The guardian knelt, a skeletal titan of jagged metal and cascading numbers, its colossal frame trembling as though it were barely held together. Every movement was a flicker, a glitch in reality, as if the world itself couldn't decide what shape it should take. Its skull-like head split open with a deafening roar—not a sound in the normal sense, but pure raw data, feedback that vibrated through Erevan's bones and rattled his very thoughts. Kaelith staggered back, clutching her ears, teeth gritting against the invisible pressure. Even Sir Quacksalot flopped onto his side, wings flailing desperately as though pinned by the noise itself.
Erevan's pulse slammed in his chest. Impossible. This is impossible. How is it still standing?
A system alert burned across his vision.
Guardian of the Broken Code Detected
Classification: Catastrophic Entity
Threat Level: Impossible
"Impossible? Perfect," Erevan muttered, his voice tight but laced with sarcastic bravado, as he backpedaled across the fractured ground. "Love the optimism, system. Really comforting."
The guardian raised one arm, each finger a blade of raw binary. With a single swipe, the ground beneath them fractured, splitting apart like broken glass. Entire chunks of the forest lifted into the sky, spinning slowly, as if gravity had decided to take the day off.
Kaelith nocked three arrows at once, loosing them in rapid succession, their digital fire illuminating the chaos around them. But the arrows dissolved midair, scattering into useless particles.
Erevan gestured at the spectacle, voice raised over the noise. "Yeah, that looked expensive!"
Kaelith's jaw tightened. "This isn't a fight we can win, Erevan! Not like this!"
The guardian bent lower, a thousand blinking red eyes forming across its chest, all of them locking onto him. The sheer weight of attention pinned him in place, like being stared at by the universe itself.
Target Acquired: Anomaly Erevan Arclight
Directive: Eradicate Error
"Why is it always me?" he shouted, diving aside as a beam of pure static erupted where he had stood. The blast wasn't just destructive—it erased. The grass, dirt, and even the air vanished into a raw black void.
Kaelith fired again, but her arrows bent uselessly in the air, whipped aside by the guardian's invisible code manipulation. She grabbed his arm, shaking him. "We have to run. Now!"
"Run where?" Erevan yelled, eyes scanning the shattered horizon. "It's got cheat codes! Look at this!"
The shard in his chest pulsed violently, as if responding to his panic.
Prototype Shard Integration: 25%
Warning: Instability Rising
Erevan swallowed hard, gripping it tightly. "Fine. Integrate, you glitchy piece of junk. Do your thing."
Pain lanced through his body, sharp as knives and electrifying as static, twisting his skin into flickering textures. His vision fractured into jagged frames, one moment upright, the next sideways, then completely gone.
The guardian swung its massive arm, a blade-finger aimed to cleave him in two. Instinct and glitch fused within him. Erevan vanished from view, reappearing behind the guardian, gasping and trembling.
Echo Activated: Copied Ability – Reality Skip
Duration: 5 seconds
"Oh… that's… actually kinda badass," he panted, voice cracking in both awe and disbelief.
The guardian's many eyes swiveled toward him, its mechanical growl splitting the air into jagged fragments.
Kaelith's voice cut through the chaos. "You moved like it! You used its ability!"
Erevan's lips quirked into a grim, uneven smile. "Guess I'm finally learning to cheat back."
The shard pulsed again, louder, more insistent, thrumming in tune with his heart.
New Skill Unlocked: Fragment Slash
Effect: Cut through reality at unstable angles. May backfire.
"Don't love the 'may backfire' part, but okay," Erevan muttered. His hand erupted into jagged shards of distorted space. The slash ripped upward, cutting the air and reality itself. The guardian's arm severed cleanly, edges flickering like corrupted textures.
The colossal entity reeled, letting out a howl of pure static. The severed limb dissolved into cascading strings of numbers, floating briefly before scattering into nothing.
Erevan blinked, staring at the wreckage of his handiwork. "Holy crap… I actually hurt it."
Kaelith's face was pale, her eyes wide. "You don't understand. That wasn't supposed to be possible."
The system stuttered, panic unspoken.
