Erevan didn't sleep. Couldn't. Not even for a breath. Every time he closed his eyes, Kyros's grin was burned into the darkness like a brand, sharp and mocking. Sometimes it was Kyros laughing, his teeth glinting with malicious delight. Other times, it was himself, but with Kyros's eyes—cold, chaotic, commanding legions of Nullifiers as if the entire world were theirs to bend.
Every blink brought fragments of things that didn't exist. Text prompts hovered in the air like intrusive ghosts, status windows flashed over Kaelith's face, even Sir Quacksalot's feathers, displaying metrics Erevan couldn't—or didn't want to—understand. Half-corrupted messages whispered from the void between sounds, taunting, accusing, seeping into his skull.
Kaelith sat across the flickering campfire, the metal edge of her blade catching the firelight as she sharpened it with deliberate, controlled strokes. She pretended not to notice the subtle tremors in Erevan's hands or the flickering static that leaked from the shard embedded in his chest. But she noticed. Of course she noticed. She always noticed.
Sir Quacksalot snored like rolling thunder, tucking his head beneath his wing. The absurdity of it was almost comforting—the duck could sleep through void storms, existential terror, and Erevan's own panicked monologues, yet it would wake in an instant if someone sneezed too hard within fifty feet.
Erevan exhaled, the sound rough, uneven. He stared at the night sky, half alive with stars, half reduced to a trembling wireframe of static lines. "He's in my head," he muttered, voice low, almost bitter.
Kaelith's gaze didn't leave her blade, but the tension in her shoulders betrayed her attention. "Kyros?" she asked, calm but sharp.
"Yeah," Erevan admitted, his fingers digging into his hair in frustration. "Every word he said keeps playing on loop, like some cursed memory I can't delete. And the worst part? He wasn't lying. I can feel it. This… thing inside me isn't slowing down. It's growing. It's hungry."
Kaelith's voice remained steady, anchored. "That doesn't mean you'll become him. You made your choice. That matters more than anything."
Erevan snorted bitterly. "Yeah, well, apparently the system doesn't agree with me." His shard pulsed violently against his chest, flickering like a trapped heartbeat. He groaned, irritation threading through the exhaustion. "Look at this—stability at sixty-seven percent. Integrity failing. Fantastic. My brain is giving me pop-ups. That's… not healthy."
Kaelith finally raised her eyes to him, silver light glinting in the fire. "Erevan. Do you trust me?"
He froze, caught off guard. "What? Of course. Always."
"Then hold onto that," Kaelith said softly, but with undeniable steel. "When the system whispers lies, I'll remind you who you are. That's what I'm here for."
For a fleeting moment, the firelight softened her features. The sharpness in her jaw, the guarded precision in her posture, all melted into something almost human. And then she turned back to her blade, and the spell was broken.
Erevan wanted to say something—thanks, maybe something dumb to cut the tension—but the shard pulsing in his chest demanded attention elsewhere. Its glow reflected in the fire, throwing twisted shadows across the dirt and the sleeping form of Sir Quacksalot.
A soft prompt appeared in his mind, jagged and intrusive. Investigate the fragment. Analyze the Watcher Code shard he'd ripped from the Nullifier Prime.
"Oh, for—" Erevan muttered, swiping it away. "Do these things ever let me breathe?"
Kaelith raised a brow, sharp and unimpressed. "Another quest?"
"Yeah. Wants me to poke the shiny murder-code I ripped out of the Prime. Because obviously, that's safe." He rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath. "Next, it'll want me to cuddle it and whisper sweet nothings."
Before Kaelith could respond, Sir Quacksalot shot upright with a furious squawk, wings flaring. The air shimmered unnaturally. A current of static whispered through the trees, making the fire flicker violently.
A crack split the night sky, and light spilled through, jagged and unnatural. Out of that fracture stumbled a figure. Not a Nullifier. Not a corrupted beast. A person.
They collapsed onto the dirt, gasping, their form glitching violently between textures. One moment, they wore armor like an adventurer; the next, they were a blank mannequin, then a half-rendered child, then back again.
Erevan scrambled forward, heart hammering. "What the hell—"
The figure lifted their head, eyes wide and wild. Whispering, glitching between tones, they begged, "Help… me…"
Kaelith's blade snapped upward, ready. "It's a trap!"
But Erevan's shard throbbed in resonance, tugging him closer. Something about this figure was familiar—broken, but like him.
