Light seemed to hold its breath. The stranger's cloak unfurled like a shadow stretching after a long sleep, pixels threading and unraveling at the edges. For a long, dizzying moment, the crater felt like it was waiting for permission to exist again.
"Still carrying her mark," said the newcomer. The voice had that strange, doubled quality like a poorly spliced record, one clear track of speech layered with another thin and static filled, both saying the same thing in slightly different tones.
Arlen felt the words ripple through him as though they'd been thrown against his chest. A faint, jagged glyph the color of old iron hovered above the stranger's palm. He could see it, and worse, he could feel it, that eerie sense of being cataloged.
"Who are you?" he asked before his nerves could remind him not to.
The figure shifted. If there was a face under the hood, it rearranged itself like an image trying on different masks "Names are slow," it said. "They rust. Call me what keeps the gate warm, if you must."
"Keep the gate… warm?" Arlen echoed, his voice smaller than he wanted.
"Keep the gate from freezing," the stranger corrected gently, like a patient cleric adjusting a mispronounced prayer. "Hold the code from fraying. We are the seam."
The Wisp pulsed beside him, like a heartbeat borrowed from another body. Arlen realized he was still clutching the half-ring in his hand. The metal was cold and unhelpful. "The woman…she… what did she mean? The summoning? The mark?" His words tumbled out, urgency building with each one.
"She tried to call a name that had no patience for her," said the stranger. "Some names answer. Some don't. The one she choked on belongs to a layer beneath the living breath. It should not have been pulled."
Arlen's head spun. The explanation both filled and widened the hole in his understanding. "So… I woke up here because someone tugged the wrong thread?"
"Or the right one snapped," the stranger replied blandly. "Both can happen."
Silence fell like ash. The crater seemed smaller now, the air brittle, that quiet tension right before glass breaks. Arlen wanted to ask if he'd survive the next hour, the next day, the next week. Instead, he asked, "Where am I? What is this… zone?"
The stranger looked at him, and for the first time, their voice softened. "This is Stasis Zone 9A," they said. "We call it a hollow. Some call it the Black Expanse. The living world calls it the place where failed things go to forget themselves."
"Failed things?" Arlen repeated.
"Promises, rituals, gods that lost patience. Petty summoners. Stray lines of code that tried to be more than they were." The stranger's tone was neither cruel nor kind, just flat, like reading a report. "It's a place the living look away from. A place you drown in if you stay."
A cold shiver slid down Arlen's spine. "Then why are you here? You're not… like them."
The stranger's hood dipped. For a heartbeat, Arlen thought he saw an expression, not pity, not scorn, but the look of someone who'd cataloged miracles and found most to be paperwork.
"We are the seam," the stranger repeated. "We watch the holes. Patch what we can. Keep the leaks from becoming storms."
"Patch what? The world?" He pressed. "Who do you patch for?"
"For whatever part still remembers to ring the bell," said the stranger. "The Crescent Rim remembers. The living world remembers. The Stasis Zones remember only what seeps in. You…" they leaned closer, voice quieter, "you weren't meant to be here. And yet the gate answered you. That's a fault."
"Fault?" Arlen laughed weakly. "Yeah, I could've told you that myself."
"Humor is an acceptable coping mechanism," the stranger said. "It also makes you a bit easier to read."
Arlen had a mountain of questions, how could a person from nowhere be called a fragment? Why did the System call him soul null? Why did the Testament label him insufficient? He wanted charts and explanations, or at least a pamphlet and a helpline.
Instead, the ground twitched a faint movement, like a fish darting beneath ice. Something small and wrong wriggled across the surface, a living crack. Arlen's skin crawled.
"Not again," the stranger muttered, and their voice fractured, one tone weary and impossibly old.
What crawled from the earth wasn't a clear shape. It was the suggestion of a person, an echo whose outline refused to settle. Small at first, like a child's shadow, then sprouting teeth, reaching with hands made of static.
[SYSTEM ALERT: THREAT DETECTED — SHARDLING ECHO (LV. 1)]
[SYSTEM TIP: AVOID / DISRUPT SOURCE]
Arlen's heart stumbled. The Wisp flared bright and sharp, cutting the dark. He should've run, the Testament had literally told him to… but something rooted him, a strip of stubbornness from whatever scraps of the living world still clung to him. Maybe this time, he'd file the wrong form on purpose.
The Echo lunged. Arlen slipped on a slick patch of glassy ash and hit a jagged rock. Pain seared clean across his back.