Error: Guardian Integrity Compromised
Directive Adjusted: Terminate Anomaly Immediately
The guardian's chest split, revealing a glowing core, energy pulsating like a sun about to explode. Kaelith grabbed his arm, voice sharp. "If it releases that, this whole zone is gone!"
Erevan's throat went dry. "So we either kill it… or get deleted."
Sir Quacksalot waddled forward, quacking furiously, the tiny creature radiating defiance. Erevan laughed hoarsely. "The duck's tanking it! Oh, I love this stupid world."
Kaelith shook her head. "Focus! Your shard—use it!"
Erevan gritted his teeth and slammed the Prototype Shard into his chest. The world fractured. Reality bled into itself, and the guardian froze, caught between obedience and collapse.
Prototype Shard Resonance Detected
Override Option Available
Would you like to attempt Guardian Hijack?
Erevan's grin was wild, unhinged. "Wait… I can… hijack it?"
Kaelith's hand tightened around his shoulder. "Erevan—don't. You can't control something like that!"
He shoved the YES prompt. The shard dissolved into him, burning like molten fire. Symbols, raw data, corrupted sequences flooded his vision. The guardian screamed, mid-motion, halted as chains of code wrapped around its jagged frame.
Hijack Progress: 61%… 78%… 92%
Erevan bared his teeth. "Not today, you oversized antivirus!"
Finally:
Hijack Success: 100%
Guardian Subjugated
The titan kneeled, its many eyes dimming, body folding as if paying allegiance to a new master.
Kaelith's voice was a trembling whisper. "Erevan… you just enslaved a catastrophic system guardian."
He staggered, laughing shakily. "Yeah… no big deal. Just rewriting god-level code on a Tuesday."
The Watcher's eye returned, wider, more furious than ever. It wasn't done. Its gaze pierced through Erevan, cold and omniscient. For the first time, he felt it—not fear, not anger—but calculation. The system didn't just want him gone. It was afraid.
The Guardian knelt, massive and trembling, controlled only by the shard now fused into Erevan's chest. Yet even as the metallic titan obeyed, the sky itself was tearing apart. The Watcher's eye expanded, covering half the horizon, its omniscient gaze pressing down on Erevan's chest like a physical weight. Every breath became a struggle; his knees buckled under the pressure, his fingers tingling with a sensation that was half adrenaline, half code overload.
Threads of light—or no, threads of code—shot down from the Watcher's eye, coiling and twisting like chains of inevitability. Each strand seemed alive, writhing as it lashed toward Erevan, seeking to pierce, erase, and reclaim.
The Guardian raised its arms instinctively. The first thread slammed into its chest, embedding like a harpoon made of pure data. The metal flesh of the titan peeled away, fracturing into cascading numbers. The control Erevan had fought to seize threatened to crumble.
"No! Stay with me, damn it!" Erevan shouted, clenching his fists so hard the shard burned his palms.
Kaelith grabbed his shoulder, shouting over the roar of unraveling code. "Erevan! You can't fight that! It's not just an enemy—it's the system's will!"
Another thread struck, piercing the Guardian's skull. Its remaining eye flickered—red to blue to static—before locking back onto Erevan. It raised itself as though begging him not to surrender. The shard in his chest pulsed hotter, almost alive, whispering promises of power and survival.
An option appeared in his mind, clearer than any system prompt before:
Assimilate instead of Hijack. Would you like to absorb the Guardian's essence?
Erevan's eyes widened. Wait… you're saying I can eat it?
Kaelith's face drained of color. "Erevan, no one absorbs guardians. No one survives that!"
A thread lashed down again, wrapping around the Guardian's arm and tearing it clean off. Binary dust scattered into the void where it had been. Erevan swallowed, gritting his teeth. "Well, lucky for me, I'm not 'no one.'"
He slammed YES.
The shard ignited. The Guardian howled as it collapsed, shards of glitching metal, fractured code, and molten energy pouring into Erevan like a hurricane. Pain flared along every nerve, every muscle, every molecule of his body. His skin fractured into shards of light, bones hummed with static, and his vision shattered into endless overlapping frames.
Kaelith screamed, grabbing his arm. "Stop! You'll lose yourself!"
Erevan barely heard her. Every ounce of his being was being rewritten. By the time the assimilation reached 100%, the Guardian had vanished, leaving only its essence merged with him. The world went silent.
