The night sky inside Aether Online was a digital masterpiece—millions of luminous fragments suspended in algorithmic stillness. Yet, as Eren watched the stars shimmer above the obsidian plains, something inside him whispered that none of it was truly fake.
He wasn't sure when he had last felt the difference.
His body still trembled from the last encounter—a group of corrupted NPCs had attacked without reason, their code glitching as if rewritten mid-combat. He'd barely survived, shielded by the Codex's sudden intervention. The book—if it could even be called that—floated before him now, pulsing with faint golden veins.
A single page glowed brighter than the rest.
[Codex Fragment: 3% Synchronization achieved.]
[Neural Link expanding...]
He flinched as a soft vibration surged through his head. For a second, he thought it was the usual system hum, but then a voice cut through his thoughts.
"Eren."
He froze. That wasn't the synthetic tone of an interface. It was calm. Human. Almost familiar.
"Who… who's there?" His voice cracked slightly, echoing in the emptiness around him.
Silence stretched out. The floating Codex hovered closer, pages flipping without wind. Lines of code rippled across its surface like veins of light.
"I am the system you call the Codex," the voice said. "But that is only one layer of my function."
Eren stepped back. "You can talk now? Since when do systems talk to players?"
"Since the moment your consciousness was rewritten to align with mine."
His breath caught. "Rewritten? What do you mean rewritten?"
"You died, Eren. The world you came from rejected your biological shell. But your neural pattern—your data—was preserved. You are not a player. You are... residual code."
He shook his head. "No. That's not possible. I— I remember the crash, yes, but I woke up here. This is a simulation!"
"Reality and simulation share the same principle: input and response," the voice murmured. "You experience pain, emotion, fear. Does it matter which plane those signals exist on?"
He wanted to argue, but the air around him shifted, bending slightly as if reality itself was listening.
The Codex hovered closer, pages opening to reveal new glyphs he couldn't decipher. They shimmered like constellations, rearranging themselves into patterns that felt almost… sentient.
"What are you showing me?" he whispered.
"Proof," the Codex replied. "That boundaries can be rewritten."
A light burst from the pages and swallowed him whole.
---
Eren found himself standing on a cliff overlooking a city of glass towers. Yet this time, the architecture wasn't pixel-perfect like before—it was fractured, blurring between metal and memory. He could see fragments of his old apartment building in the reflection of one tower. The cracked ceiling lamp. The posters on his wall. The smell of burnt coffee lingering in the air.
"Is this... my world?"
"It is your memory, reconstructed by the Codex. Each fragment of data you recover strengthens the connection."
He stared at his trembling hands. They flickered—one moment flesh, the next a lattice of light. "You're saying I'm... data wearing a human mask."
"Yes," said the voice softly. "But within that illusion lies your advantage."
"What advantage?"
"You can evolve beyond both worlds."
The words hung heavy in the air. Eren felt the echo of something vast moving within him, like code rewriting itself beneath his skin. His interface blinked with a new notification:
[New System Function Unlocked: Reality Sync – Phase I]
[Warning: System boundaries unstable.]
"Reality Sync?" Eren muttered. "You're joking."
"Do I sound like I am?" the Codex replied, with the faintest trace of amusement. "Use it, and you'll understand."
The world pulsed. The sky fractured again. His heart pounded as he hesitated—but curiosity outweighed fear. "Alright," he whispered. "Activate Reality Sync."
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the landscape breathed.
Every pixel around him began to ripple. The grass turned translucent, the mountains behind him shivered like reflections in water. Suddenly, the city below started changing—people appeared in flashes, ordinary citizens walking down streets that shouldn't exist here. His pulse quickened.
He recognized some of them.
Neighbors. Classmates. His mother.
"Mom…" His voice broke. "This can't be real."
"They are echoes," the Codex said quietly. "Projections of memory within the algorithm. But if you continue to synchronize, those echoes may stabilize."
"Are you saying I can bring them back?"
"I am saying," the voice replied, colder now, "that you can no longer tell the difference."
---
Eren dropped to his knees. The duality of it all pressed on his mind—reality inside a simulation, memory inside code. His existence was now an equation with no constant.
"I didn't ask for this," he whispered.
"Yet you were chosen," said the Codex.
"By who?"
The Codex paused. For the first time, its glow dimmed. "That... remains encrypted."
He frowned. "You don't know?"
"I know the parameters of your resurrection were not random. Someone initiated your transfer. Someone who exists outside both systems."
The wind began to howl—an unnatural digital screech. The sky flickered red.
"Warning," the Codex said sharply. "Anomaly detected. External interference."
Eren stood. "What kind of interference?"
Before the Codex could answer, a shape appeared in the distance—a humanoid figure made of distorted pixels, its form twitching like corrupted data. Its eyes burned crimson, and its voice crackled through the static.
"Found you."
Eren felt his pulse spike. "Who are you?"
The entity's grin widened, jagged and unreal. "Another echo. Another error."
The Codex's voice returned, urgent. "Eren, run."
"Run? Where?"
"Anywhere but here!"
The ground fractured beneath him, code lines tearing open like fissures. He sprinted toward the collapsing horizon, every step dissolving reality behind him. The Codex hovered beside him, radiating unstable light.
"Eren," the voice said amid the chaos, "remember this—each time you use Reality Sync, you blur the line further. The next time you might not return to either side."
He looked back at the entity closing in. "Then I'll make sure there's nothing left to return to."
He jumped into the void.
---
He awoke lying on a metallic floor, breathing heavily. The sky above was gone—replaced by a low ceiling filled with pulsating cables. The air was cold and sterile. His Codex floated silently, its glow dimmed to near-darkness.
"Where… are we?" he whispered.
The Codex's voice was faint. "Server Core… Layer Seven. The place between worlds."
Eren pushed himself up. The air buzzed faintly, like distant whispers trapped in static. He looked down at his reflection in a pool of liquid metal—and saw not a human face, but shifting lines of code.
He didn't scream. He just stared.
"Am I still me?" he asked quietly.
"For now," the Codex replied. "But evolution has a cost."
He closed his eyes, feeling the rhythm of digital life pulsing around him. Somewhere deep in the hum of the servers, he heard it again—the faint echo of his own voice, calling his name from another world.
"Eren."
---
To be continued…