The forest shimmered like a dream trying to stabilize.
Leaves flickered between pixels and real veins, each rustle echoing with faint static. The soil beneath Eren's boots wasn't quite solid — it hummed, as if breathing data.
He took a slow breath. The air here felt charged, sharp on the lungs yet intoxicating. His Codex mark pulsed in rhythm with the wind.
> "So this is the world the system built for me," he murmured. "Half real, half memory."
A faint sound rippled through the distance — the metallic rhythm he had heard earlier. He turned, eyes narrowing. Shapes emerged through the trees: armored figures, their silhouettes flickering between human and machine.
NPCs. Or something close.
They marched with precision, weapons drawn, glowing runes etched into their armor. Their visors gleamed red, scanning the forest.
> "Identification required," one of them said. The voice was monotone, mechanical.
"Unauthorized data signature detected."
Eren raised his hands slowly, playing for time.
> "I'm not here to fight. I'm — "
> "Host signature: corrupted," another interrupted. "Codex anomaly confirmed. Initiate containment protocol."
Before he could respond, they attacked.
Bolts of plasma cut through the air, slamming into the trees around him. The forest erupted in shards of light. Instinct took over — he dove behind a fallen trunk, rolling through static leaves. His body moved with precision beyond anything he'd known in the real world.
The Codex pulsed again, whispering lines of text into his mind.
[Skill Active: Data Resonance — Adaptive Perception Unlocked]
The world slowed.
The projectiles traced visible arcs through the air, their code patterns glowing faintly. He saw the algorithm behind each trajectory, every possible outcome.
He stood, sidestepped, and one shot passed millimeters from his shoulder.
> "Alright," he muttered, "let's test what you can do."
He focused. The Codex mark flared, and reality rippled. The ground beneath one of the soldiers fractured into a spiral of binary light, swallowing it whole. The others halted instantly, recalibrating their formation.
> "Threat level: elevated. Switching to annihilation mode."
Eren clenched his fists. The Codex responded, feeding raw information into his consciousness — how to shift his resonance, where to strike, what to avoid. It wasn't instinct; it was precision calculated at light speed.
He moved.
One step, a blur, a flash of code. His hand pierced through the armor of the nearest unit. The figure froze, its red visor dimming as streams of corrupted data leaked from the wound.
> "They're not human," he whispered.
The remaining soldiers surrounded him, forming a circle. Their weapons adjusted, humming with increasing pitch. A storm of energy gathered.
Eren glanced upward. The twin moons reflected on his metallic eyes. He felt the Codex reacting again, not in defense this time — but recognition.
[Linked Data Found — Archive Signal Detected Nearby]
> "An archive?"
No answer, but his chest burned with direction. Something ancient within the network was calling him. He tightened his grip, eyes scanning the surroundings.
The soldiers fired simultaneously.
Eren raised his arm, shouting without words. A translucent barrier flared into existence, woven from golden code. The energy collided against it, shaking the ground. The barrier held — barely.
He staggered backward, panting.
> "I can't keep this up."
Then something strange happened. The fallen soldier's body began to disintegrate, its particles streaming toward Eren like motes of light. They sank into his Codex mark, merging seamlessly.
A notification flashed.
[Fragment Absorbed — Codex Integrity + 1%]
[Skill Unlocked: Echo Pulse]
The pain vanished. Power surged through his veins.
> "Let's see what this does."
He thrust his hand forward. A pulse of energy rippled outward, bending the air. The soldiers staggered, their systems glitching violently. Their visors cracked, one by one, until the clearing fell silent. Only fragments of their data remained, floating like ash in the wind.
Eren exhaled. His vision flickered — a flood of fragmented memories not his own flashed through his mind : voices, faces, cities made of light, and something deeper, buried beneath the data — a heartbeat, human yet mechanical.
> "Whose memories are these?"
The Codex did not answer. It never did.
He looked around. The forest seemed to stretch infinitely, but somewhere behind the horizon, a structure shimmered — a tower of crystal, faint and distant. The archive. He felt it.
> "That's where I need to go."
He started walking, cautious but resolute. Every few steps, the environment changed — trees transforming into columns of code, ground shifting from soil to circuitry. The simulation was unstable, like two realities competing for dominance.
Eren's thoughts drifted.
He remembered his old life — the one before the crash. The late nights in neon cafés, endless hours spent in Aether Online grinding for loot that never mattered. He had been ordinary. Replaceable.
Now, somehow, he was the key to a myth no one was supposed to touch.
The forest eventually opened into a field of floating platforms suspended above an abyss of swirling data. The path toward the tower crossed them like stepping stones. Each platform pulsed with a low, rhythmic hum, as if testing his presence.
> "If this world wants to erase me, it'll have to try harder."
He leapt to the first platform. It held. The second trembled under his weight, flickering. He adjusted his balance, using the Codex's guidance.
Halfway across, a new sound pierced the silence — a whisper, soft yet clear.
> "Eren Vale."
He froze. The voice wasn't mechanical. It was female, human, but distant, as though echoing from the code itself.
> "Who's there?"
No answer — only static.
> "Identify yourself," he demanded.
A faint shimmer appeared before him — a translucent figure, blurred by interference. She wore an ancient robe inscribed with luminous patterns, her eyes twin galaxies of light.
> "You shouldn't be here," she said. "The Codex was never meant to awaken."
> "Then why am I alive?"
> "Because the system failed to delete you."
The words struck like a hammer.
Eren stepped closer, but the figure flickered violently.
> "What are you?"
> "A fragment," she whispered. "Of what remains."
Her image wavered again, the surrounding platforms beginning to collapse into the abyss.
> "Wait—! Tell me what the Codex is!"
> "You'll remember… when it's too late."
Her voice faded as the last platform shattered beneath his feet.
Eren fell.
Wind roared past him, mixed with shards of light and lines of broken code. The abyss below wasn't darkness — it was infinite depth, filled with screaming fragments of data, faces, voices, echoes of forgotten players.
He reached out instinctively, trying to stabilize his descent. The Codex reacted, glowing brighter than ever.
[Emergency Protocol Engaged]
[Echo Pulse — Reversal Mode Activated]
A shockwave erupted outward. The falling debris reversed direction, swirling upward in a spiral. Eren landed hard on a remaining fragment of ground, coughing, his vision blurred.
He had survived, but the voice still echoed in his head, lingering like a haunting code line.
> "You'll remember… when it's too late."
He stared at the tower in the distance. It was closer now, glowing with faint gold. Beneath its surface, he could sense millions of data streams converging — each carrying memories, histories, and something else : intent.
> "If the system tried to erase me," he murmured, "then I'll find out why."
The Codex pulsed in agreement, almost like it understood him.
Above him, the skies shifted again — one of the moons turned red, its light bleeding into the landscape. Across the horizon, thousands of sigils began to form in the air, aligning like constellations.
A new message appeared before his eyes.
[Server Protocol Update — Anomaly Detected]
[Codex Bearer Location Broadcasted to All Active Entities]
Eren's expression hardened.
> "So now they all know where I am."
The forest around him trembled, data storm rising in the distance. He tightened his fists, feeling the pulse of the Codex beneath his skin.
Whatever the system had become, it was watching.
And the game had just changed.