[SYSTEM UPDATE: HEALTH -1 // BLEEDING: MINOR]
[SYSTEM COMMENT: Well. That looked unpleasant.]
The stranger hissed. For a moment, their silhouette expanded not in size, but in gravity, like a giant blocking out light. The shadows recoiled as though something ancient had frowned.
"Not today," the stranger said, voice threaded with that delicate cruelty of someone who knows exactly where to cut. "Go find the void, little shard."
Static cracked. The Echo splintered, collapsing into dust that smelled faintly of pennies and old paper. Arlen coughed, tasting grit and a strange, small triumph.
[ACHIEVEMENT: NOT A CORPSE TODAY]
[REWARD: +1 WILLPOWER]
[SYSTEM COMMENT: Excellent breathing exercises. Marketable, even. You weren't panicked at all.]
Breathing hard, Arlen steadied himself. "You keep saying the Gate would answer me," he said. "How? Why? What even is the Relay Gate?"
The stranger inclined their hood. "The Relay Gate is a relic, a vector from the Age Before, when the Crescent Rim was young and the world still obeyed orders. It ferried travelers between the living lattice and the Stasis field for delicate operations."
"So it's an actual door?" Arlen asked, picturing steel and a brass plaque.
"A door in principle," the stranger said. "In practice, it's a seam… an old circuit that hums when the right pulse reaches it. It doesn't open on command. It opens when something remembers strongly enough to ask."
"Remembers what?" Arlen asked.
"The living. The Crescent Rim. The circle that binds the world together. The Gate only answers if the living memory keeps the thread intact."
"So if the living remembers, it opens?" he pressed.
"Sometimes," said the stranger. "Sometimes not. Even gods hate paperwork."
Arlen turned the half-ring between his fingers. "And me… the Testament said soul integrity critical, level zero, fragment. What if I can't… get out?"
"You're not on 9A's ledger," said the stranger. "That matters. If you stay, this place will gnaw at you until you forget how to ask for help. But if the Gate hears you, it might drag you into a world that remembers you as someone else."
"Someone else," Arlen repeated quietly.
"Yes."
They stood in silence, listening to the faint hum of the Hollow Reach Beacon far off in the dark.
"You can leave, if you can find the Relay Gate," said the stranger. "But it's picky, likes neat names, loud memories. You," they paused, "you're a whisper easily ignored."
Arlen laughed, rough and hollow. "A whisper dumped in a landfill. Great."
The stranger almost smiled. "There's a pulse eastward. Follow the hum until the ground sings. Don't run… that wakes the wrong things. Move like a rumor."
"Why help me?" Arlen asked. "You patch seams. Why not just… watch?"
"Because cracks are expensive," the stranger said simply. "And because someone stopped listening. If the Crescent Rim finds you, you'll be a bureaucratic headache and people solve those with swords. Swords are messy."
Arlen exhaled, half-relieved, half-exhausted. "So, go east, find the Gate, hope it opens if I'm remembered. Comforting."
"It's the truth," said the stranger. "Also, you smell like burnt coffee and regret. The Crescent Rim buys coffee. Maybe they'll buy you a better fate."
A strange wind rose, not real air, but the breath between lines of code. The stranger stepped back, their cloak flickering at the edges like pixels near a heat source. "Follow the hum," they said, voice flattening. "One foot at a time. And for the love of whatever keeps the Rim, don't try to be a hero on your first day, you might finally die."
Arlen nodded. His joints ached; his fingers throbbed. The Wisp hovered at his shoulder, bright and judgmental.
[TESTAMENT // USER: ARLEN THANE — SYSTEM PROMPT]
[NEW OBJECTIVE ACCEPTED — LOCATE RELAY GATE // PRIMARY PATH: EAST RIDGE // ESTIMATED DIFFICULTY: HIGH]
[SYSTEM TIP: Emotional focus affects output. Rage => +STR (temporary); Fear => +DEX (temporary). Tears acceptable but low-yield.]
Arlen squared his shoulders. The stranger's form shimmered and vanished not with drama, but like a light being quietly unscrewed.
For a long moment, Arlen stood there, letting the world breathe through him. He felt smaller, but maybe also like something that could still learn to matter. He had a task. A direction. He had for now a thread to follow.
He stepped forward full of hope despite his wretched state.
[END OF CHAPTER 3 — ZONE 9A]
[NEXT OBJECTIVE: LOCATE RELAY GATE // PRIMARY PATH: EAST RIDGE]
[DIFFICULTY: HIGH]