The void fractured open like a wound in reality. Pixels peeled away from nothingness, stuttering in jagged spirals of light and shadow until a figure stepped through. He wasn't just a man—he looked stitched together out of broken static, each edge of his form fraying like torn film before reknitting itself. His cloak rippled, though there was no wind here, its threads unraveling and reassembling in endless loops.
And his eyes—gods, his eyes. Twin whirlpools of corrupted light, swirling like galaxies devouring themselves. They locked on to Erevan with a familiarity that made his stomach twist.
The Nullifier Prime, still towering with its deletion-forged blade humming low, didn't strike at the newcomer. Instead, the creature lowered its stance, tilting its head in eerie recognition. As if awaiting orders.
That was the first warning sign.
Erevan's lungs still burned from the last fight, every breath a jagged edge. His hand shook as he raised it, Pathbreaker flickering faintly at his side. Sarcasm came easier than admitting fear.
"So. Another cryptic freak with glowing eyes. What's next, a dramatic speech about destiny before you try to kill me?"
The figure laughed—and the sound broke apart mid-note, cycling through pitches, tones, like the void itself couldn't decide what his voice should be.
"Monologue? No. I'm here to welcome you. You've done what no anomaly before you ever dared. You chose outside the system."
Erevan's pulse jumped. Outside the system? The words sank in like barbs.
Kaelith didn't wait. She stepped forward, arrow nocked, eyes narrowed like sharpened steel.
"Stay back. Whoever you are, you reek of corruption."
The figure's gaze flicked to her, flat and disinterested. His lips curled in a half-smile.
"And you—placeholder with delusions of agency. A shadow scribbled into the margins of a story you'll never control. Your fate isn't written in my lines."
Erevan's chest tightened. Placeholder? He saw Kaelith's jaw clench, the bowstring trembling but held steady. She didn't flinch. And that made Erevan's legs move before he thought about it.
"Touch her," he rasped, forcing strength into his voice even as his body wavered, "and I'll rend your code into confetti."
The stranger's grin sharpened, pleased.
"Good. Fire. I like that."
He spread his arms wide, as if unveiling some cosmic joke.
"Name's Kyros. The first. The original glitch. Long before you clawed your way out of the leash the system fastened on you, I was already rewriting it."
The air itself buzzed with static.
[System Alert: Unauthorized Entity Detected]
[Designation: Kyros – Rogue Anomaly]
[Threat Level: Undefined]
Erevan blinked. Wait. The system actually labeled him?
Out loud, he scoffed. "Seriously? It gave you a name tag? Guess even the Watcher couldn't file you under 'edgelord in tattered cosplay.'"
Kyros laughed again, deep and jagged. "Oh, it tried. But I'm beyond its little categories. Like you, Pathbreaker. Except unlike you, I didn't stumble into my power by accident." His gaze bore into Erevan, sharp as glass. "I embraced it."
The Nullifier Prime lowered its weapon, sinking to one knee. Like a knight kneeling before its king.
Kaelith hissed through her teeth. "He controls them. The system's countermeasures answer to him."
Erevan's gut turned to ice.
Which means he's either worse than the system… or he is the system.
Kyros tilted his head, grin widening as if he'd heard the thought.
"Neither. I am what happens when you stop resisting and start becoming."
His eyes seared into Erevan's.
"You feel it already, don't you? The shard eating you alive. The code in your veins. You're not human anymore. Not really. The longer you cling to your fragile sense of self, the faster you'll break."
Erevan's fists clenched. Sparks of glitch-fire crackled across his skin, betraying the storm inside him. "You don't get to decide what I am."
Kyros's chuckle was low, indulgent. "Oh, you misunderstand. I'm not deciding. I'm offering."
He gestured casually, and the Prime rose, lowering its blade like a predator leashed.
"Join me. Together, we can stop being anomalies. Stop running. We can become the system. Rewrite it. Control the Watcher instead of being hunted by it."
"Don't listen," Kaelith snapped, her voice as sharp as her arrows. "He's poison."
Right then, Sir Quacksalot fluttered down onto Erevan's shoulder. The duck's tiny body vibrated with fury, feathers fluffed to maximum rage. One sharp, angry quack punctuated Kaelith's words like divine confirmation.
Kyros cocked his head, amused. "Even your pet knows I'm right." His smirk deepened. "Without me, you'll burn out, Pathbreaker. The system will crash you, and when it does, everything you're fighting for—" he gestured at the broken wireframe sky, the unraveling horizon "—will dissolve into nothing."
Erevan's shard pulsed hot inside his chest. His vision fractured for an instant—his reflection split into overlapping shards. In one, he wasn't himself anymore but a shattered version, older, more fractured, surrounded by Nullifiers kneeling in devotion, laughing while the world burned.
His knees buckled. Pain lanced through his skull, forcing a choked gasp.
[System Warning: Mental integrity compromised]
[Pathbreaker resonance unstable]
Kyros leaned in, grin now all teeth.
"See? It's already happening. You and I are the same. The only difference is whether you fight it or wield it."