"Wait." He held a hand out, his voice firm but tinged with urgency. "I think… I think they're another anomaly."
The figure convulsed, body splitting into fragments of different models before stabilizing again. Their voice layered, glitching, fractured: "System… failed… reset me…"
Erevan felt his stomach twist. Another anomaly. Another life hanging on the edge of deletion.
Kaelith cursed under her breath. "They're destabilizing!"
The figure screamed, their body erupting into shards of raw data. From those shards, twisted Nullifier drones rose—malformed, twitching, their limbs wrong, their faces hollow voids.
Erevan swore, teeth gritting. "Of course. Because nothing can ever be easy."
Kaelith's arrows cut through the nearest drone, unspooling its code with sharp precision. Sir Quacksalot, puffed up like some tiny demon, charged headfirst into another with a war-quack that echoed through the corrupted trees.
Erevan ignited Pathbreaker, Prime Rend blazing unstable fire along his arm. The first drone lunged at him, limbs flailing, binary screams filling the void between sounds. He slashed through it, sparks of static lightning erupting as the thing shattered into fragments.
Another claw raked across his arm, code searing into his flesh. He counter-slash and dissolved it mid-air.
Kaelith's voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding. "Erevan! Vega's still in there! If you cut them down, you'll destroy what's left of them!"
He glared, frustration boiling. "So what, I'm supposed to… hug the corruption out of them?!"
A pulse of thought—an option the system wouldn't give him—appeared: stabilize the anomaly using the Watcher Code fragment. Extreme risk, unknown outcome.
Erevan gritted his teeth, determination flaring. "Kaelith, cover me!"
She didn't hesitate. Her arrows rained down with deadly precision, slicing drones apart mid-lunge. Sir Quacksalot latched onto one with a bite that made code scream.
Dropping to his knees beside the shattered figure, Erevan pressed his shard to their chest. The shard pulsed in sync with the fragment of Watcher Code, trembling violently. Pain lanced through him, molten static pouring into his veins, but he didn't stop.
For a moment, the shadows of Kyros's grin returned, whispering: Yes… break yourself… give them everything…
Erevan's teeth clenched. "Shut up."
He pushed harder, feeding light, life, and stability into the broken anomaly.
With a final convulsion, the figure slammed solidly against the dirt. Their glitches slowed, stabilizing, breath ragged but alive.
Vega—the Broken Codebearer—looked up at him, eyes wide with confusion and gratitude. "Why… why would you save me?"
Erevan wiped blood from his lips, grin sharp despite the exhaustion. "Because screw the system. We don't abandon people like it does."
The night finally felt a little less empty. Kaelith muttered about his recklessness. Sir Quacksalot nestled against his chest, warmth and absurdity combined. Vega stayed seated, still flickering faintly, staring into the fire with haunted, wary eyes.
For the first time since Kyros, Erevan didn't feel completely alone.
And somewhere deep in the static, faint, mocking laughter echoed—Kyros, promising that the fight was far from over.
[Main Quest Updated: Form the Anomaly Resistance]
[Party Members: Kaelith, Sir Quacksalot, Vega]
The firelight flickered violently, casting long, fractured shadows across the forest floor. Erevan's chest heaved, every breath ragged as he knelt beside Vega, the figure who had fallen from the fractured night. Vega's body shimmered, glitching between textures—armor, mannequin, child, human, then back again—and the shards of corrupted code still hovering like malevolent fireflies.
"Stay with me," Erevan muttered under his breath, his hands pressed against Vega's chest, feeling the shard inside him resonate with the broken fragment of Watcher Code. It throbbed, pulsing in a rhythm that both terrified and reassured him. The system's warnings had gone silent, replaced by the chaos of raw, unpredictable life.
Vega convulsed violently, body lurching and splitting into fragments midair, glyphs spiraling around the fire like tornadoes of static. Their scream was both human and digital, a shrill symphony of desperation that tugged at Erevan's insides.
"Kaelith!" he barked, barely holding his own panic in check. "Cover me!"
Kaelith's voice cut through the chaos, sharp, precise. "I am covering you! Focus!" Arrows rained down, slicing the glitch drones that erupted from Vega's collapsing code. Their movements were wrong, erratic, limbs bending in impossible directions, faces flickering into voids, eyes nothing but static.
