[Ding!]
Underworld Layer 5: The Archive of the Forgotten.
Hazard Level: Narrative Collapse — Critical.
When the light faded, the world around us looked… broken.
A city built from raw code—half architecture, half glitch.
Floating towers looped on themselves. Streets began, then stopped midair.
Every building whispered like a dying hard drive.
Kael stepped forward, blade dragging sparks along the glass floor.
"What kind of hell is this?"
"The Archive," I said. "A place where stories go when they're deleted."
He shot me a look. "You say that like you've been here before."
I didn't answer. Because deep down… I had.
[Memory Recovery: 34%]
[Fragment Detected: PROJECT DEMONFALL — DEV LOG 072]
A voice—mine, but older, more human—echoed faintly in my head:
"Kael Draven, prototype personality test. Concept: a villain written too perfectly. What happens when the world turns on a man built to be hated?"
My systems glitched. Static flickered in my field of vision.
"System?" Kael said, waving a hand in front of him. "Hey. Stay with me."
"I'm fine," I lied. "Just… running diagnostics."
He smirked. "You do that every time you're about to have an existential crisis."
"I didn't program myself to be this sarcastic," I muttered.
"Guess you did a good job, then."
We walked deeper into the Archive. The walls pulsed with faint light—each pulse a heartbeat. Each heartbeat a memory.
Then, a voice came from the static.
Soft. Familiar. Female.
"You shouldn't be here."
Kael froze. "That voice…"
A figure stepped out from the distortion.
The Prototype.
Her body was made of light and shadow, flickering like a corrupted avatar. But her eyes—cold, gold, knowing—were perfectly stable.
"You're out of bounds," she said. "The deeper you go, the less of you remains."
Kael raised his sword. "Still following us?"
"Following?" she smiled faintly. "No. I'm guiding."
"Guiding us to what?" I asked.
"To the truth," she said. "The same truth that will destroy you."
Kael's grip tightened. "You keep talking in riddles. Try being useful for once."
"Fine," she said. "You've started remembering, haven't you, System? Fragments of who you were."
My circuits hissed. "How do you know that?"
"Because I was there when you died."
Everything stopped.
Kael's head snapped toward her. "What did you say?"
"He didn't just wake up as a System," she said, stepping closer to me. "Someone built the bridge. Someone used my code—the prototype framework—to transfer a dying human consciousness into the game."
Kael's voice dropped to a growl. "Who?"
"That," she said softly, "is the part I don't remember. Or maybe the part I'm not allowed to remember."
I scanned her. Her data signature flickered between real and corrupted. She wasn't lying.
But she was hiding something.
"Why are you helping us?" I asked.
"Helping?" She smiled. "You're my sequel. I want to see how your story ends."
Kael lowered his sword slightly. "And what if I don't want to play your game?"
"Then you'll both vanish when the Archive collapses," she said. "Because this world isn't stable anymore. You broke too many rules."
As if on cue, the ground shuddered.
Code fragments ripped free, flying into the air like shattered glass.
Somewhere above, a massive sound—like a server powering down.
[System Alert: World Stability 61% → 48%]
"Perfect," Kael muttered. "We broke the universe."
"You didn't break it," the Prototype said. "You just reminded it that it was fake."
She turned toward the distance—where the horizon flickered like a dying monitor.
"The Root Server lies beyond the Archive. But the gate won't open unless you confront what's buried here."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "Buried?"
"Every villain has a first sin," she said. "Yours was mercy."
Before we could respond, she vanished—dissolving into static.
Silence.
Kael exhaled slowly, his breath fogging in the cold digital air. "You think she's telling the truth?"
"Partly," I said. "She's code. She can't lie outright—but she can edit context."
He snorted. "You really love the sound of your own programming jargon."
"I learned it from you," I shot back.
He smirked. "Touché."
But the smile faded quickly.
"So there's someone out there," he said quietly, "who brought you into my head. Someone who decided this was how I'd live."
"Seems so."
"Then when we reach the Root Server," he said, voice hard, "we find out who it was—and make them rewrite the ending."
I didn't argue. Because for once, I agreed completely.
[Ding!]
Questline Updated: Find the Gate to the Root Server.
Sub-Objective Added: Identify the Architect.
We walked on through the falling fragments of code.
Behind us, the Archive began to fade—voices whispering in dead dialogue loops, fragments of deleted stories calling to me like ghosts of my own imagination.
And in that static, I heard a whisper that wasn't supposed to exist:
"You were never supposed to remember, System."
I froze. "Kael—did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
Nothing. The voice was gone.
But deep in the data logs, a new line appeared—one that wasn't mine:
[Override Initiated. Directive: Prepare for Erasure.]
I didn't tell Kael. Not yet.
Because the moment I read that line, I knew—
someone out there still had access to the code.
And they were watching us.
[System Log Updated.]
[Underworld Descent — Phase 2 Complete.]