Erevan didn't sleep. Not really. He sat on the edge of the firelight, knees drawn up, arms resting on them, eyes half-closed but flicking constantly to Vega. The flames licked their faces, casting long, twisting shadows that danced across the ground. The smell of smoke mingled with the sharp tang of metal from their weapons, and the heat of the fire contrasted sharply with the chill of the night air that seeped into his bones. Every crackle of the fire, every pop and hiss of burning wood, seemed louder than it should, as though it were echoing the tension in his chest.
Vega sat across from him, impossibly still, yet impossibly wrong. Their body flickered, shifting in and out of textures as though reality itself couldn't decide what to make of them. One moment, Vega looked entirely human, sitting silently with their hands folded in their lap. The next, their skin turned flat gray and featureless, like an unfinished sculpture. Erevan's stomach twisted. Then a child's face flashed across Vega's features, eyes wide and blinking, before snapping back into the older, sharper lines of their true form. Each glitch made the air around them hum faintly, a vibration in the chest that reminded him uncomfortably of a swarm of angry bees trapped under skin.
Erevan let himself pretend he was asleep, though he knew better. His shard pulsed faintly against his ribs, a quiet echo in his chest, synchronizing with the subtle tremor he could feel from Vega. Kaelith, as usual, didn't waste time pretending. She watched openly, bow resting across her lap, fingers brushing the string almost absentmindedly, eyes sharp enough to split steel.
And then there was Sir Quacksalot. The duck slept like a rock, sprawled on his back, feet sticking straight into the air, snoring with the kind of deep, resonant intensity that made Erevan briefly envy him. For a single moment, he envied the simplicity of a creature that didn't carry bugs in its body, glitches in its soul, or the weight of a system that hunted them like rats.
Vega finally spoke. The sound was almost mechanical, glitching like two radios tuned to slightly different frequencies. "You shouldn't have saved me."
Erevan shifted, groaning, dragging himself upright. "You're welcome too, by the way," he muttered, voice rough with sleep—or maybe it was the tension.
Vega's eyes shimmered with static, the glow catching in the firelight, flickering between human and something far older, far stranger. "No, I mean it. The system… it doesn't tolerate anomalies like us. By stabilizing me, you've painted an even bigger target on yourself."
Kaelith's voice cut through the tension, calm but sharp, a steel blade in the night air. "The target was already there."
Vega flinched, as if her words had struck deeper than she intended. "You don't understand what I carry."
Erevan's chest tightened. He could feel the shard inside him pulse, echoing Vega's fragile rhythm like two broken hearts thumping together in an abandoned building. "Then explain it," he said softly, trying to keep his voice steady even as the unease curled in his stomach.
Vega hesitated, a trembling flicker passing across their face. Then slowly, they lifted their hand. For a brief, breathtaking moment, their flesh peeled away into glowing glyphs. Symbols spun and hovered in the air, burning faintly, alien and beautiful. A circle of intricate, ancient runes hovered around them, suspended by light and code.
"This is what I am," Vega whispered. Their voice carried a tremor of fear, awe, and something entirely human beneath the glitches. "A Codebearer. The system stitched fragments of ancient Watcher algorithms into my body. But it didn't finish the process. I'm half-finished code. I bleed bugs. Every step I take destabilizes reality around me."
Erevan's jaw clenched, a familiar knot of frustration and recognition tightening in his chest. "Sounds… familiar." He almost laughed, but it stuck in his throat.
Kaelith leaned forward, eyes narrowing, her bow shifting slightly in her hands. "Why would the system create something it couldn't control?"
Vega's glitching face twisted, human fear peeking through the alien. "Because it didn't create us. It found us."
The fire seemed to dim, shadows growing longer and colder. Even Sir Quacksalot paused mid-snore, one eye twitching open as though he sensed the weight of the words.
"What do you mean, found?" Erevan asked carefully, the shard in his chest pulsing in tandem with the unease in his stomach.
Vega's eyes met his, their gaze unnerving and endless, not entirely their own. "We're leftovers. Experiments from before the world was a game. The system didn't design me—it patched me, sealed me into the code like duct tape. But the cracks keep spreading."
Erevan rubbed at his temple, leaning back against the rough bark of the trees. "Oh, fantastic. More existential dread. Just what I needed tonight." He tried to hide the tremor in his voice, but it was there.
Kaelith's hands tightened around her bow, voice low and measured. "If what you're saying is true, then Erevan's shard—"
"—is part of the same lineage," Vega finished for her, eyes locking onto Erevan. Their glitching face flickered with what looked almost like awe. "You're worse than me, though. Stronger. Wilder. If Kyros wasn't lying, then you're carrying something… dangerous."
Erevan smirked, but it felt hollow, tight across his chest. "Story of my life," he muttered, and the shard inside him thrummed like a pulse of both dread and familiarity.
The night grew heavier, the fire casting long, tense shadows across three figures sitting too close to one another, tied together by circumstance and anomalies they couldn't yet fully understand. The air was thick with the smell of smoke, dirt, and something far older—metallic, like the tang of blood before it hits the earth.
Erevan thought of the countless nights spent running, hiding, and wondering if he'd ever stop being a target. He thought of Vega, half-finished and trembling, and of Kaelith, calm but unrelenting. And in that moment, he understood something he hadn't allowed himself to admit: maybe being anomalies wasn't just a curse. Maybe it was a chance—painful, dangerous, terrifying—to fight back.
Vega's glitching figure leaned slightly forward, the glyphs burning faintly against their skin. "If we work together… maybe we can survive. Maybe we can even fight back."
Erevan's fingers brushed the hilt of Pathbreaker, eyes narrowing as the firelight danced across the blade. "So… we're talking about surviving, or taking the fight to them?" he asked, voice half-sarcastic, half-curious.
