The forest had ceased being a forest.
What lay before Arin and Lyra was a nightmare stitched together by a broken mind. The trees bent sideways in impossible arcs, roots forming cages in midair. The ground cracked into floating shards, drifting in slow circles as though gravity had grown indecisive. And hanging above it all, like a wound in the sky, was a gaping rift bleeding static.
Every second, fragments of light poured out of the rift and slammed into the earth. Each impact twisted into a monster, born half-formed, half-corrupted, but wholly hostile.
Arin gritted his teeth as the first wave surged forward—wolves with teeth like glass, spiders whose legs stretched endlessly like unraveling strings of code.
[Corruption Surge: Active]
[System Directive: Eliminate the Bugged One]
"Figures," Arin muttered. "It's always me."
Lyra stood beside him, silver light dancing across her fingertips. But even her glow flickered in the corrupted air. "It's targeting you, Arin. This whole surge—it's not random."
Arin forced a grin, though his stomach churned. "Lucky me. Let's give it a fight worth remembering."
The wolves struck first.
Arin's blade moved in an arc, faster than thought, carving a trail of broken pixels through their bodies. But where they should have collapsed, their fragments reassembled, crawling back into shape.
"Persistent," he growled, activating his exploit. Reality stuttered for a heartbeat, and his blade passed through three enemies at once—ignoring their respawn code entirely. They froze, glitched, and dissolved into raw data.
[Bug Exploit: Reality Bypass]
[Effective: Yes]
But every use ticked at his corruption.
[Corruption: 3.7% → 3.9%]
His jaw tightened. "Damn it…"
Meanwhile, Lyra pressed her palms together, silver light flooding outward like ripples in water. Wherever the glow touched, the monsters slowed, their corrupted patterns unraveling for a precious few seconds.
"Arin—now!" she shouted.
He leapt into the opening, blade flashing. Each strike carved deeper, faster, his movements fluid despite the chaos. But as the battlefield expanded, the rift above pulsed—harder, louder—until the world itself seemed to scream.
And then it hit him.
Not physically, but mentally.
The static from the rift crawled into his skull, flooding his vision with memories that weren't his own.
—A sterile white room.—A boy with wires strapped to his arms.—A voice saying: "Subject E-01: Stable. Begin overwrite."
Arin staggered mid-swing. His chest heaved. The monsters blurred, replaced by flickers of a hospital bed, syringes, and masked figures.
"You were never real," the whispers hissed."You are just broken code.""You don't belong."
For a heartbeat, his grip faltered. His blade almost slipped from his hand.
"Arin!"
Lyra's voice cut through the storm. She rushed toward him, eyes blazing. Her silver light burst outward, shielding him from a dozen claw strikes that would have ended him.
He blinked, gasped, forced air into his lungs. "I… I saw—"
"I know," Lyra said firmly, holding his gaze. "It's trying to overwrite you. Don't let it. You are Arin. You've bled, fought, and survived as Arin. That's what's real."
The words hit harder than any monster's strike. He clenched his fists, teeth grinding.
"No more running," he whispered.
The corruption inside him flared. But instead of resisting, he grasped it. For a moment, his vision split—half reality, half raw system code. And in that fractured world, he saw the monsters not as beasts but as errors, strings of logic waiting to be undone.
"System Rewrite," he growled.
The world glitched. His blade hummed with impossible weight, its edge dragging across lines of code only he could see. He swung once, and a dozen monsters unraveled, collapsing into raw data before they could respawn.
[System Rewrite: Corruption Manipulation Unlocked]
[Warning: Stability decreasing]
The rift pulsed angrily, birthing even greater horrors—towering giants made of writhing polygons, their bodies patched together like broken statues.
Lyra stepped beside him, sweat glistening, her glow dim but steady. "Arin… if we keep this up, the rift will notice too much."
He smirked despite himself, eyes burning with defiance. "Good. Let it notice. I want it to know—" He raised his blade, sparks of glitching light crawling across the steel. "—that I'm not going to break. Not here. Not ever."
The battlefield roared as the next wave descended.
And Arin charged.