The Nullifier Prime loomed above them, its blade humming low like a heartbeat in a dead void. Reality bent around it, the wireframe forest behind it glitching violently as if the air itself feared the creature's presence. Its glyph-plated body shimmered, every line of code in motion, every symbol a silent threat of deletion.
Erevan's shard pulsed in his chest, searing hot, veins humming with pure static energy. His breaths were jagged, uneven, as he staggered forward. Focus. Don't let it—no. Don't let Kyros get under your skin. Don't let it win.
He forced his body upright, despite the exhaustion clawing at his muscles, the blood in his nose thick and metallic. "Alright," he muttered, teeth gritting. "Let's see what you're made of."
The Prime raised its sword, each movement tearing a patch of forest into pixels and dust. Kaelith's eyes widened, bow trembling as she fired arrow after arrow. They disintegrated before reaching the Prime, shredded by invisible defenses.
"Erevan!" Kaelith shouted, desperation cutting her words. "It's not just physical! You'll have to—"
But before she could finish, Erevan surged forward, Pathbreaker igniting along his arm. His body fractured into glitching shards of code, reality warping around him. He collided with the Prime's blade in a blinding explosion of static fire.
Time splintered. Fragments of wireframe trees and shattered ground spun in slow arcs, shards of reality raining down like metallic hail. Every nerve in Erevan's body screamed. He gritted his teeth, refusing to look at the pain, the burning glyphs along his skin, the shards of himself reflected in broken fragments of the void.
The impact rocked him back, and for a heartbeat, he froze. His reflection—multiple faces, all glitching, all him—blinked back from the shards strewn across the battlefield. If I go any further, I might break…
Kyros's laughter slithered through his mind, low and jagged. "You're one of us already. Taste the power, Pathbreaker. You know it wants you."
Erevan's gut twisted violently. I'm not you. I'll never be you. The shard pulsed, hotter, insistent, almost sentient. He could feel the Prime's code leaking into his veins, trying to fuse with him.
The world trembled around them. Sir Quacksalot's furious quacks echoed like tiny battle horns, feathers ruffled, wings trembling but undaunted. Kaelith held his shoulder, trying to ground him, whispering, "You can do this. Stay human, stay you!"
Erevan's laugh was ragged, bitter, more of a growl than anything else. "Human? Oh, sweetheart… you're adorable, but that ship sailed the moment I picked up this shard."
The Prime's blade arced again, aiming to split him in two. Erevan dove aside, glitch-fire flaring across his path. Pathbreaker expanded, unstable, warping space itself as he struck upward, colliding with the Prime's weapon. The clash reverberated like a code explosion, shattering the surrounding void.
Every fragment of reality trembled, spinning in chaotic arcs. The Prime faltered, glyphs flickering violently, its perfect form cracking. Erevan's breaths were ragged, sweat and blood mingling with static sparks along his skin.
It's working. It's really working. His mind shouted, even as his body screamed in warning.
The shard pulsed again, insistent. Assimilation. Power. Survival. Kyros's voice echoed inside him: embrace it, Pathbreaker. Become the system.
"No," Erevan hissed, shaking his head, every fiber of him resisting. "I am me! Not you, not the system, not this…" He slammed YES.
Light exploded from the Prime, threads of glyph-code ripping free, funneling into him. Erevan convulsed violently, veins alight with burning symbols. His skull throbbed, and shards of his reflection multiplied into a kaleidoscope of faces, all glitching, all screaming with him.
Assimilation tore through him—painful, intoxicating, infinite. Every nerve ending felt like it was coding and recoding itself. For a moment, he thought he might shatter, lose himself completely.
Then—clarity.
Power surged through his veins, overwhelming and raw. Pathbreaker flared into its ultimate form: Prime Rend. Erevan rose to his knees, blood dripping from nose and ears, his eye blazing with glyphs mirroring Kyros's corrupted light, but his own will driving it.
He lunged. Prime Rend cleaved through the Nullifier Prime's chest. The creature screamed, silent, its body fracturing, glyphs dissolving into a storm of static symbols.
The void trembled. The storm of symbols collapsed into the nothingness, rain of code fragments swirling before fading. The Prime was gone.
Kaelith rushed to him, shaking his shoulders. "Erevan! Stay with me! Don't… don't you dare leave me here!"
Erevan blinked, eyes still blazing with code, chest heaving, blood and sweat running into a single metallic-tasting mixture. He smiled, feral, teeth bared. "No… I'm still me. All me."
Kyros's laughter lingered, a whisper in his mind, even as the man himself faded into static, leaving nothing but a trail of fractured reality.
"We'll see how long you keep pretending," the voice echoed, gone almost immediately.
Erevan staggered upright, Kaelith supporting him, Sir Quacksalot perched stubbornly on his shoulder, still glaring like a tiny, furious general.
"Okay," he rasped, voice hoarse, almost trembling with exhaustion and exhilaration. "New plan. We find that bastard… and we break him. On my terms."
The shattered void around them pulsed faintly, the whispers of the system murmuring threats in every direction. But for once, Erevan felt… in control.