Vega almost smiled, a flicker that was gone before anyone could fully see it. "Both," they said softly.
The night stretched on, filled with unspoken questions, the hum of unstable code around Vega, and the quiet pulse of two anomalies who had found each other, whether the system liked it or not.
The firelight had barely begun to settle into a lull when the night cracked open in a way that no one could ignore. The sky tore like paper, a jagged rift splitting the black canvas into sharp shards of red and violet. Erevan's shard throbbed in alarm, a painful reminder that the system had found them.
Nullifiers poured from the rift, their forms sharper, more deliberate than the mindless swarms Erevan had encountered before. These weren't random trash mobs. These were hunters, engineered with precision, eyes glowing crimson, claws glinting in the pale light. Every step they took made the earth shiver beneath their weight.
Kaelith leapt to her feet instantly, nocking an arrow, her every motion fluid and deadly. "They're here for Vega!" she shouted, voice slicing through the chaos.
"No kidding!" Erevan muttered, yanking Pathbreaker from its sheath. Prime Rend sparked to life, humming with lethal energy. His pulse quickened, heart hammering, but beneath the rush of adrenaline was something else: a flicker of fear, raw and human. He could feel Vega faltering across the firelight, glyphs sputtering in chaotic bursts as if struggling to hold themselves together.
Sir Quacksalot, as usual, refused subtlety. The duck flapped into the air with such reckless determination it was almost comical, wings slapping with a ferocity no one thought possible. It charged a Nullifier with the intensity of a berserker, headbutting it with a force that made Erevan blink in disbelief as sparks flew from the collision. The creature collapsed into static, leaving a faint smell of burnt feathers lingering in the air.
Erevan smirked despite the chaos, letting himself laugh. "That duck is scarier than half of these things!"
Kaelith's reply was sharp, laced with equal parts frustration and concern. "Don't encourage him!"
Erevan didn't answer. There was no time. Another wave of Nullifiers lunged from the rift, claws scraping stone and dirt. The smell of burning ozone filled his nose as he swung Pathbreaker in a wide arc, cutting through one of the creatures. Sparks and black ichor splattered the ground. His shard throbbed painfully as it resonated with Vega's unstable code, a rhythm that made his vision blur for a second.
Vega stumbled, glitching violently, glyphs sparking, fire licking around their hands. They tried to summon the glyph-fire into whips, lashing at the advancing Nullifiers, but several still pressed through, claws tearing at the ground dangerously close.
Erevan's mind raced. He could link with Vega, stabilize them—but the cost would be enormous. His own stability would bleed into them. He knew the system would punish him if he failed. But watching Vega falter, trembling as they tried to hold their own against impossible odds, something inside him snapped.
"Hold still," he growled under his breath, eyes narrowing. He planted his boots firmly into the dirt, letting his shard resonate outward in a pulse. Anomaly Link: activated.
A surge of raw, overwhelming energy shot through him, burning along nerves and muscle, latching onto Vega's broken code. The pain was immediate, a white-hot agony that clawed at his chest, stole his breath, and made his vision swim. But through the fire of pain, he felt Vega stabilize. Their glyphs roared to life, solid and coherent, forming a perfect circle of blazing symbols around their hands.
Vega's eyes widened in shock, then awe, as their powers flared outward. Waves of annihilating energy rippled across the battlefield, shredding Nullifiers in spectacular bursts of light and code. Entire swaths of hunters disintegrated as if being erased from existence. The rift shuddered, flickered, and cracked. Kaelith's final arrow flew with uncanny precision, striking the rift's heart and forcing it to seal with a scream that echoed into the night.
Erevan stumbled to one knee, chest heaving, blood mixing with dirt along his jawline. Every muscle screamed in protest. His shard hummed faintly, exhausted, but it had held. Vega stood trembling, glyphs burning faintly, stabilized at last.
"We… we actually did it," Vega whispered, voice small, amazed.
Erevan forced a grin through the blood and sweat. "Nah," he said, wheezing. "Because of us." He glanced at Kaelith, who was breathing heavily, arrow nocked loosely but eyes blazing with fierce relief and irritation.
Sir Quacksalot strutted onto Erevan's shoulder like a conquering king, quacking triumphantly. Sparks clung to his feathers like tiny stars. Erevan laughed hoarsely. "Yep. Definitely scarier than me."
Kaelith rolled her eyes, shaking her head, but the corners of her lips betrayed her relief. "You absolute lunatic," she muttered, crouching next to him to make sure he was still upright.
Erevan let the moment linger, chest heaving, shoulders sagging as adrenaline ebbed and left the weight of exhaustion behind. For the first time that night, he felt it—not just survival, but victory, however fleeting. The firelight glimmered across three figures, burnt, bruised, but alive. The world was dangerous, the system was hunting them, and yet, for a brief, fragile heartbeat, they had won.
The shard inside Erevan pulsed faintly, a reminder that this victory came at a cost. His body ached, his mind felt frayed, and the Anomaly Link had left traces of instability in him—but Vega was steady now. And that mattered more than anything.
"We're going to have to do this again," Erevan muttered, half to himself, half to Vega, already sensing the larger battles ahead.
Vega met his eyes, glitching slightly but smiling, even if it was imperfect. "We'll be ready. Together."
Sir Quacksalot flapped his wings as if punctuating the promise, quacking with determined ferocity. Kaelith let out a short laugh, tension melting just enough.
Erevan allowed himself to lean back against a tree, dirt and blood and ash covering him, but for the first time in a long while, he could breathe. They had survived the night. They had stood together against impossible odds. And somewhere deep in his chest, he felt the spark of something he hadn't dared to hope for: the beginnings of an anomaly resistance that could fight back—not just survive.
The system might be vast, merciless, and endless—but for tonight, they were alive. And they were not alone.