, eyes flickering between clarity and static. His voice rasped.
"If I give in… I don't know what happens."
Kaelith's gaze locked on him, fierce despite the chaos.
"Then decide who you are before it decides for you."
The words struck deep, cutting through the storm. For one fleeting moment, silence fell inside him.
Then the shard roared.
You are not a hero. You are an anomaly. Claim it.
Erevan's hands curled into fists. The fractured ground beneath him pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, and lines of corrupted energy spread outward like veins across reality itself. The guardian hesitated for the first time, its cold eyes narrowing.
Erevan lifted his head, smirk tugging at the corner of his lips despite the chaos flickering through his body.
"Fine. Let's see what happens when the error fights back."
The shard surged, flooding him with raw, unstable power. His vision cracked like glass, every movement thrumming with a force that didn't belong to the world.
As the guardian unleashed its devastating strike, Erevan stepped forward, the anomaly within him finally unchained.