Sir Quacksalot, feathers fluffed into a terrifying little armor of rage, dove into the fray, pecking and clawing at drones with ferocity that made Erevan blink in disbelief. One drone's arm fell apart mid-attack under the duck's assault, scattering into glyph fragments that sizzled into nothingness.
Erevan gritted his teeth and slammed Pathbreaker into the nearest drone. Prime Rend ignited, unstable, erratic sparks flying, tearing the corrupted limb from limb. Sparks of static lightning arced across his skin, crackling into the night. Each strike shredded code, each pulse of energy threatening to rip him apart from the inside.
"This is insane," Erevan muttered, pain shooting through his veins. The shard inside him flared uncontrollably. "Why does it always have to be insane?"
Vega's voice, still layered and glitching, whispered through the chaos: "System… failed… you… help… please…"
Erevan's chest tightened. They're like me… he thought, every heartbeat syncing with the shard's pulse. They're bleeding the same fire I am. And if I fail… if I hesitate…
He pressed his hands harder against Vega's chest, letting the shard's light seep into the cracks of fractured code. Pain ripped through him, molten, white-hot, as if static fire ran through his veins. His vision blurred, fracturing into multiple images of Kyros, each one sneering, each one echoing the temptation to surrender.
"Yes… break yourself… give everything…" Kyros whispered inside his head, sharp, intoxicating, corrosive.
Erevan gritted his teeth and roared, shaking his head violently. "Shut. Up!"
He focused, ignoring the shard's screaming, ignoring Kyros's lingering shadow. He funneled every ounce of stability, every flicker of controlled chaos, into Vega. Code flowed between them, raw and alive, a bridge of flickering light and fractured symbols.
The glitch drones surged, sensing their host's fragility. Erevan slashed through them, sparks lighting the forest, static arcs igniting the trees as he dodged limbs that bent in impossible ways. Kaelith's arrows cut precise, silent, deadly trails through the air, each one disintegrating a drone into nothingness.
Sir Quacksalot, fearless and absurdly loyal, leapt onto another drone, pecking at its hollow face until cracks spread like lightning across its surface. The bird's tiny war cries punctuated the chaos with a kind of grim, ridiculous heroism.
Erevan's hands burned, shard-fire coursing into Vega, melding his own unstable code with the broken anomaly. For one agonizing moment, he swore he felt himself fracturing into Vega, identities bleeding into each other, his mind stretched across every possible outcome.
Then—snap.
Vega's body slammed against the dirt, solidifying. Their glitches slowed, shimmers of stability replacing chaotic sparks. Breathing came ragged, but steady. They sat up, eyes wide, blinking at Erevan as though he had performed sorcery too vast to comprehend.
Erevan collapsed back on his heels, coughing, blood flecking his lips and hands, sweat and static clinging to his skin. "You… you're alive," he gasped, voice hoarse, nearly strangled with relief.
Kaelith grabbed his shoulders, her silver eyes sharp with panic. "Idiot! You could've burned yourself into nothing!"
He coughed, a twisted, dry laugh escaping him. "Yeah… but it worked."
Sir Quacksalot waddled over, quacking softly, his head pressing against Erevan's chest. The absurd comfort of the tiny furnace of feathers was grounding, almost enough to stop the adrenaline from tearing him apart.
Vega's eyes, still flickering faintly with residual glitch, locked onto Erevan's. Confusion, fear, and fragile gratitude mingled in their gaze. "Why… why would you save me?"
Erevan wiped blood from his lips, his grin sharp, dangerous, alive. "Because screw the system. We don't abandon people like it does."
Kaelith muttered a curse under her breath, shaking her head at his recklessness. Sir Quacksalot nestled against Erevan's chest, soft warmth against burning veins. Vega stayed seated, still stabilizing, their gaze haunted but aware, flickers of glitch slowly dimming.
For the first time since Kyros's invasion, Erevan didn't feel completely alone.
Yet deep in the static, somewhere just beyond the firelight, he felt Kyros's presence echo faintly. Not in form, not in flesh—just laughter, lingering like smoke, a promise that the war, the corruption, the system… none of it was over.
But for now, in the fractured silence of the forest, they were three. Erevan, Kaelith, and Vega. And with Sir Quacksalot, they were unstoppable.
The Anomaly Resistance was born.
[Main Quest Updated: Form the Anomaly Resistance]
[Party Members: Erevan, Kaelith, Sir Quacksalot, Vega]