The chamber cracked apart like glass under a hammer. Shards of code and stone alike rained from above as the ground split into jagged fragments.
Arin ran, his lungs burning, every step vibrating with the rumble of collapse. Beside him, Lyra sprinted effortlessly, her silver hair flashing like a beacon in the glitch-light.
The roar of the Core's fading pulse thundered behind them, shaking the world apart.
"Faster!" Lyra shouted.
"I'm—trying—!" Arin gritted his teeth, stumbling as the floor beneath him flickered between solid rock and raw code. Each time he found footing, the ground tried to vanish.
A massive fissure tore open ahead, stretching wall to wall. A bottomless abyss of static yawned before them, crackling with unstable energy.
Arin skidded to a halt, chest heaving. "Great. Just great."
The fissure widened. Time slowed. And instinct screamed at him.
System Rewrite.
He didn't know how. He didn't know the cost. But the words pulsed inside him, begging to be spoken.
"System Rewrite—Bridge Function!"
The world stuttered. For a heartbeat, everything froze. Then, lines of glowing code erupted across the abyss, weaving into a makeshift path. It wasn't stable — the bridge blinked in and out, shifting textures like it couldn't decide if it was stone, wood, or pure light.
Lyra's eyes widened. "You… you rewrote the terrain."
Arin smirked, though his hands shook. "Guess I'm a game dev now."
The bridge began to unravel. No time for jokes.
They dashed across, the unstable path collapsing behind them. Arin's legs burned, his heart hammering in his ears, but they made it across just as the last fragments of the bridge dissolved into static.
The chamber groaned, a deafening sound that rattled his bones.
The exit loomed ahead, but the tunnel was already caving in. Rocks fell in slow motion, suspended by the flicker of corrupted code before crashing down.
Another blast of glitch-light flared behind them. Arin dared a glance back. The Core wasn't gone. Not entirely. Its fractured surface pulsed faintly, and from it spilled crawling data wraiths — shadowy creatures stitched together from broken code. They slithered across the walls like living static, their hollow faces screaming.
"Move!" Lyra yanked him forward.
They sprinted, dodging falling debris, but the tunnel narrowed, the exit collapsing faster than they could reach it.
Arin's pulse roared. He had one chance.
"System Rewrite—Gravity Invert!"
The air twisted violently. His stomach lurched as the world flipped.
Suddenly, they weren't running on the floor — they were sprinting on the ceiling, debris crashing harmlessly below.
Lyra let out a breathless laugh, half-disbelief, half-terror. "You're insane."
Arin grinned despite the sweat in his eyes. "Takes one to follow me."
The rewrite lasted seconds. Enough. They shot out of the collapsing tunnel and tumbled into the open air, rolling across solid ground as the cavern behind them caved in entirely.
Silence.
Arin lay on his back, staring at the broken sky above — a sky with fragments missing, showing raw lines of code shimmering in the void. His chest rose and fell rapidly, every muscle trembling with exhaustion.
[System Notification: System Rewrite → Corruption +0.5%]
His HUD blinked. The corruption percentage ticked up.
He cursed under his breath. "Figures. Nothing's free."
Lyra sat beside him, her expression unreadable. For a long moment, the only sound was the distant hum of the broken world.
Finally, she spoke softly. "That was reckless."
"Saved our lives," he shot back, still panting.
"Yes," she said, looking at him with something between awe and sorrow. "But every time you bend the system, you bend yourself. You felt it, didn't you?"
Arin thought back to the weight in his chest when he invoked the Rewrite. Like the world itself had reached inside him and twisted. He clenched his fists. "Yeah… I felt it."
Lyra touched the ground where the collapsed cavern had once stood. Her hand glowed faintly, her connection to the system stirring. "The Core gave you that ability for a reason. It doesn't hand out power freely. It wants something."
Arin pushed himself up, leaning on his knees. "Then I'll figure out what before it tries to collect."
For a while, neither spoke. The broken wind carried whispers of static through the ruined forest around them.
Finally, Arin broke the silence, his voice low. "System Rewrite… it's dangerous. But it's also the only edge I've got. If I'm a bug, then I'll be the worst bug this system has ever seen."
His HUD flickered again, the word [BUGGED]flashing faintly where his name should be.
Lyra watched him, silver eyes shining in the glitch-light. For the first time, there was no trace of an NPC's scripted calm in her gaze. Only something achingly human.
"You're not just a bug, Arin," she said quietly. "You're a choice the system couldn't erase."
Her words settled deep in his chest.
And as the broken sky pulsed faintly overhead, Arin knew one thing with certainty: the fight wasn't just for survival anymore. It was for control.