Light swallowed him whole.
Brian's last memory of the arena was Aurora shouting his name, the Hunter Supreme screaming through static—and then the world inverted. Up became down. Matter became code. His body dissolved into strings of data, unspooling into a tunnel of endless blue.
No pain. No gravity. Just motion, like being pulled through a heartbeat the size of a galaxy.
> [System Synchronization Complete]
[User: Brian]
[Access Level Elevated: Core Layer]
The words didn't appear in front of him. They were him—flashing behind his eyes, beating in his veins.
He blinked and found himself standing on an endless glass plain, suspended in blackness. Stars drifted beneath his feet like fish under ice. The sky above wasn't a sky at all—it was code, shimmering symbols folding and unfolding like origami.
He exhaled. "...Where the hell am I?"
The System answered, but its voice was no longer mechanical. It sounded tired. Human.
> You have entered the Core Layer.
Access granted by emergency override.
"Emergency," Brian muttered. "Yeah, that tracks." He glanced around. "So, uh… where's the off switch?"
No reply.
Then the ground rippled, and in the distance he saw them—shattered mirrors hanging in the void. Each one reflected a different world: a desert of bones under three suns; a city built on floating cubes; a jungle glowing with red rivers.
He took a step closer, breath catching. "These are… worlds."
> Fragments, the voice whispered. Shards of a broken whole.
Brian frowned. "Broken? By what?"
The mirrors pulsed. His reflection split into dozens—each version of him wearing different armor, wielding strange weapons, some even with faces not his own. They all looked back at him, silently.
> The Collapse fractured the Creation. The System was built to hold what remained.
He turned slowly. "Who built it?"
No answer at first—just static, like wind over glass. Then:
> Not who. What.
A will that dreamed too deeply.
Brian's heartbeat stumbled. The words weren't coming from the System now. They were leaking through it, like something speaking behind the code.
He swallowed. "The Creator…"
The stars dimmed.
> The Creator is not gone. Only scattered.
The voice grew fainter, fading between syllables.
> Each shard of this universe carries a trace… of the One you seek.
Brian's breath caught. "The One… I've seen pieces. Names. Symbols."
> Then you already know too much.
The glass under him cracked. Fracture lines of light spread in all directions, each one leading toward a different mirror, a different reality.
> Choose, Brian.
The System will obey your path—but not your fate.
The world shook.
He staggered back as the mirrors shattered, sending shards of reality spinning through the void. One fragment drifted close—a glimpse of Aurora and the others still fighting the Hunter Supreme.
> Return, or fall further.
Brian hesitated for half a heartbeat. Then he reached toward the shard that showed his team, his world.
"I'm not done there yet."
He touched it—
—and the universe snapped back.
---
Brian gasped as air filled his lungs again. He was on his knees in the arena, light still coiling around his arms. The Hunter Supreme was mid-strike, frozen like a paused frame.
Aurora's voice broke through the ringing in his ears. "Brian?! What happened?"
He looked up at her, eyes glowing faint blue, voice low.
"I saw it," he whispered. "The truth. We're just… fragments."
Then the System chimed again, soft and almost reverent.
> [New Directive Unlocked: The Fractured Loop]
[Unknown Entity Detected — "The One"]
The Hunter Supreme twitched back to life, eyes burning brighter than before.
Brian clenched his fists. "Round two," he said quietly. "For the whole damn universe."
> [TO BE CONTINUED…]