Gasping, he fell to his knees. His hands shook as he raised them, seeing his skin shimmer, fingertips splitting into afterimages before snapping back. Floating shards of broken glass reflected a face not entirely human—yet entirely his.
A whisper in the back of his mind, the system's voice, reverberated:
New Core Ability: Code Rend – Tear apart enemies at the code level, bypassing defenses.
New Passive: Guardian Echo – Partial immunity to Purge-class attacks.
Kaelith knelt before him, gripping his face, eyes searching. "Erevan… do you know who you are? Do you know your name?"
Erevan blinked, panting. "…Erevan Arclight. Still me… mostly."
Sir Quacksalot waddled forward, quacking loudly, and headbutted his knee. The tiny duck hadn't glitched. Somehow, it remained stubbornly… duck. Erevan laughed hoarsely. "See? Even the duck believes in me. That counts for something."
But the sky above wasn't done. The Watcher's eye narrowed, furious. Threads shifted, aiming directly at him.
Target Confirmed: Anomaly Core Detected
Deploying Purge Host: Level ???
The threads wove into a humanoid figure. Cloaked in interlacing strands of light, faceless except for shifting symbols where a face should have been, it descended. Its presence was suffocating, heavier than gravity, more absolute than death itself.
Erevan staggered upright, fists clenching. "Well. Guess Daddy System finally decided to get personal."
Kaelith grabbed his wrist. "We run. Hide. Now."
Erevan shook his head. "Run? You've seen what happens when I run. They just send worse. It doesn't stop until I stop it."
The Purge Host raised a hand, and time itself seemed to pause. Wind stilled, the world frozen in absolute silence. Then, with a flick of its finger, a wave of annihilation erupted.
Erevan instinctively crossed his arms. Code flared across his skin, forming a glitching barrier. The blast ripped through him like knives, shredding reality—but the barrier held, just barely.
Guardian Echo Passive Activated – Purge Resistance: 18%
"Eighteen percent?" Erevan muttered, dryly, teeth gritting. "What is this, a bad credit score?"
Kaelith fired an arrow. It shredded midair, erased by invisible defenses. "It's not fighting—it's rewriting reality!" she yelled.
The shard pulsed violently, begging him to act.
Option: Deploy Code Rend. Warning: Will destabilize user further.
Erevan grinned, wild and unhinged. "Yeah, yeah, warnings, blah blah. Let's go!"
His hand split into jagged pixels, slicing the air and tearing reality itself. A rip opened in the Purge Host's shoulder, spilling raw static like blood.
The Host recoiled.
Kaelith's jaw dropped. "You actually hurt it."
Erevan smirked, blood dripping from his nose. "Guess I'm getting the hang of this."
The Host raised both hands, symbols glowing brighter, preparing something catastrophic. And then—the Watcher's eye blinked. Once.
The Host froze. Threads retracted slightly, hesitating.
Erevan frowned. "…What just happened?"
The system's whisper was quieter this time, almost reluctant.
Observation Shift Detected – The Watcher is… recalculating.
For a moment, Erevan swore he felt it—not anger, not fear. Curiosity.
The Purge Host lowered its arms, watching. Testing.
Erevan spat blood, wiping his mouth. "Great. So I'm an experiment now. Love that."
Kaelith's face was pale, eyes wide. "No one has ever made the Watcher hesitate… not in recorded history."
The Host's head tilted, symbols shifting.
New Directive: Extract Anomaly Alive
Erevan's stomach dropped. "…Alive?"
Threads shot forward, not to kill, but to bind him. Chains of light wrapped around his body, dragging him upward despite his struggles.
Sir Quacksalot leapt, quacking furiously, biting one thread. It snapped, making the Host twitch. Kaelith fired arrow after arrow, cutting others, desperately slowing the pull.
Erevan screamed as he was lifted skyward, the Watcher's eye expanding, filling the entire world.
And then—a system prompt appeared.
Critical Decision Point Reached
Choice A: Submit. Be taken. Discover the truth.
Choice B: Resist. Risk deletion.
The system froze, waiting. The Watcher waited.
Erevan clenched his fists, glaring into the infinite eye. "I'm not your pawn. I'm not your anomaly. I'm your problem."