Silence wasn't quiet anymore. It hummed.
After the last strike, time folded in on itself. The Hunter Supreme's armor cracked like porcelain, and light leaked out, pouring upward instead of down. Brian stumbled back, gasping—because for a moment, he wasn't sure which of them was the real monster.
> [REALM INTEGRITY: CRITICAL]
[STABILIZING LINK WITH PRIMARY CONSCIOUSNESS...]
The world dimmed.
Then everything went still—like reality had been put on mute.
And that's when he saw it.
Not the Hunter.
Not the System.
Something between.
A figure woven entirely from light and shadow, standing where the Hunter used to be. Its shape flickered—one heartbeat male, another female, another… something inhuman. Every time it shifted, Brian's chest tightened, like his body recognized each form before his brain could.
> "Do you understand what you've awakened?"
The voice wasn't a sound. It was a thought layered into every frequency of his existence.
Brian clenched his fists, sparks trailing from his palms. "You're not the Creator."
> "No. I am what remains when the Creator's fragments learned to dream."
It stepped closer, and the arena around them bled into static. The cracked floor gave way to endless sky—a broken mirror suspended in a storm of data.
> "When the Creator fell, their memories scattered across the realms. Each world born from that collapse carries an echo. You, Brian, are one of them. But you've gone too far. You've seen too much."
He felt the truth crawl up his spine.
The fragments. The voices. The other selves.
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
> "Decide which version of you survives the merge."
The figure reached out its hand. Space itself rippled. For a second, Brian saw not one world but thousands, layered like glass shards. Within them, flickers of other heroes—those familiar silhouettes again. Each living their own reality, unaware that the fracture between them was thinning.
The being tilted its head.
> "The Creator's Echo has already chosen its next host."
Brian's System screamed in his ears.
> [ALERT: CREATOR'S SIGNAL—APPROACHING VELOCITY ANOMALY DETECTED]
The air split. A rift, massive and alive, tore through the arena. From within it, something looked back—a gaze ancient enough to feel like gravity.
Brian staggered as the light hit him.
Visions crashed into his mind: A boy building a machine from starfire. A woman trapped in an infinite library of worlds. A soldier kneeling before a throne of crystals.
> "They're all pieces of you," the voice whispered.
"And soon… the fragments will remember what they were meant to become."
The Hunter's broken form stirred again—its voice now layered with dozens of others. The figure of light and shadow smiled faintly.
> "Round three begins now, Fragment."
Then it vanished—like the idea of it had been deleted.
The rift roared wider, swallowing the arena, the code, and the stars themselves.
Brian stood alone on a fragment of floor, his eyes glowing with lines of golden script.
> [SYSTEM OVERRIDE GRANTED]
[ECHO CORE — UNLOCKED]
And somewhere, deep across the multiverse, the other MCs felt it.
A pull. A whisper. A heartbeat that wasn't theirs—but familiar.
Silence crashed like thunder.
The rift, the storm, the voice — everything imploded inward, sucked into a single point of blinding white. Brian threw up his hands, but the light swallowed him whole.
Then—
Darkness.
He gasped awake. The sound hit first: distant humming, metal creaking, the low pulse of energy. The smell of ozone. His back ached like he'd been hit by a truck made of stars.
He blinked and saw the familiar glowing UI hovering above him.
> [SYSTEM ONLINE]
[INTEGRITY RESTORED]
[ERROR LOG — CORRUPTED FILES DETECTED]
Brian groaned and sat up. "Okay… either I died and respawned, or someone hit the reset button on the universe."
Aurora's voice cut through the haze. "Brian!"
She was there — covered in soot, eyes red, but alive. Behind her, Lyra floated with a cracked halo of light, Kira was leaning against a wall with her cyber-blades sparking, and Selene was sitting cross-legged, glowing faintly like a dying star.
"You're awake," Selene said quietly.
Brian looked around. The arena was intact again — mostly. The fractures were gone, replaced by faint veins of crystal light pulsing under the floor. The Hunter Supreme was nowhere to be seen. Just dust.
He blinked. "Wait… we won?"
Kira snorted. "Technically, it exploded. I call that a draw."
Aurora crouched beside him, her usual fiery energy dimmed to embers. "What happened to you? One second you were down, and then everything just—" she gestured vaguely—"broke reality."
Brian rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, about that. I think I… might've touched something I wasn't supposed to."
Lyra frowned. "Like what?"
He hesitated. Images still burned behind his eyelids — flashes of the figure made of light and shadow, the voice that spoke like a god remembering a dream.
"Someone," he said softly. "Or… something. Said I was a 'fragment.' Like part of the Creator's memory or whatever."
The girls exchanged looks.
Selene's eyes glowed faintly, reading him. "There's a foreign signature in your aura now. Something… ancient."
Brian sighed. "Figures. I can't even take a nap without becoming a lore dump."
Aurora rolled her eyes but smiled faintly. "You're impossible."
"Yeah," he said, standing and stretching. "But I'm our impossible."
He looked toward the far end of the arena. The cracked crystal wall was still humming faintly, pulsing with an eerie rhythm — like a heartbeat he didn't remember starting.
> [NOTICE: NEW SYSTEM FILE DETECTED]
[ECHO CORE – SEALED]
[ACCESS DENIED UNTIL 'ECLIPSE PROTOCOL' IS TRIGGERED]
Brian frowned. "Eclipse Protocol…?"
The System didn't answer. Just a faint, static hum.
Then, as if sensing his doubt, it added a final line:
> [DO NOT SEEK THE OTHER FRAGMENTS.]
He laughed under his breath. "Yeah, sure. That's not ominous at all."
Lyra floated closer. "What now?"
Brian's grin returned, sharp and reckless. "Now? We rebuild. Heal up. And maybe take a nap before another cosmic entity tries to eat us."
Aurora smirked. "That's your big plan?"
"Yup. Strategic rest. The greatest weapon of all."
The girls groaned, but for the first time in what felt like ages, they were smiling.
As they walked out of the shattered arena, the crystalline lights dimmed behind them.
But for a brief second — when no one was looking — a ripple of static flickered across the System UI. And within it, the faint outline of a human silhouette whispered, too soft for Brian to hear:
> "Soon, Fragment… the others will awaken."
Then the System blinked once, twice — and the world pretended nothing had happened.