TRUE to oneself
The day was young.
That did not matter. After the trippy episode, they departed from there hopping to get to the blacksmith
The sun rose the same way every time soft light spilling over the hills, dew clinging to grass, birds calling to one another as if the world had not already ended several times over. Fen had come to hate that constancy. It felt mocking. As if the world itself was unaware that it was already dead.
They stood together on the hilltop, watching the village below.
Attempt One.
Neither of them spoke.
They had decided—after long, quiet deliberation—that before they planned, before they optimized, before they touched the system again, they needed to confirm a single thing:
Whether anything they did mattered.
The hum came early this time. Fen noticed it almost immediately, a pressure behind the eyes, a tightening in the chest. The system was faster now. Or perhaps he was simply more attuned to it.
The interface appeared above the road.
Screams followed.
Ayger moved first.
"Left side," he said. "I'll intercept."
Fen nodded and took the opposite flank.
They had no classes yet. No weapons beyond what they could scavenge. This was deliberate. They needed a baseline.
The first corrupted humans emerged from between the houses.
They were worse than Fen remembered.
Skin stretched thin and split in places, exposing muscle that twitched as if animated by something else. Their eyes glowed with unstable system light, interfaces flickering violently above their heads.
They moved wrong.
Ayger grabbed a sharp stick from a fallen woodpile and charged.
Fen saw the mistake the instant it happened.
The corrupted man didn't flinch. It didn't retreat. It stepped into the swing, taking up the stick misshaped handle under one arm while another corrupted figure came in from the side.
"Ayger—!" Fen shouted.
Too late.
The axe came down again—not Ayger's, but the corrupted man's. Crude, heavy, sharpened stone bound to wood.
It split Ayger's skull from crown to jaw.
There was no dramatic pause. No last words.
Ayger dropped.
The system interface above his body flickered once, then went dark.
Fen screamed and lunged forward—
—and died seconds later beneath a swarm of bodies.
Reset.
Attempt Two.
Fen woke gasping, already moving.
They didn't talk about Ayger's death. They didn't need to. Memory was enough.
This time, Fen took the lead.
They armed themselves better—iron tools, scavenged spears, anything with reach. Fen's hands shook as he tested the weight of a farming spear.
They reached the edge of the village as the corruption spread.
This time, Fen engaged first.
He killed one.
Then another.
The system watched.
The third cannibal tackled him.
They fell together, rolling in the dirt. Fen tried to bring the spear up, but the thing was stronger than it looked. Its jaw unhinged wider than human anatomy allowed.
It bit into Fen's shoulder.
Pain exploded.
Fen screamed as teeth tore through muscle, then bone. The cannibal didn't stop. It fed. Methodically. Fingers clawed into Fen's chest, ripping, pulling, devouring.
Fen watched himself being eaten.
Watched his own ribcage open.
The creature's hands were inside him now, pulling out organs with wet, deliberate motions. Fen felt each one leave—liver, stomach, intestines unspooling like rope. The pain was beyond comprehension. Beyond language.
He tried to scream but his lungs were gone.
The system interface above the cannibal stabilized as it consumed him.
CONSUMPTION COMPLETE
EVOLUTION TRIGGERED
Then the world went dark.
Reset.
Attempt Three.
They stood on the hill again.
Neither moved.
"Nothing is the same," Fen said hoarsely.
Ayger nodded. "Only us."
They waited longer this time. Too long.
The interface appeared.
Then the sky ruptured.
They looked up just in time to see debris—massive stone fragments, pieces of something architectural and alien—tear free from a forming rift.
There was no time to run.
No time to react.
The ground vanished beneath them as several tons of stone and metal slammed down.
Fen felt his body compress.
Bones shattered like glass. His spine folded in on itself. His skull caved inward with a sound like wet paper tearing. For one impossible moment, he was aware of being flat—a two-dimensional smear of meat and bone pressed into the earth.
The world went white.
Reset.
---
He'd been staring at the knife for the past three minutes, turning it slowly in his hand. It wasn't a special knife. Just a normal one—well-balanced, sharp, used daily for mundane tasks like chopping vegetables and cutting bread.
They knelt in the grass afterward, shaking.
Three deaths.
Three different failures.
"Intervention changes outcomes," Ayger said slowly. "But unpredictably."
Fen wiped blood—imaginary, remembered—from his hands. "And waiting is just as lethal."
Ayger looked down at his hands. "The system isn't resetting the world. It's reloading a state."
Fen nodded. "With variance."
They sat in silence until the hum began again.
This time, they did not hesitate.
"Open system," Fen said.
Ayger echoed it.
The interfaces bloomed.
They selected their classes without ceremony.
BOXER.
SPEARMAN.
The system acknowledged them.
Achievements stacked quietly.
They did not react.
They moved immediately—away from the village, toward the forge.
The cannibals were already forming behind them, but this time they did not engage unless forced.
When they were forced, it was clean.
Efficient.
Fen's spear found throats and hearts. Ayger's movements were brutal and economical. The system fed them data, confirmation, reinforcement.
But the world did not stabilize.
They reached the blacksmith as corruption crept closer.
This time, they knew what to do.
They opened the system.
They took professions.
They watched the blacksmith survive—this time.
Outside, screams still echoed.
Fen leaned against the forge wall, breathing hard.
"We're not fixing this," he said.
Ayger shook his head. "No."
Fen looked at the system interface hovering patiently before him.
"But we can survive it," Ayger continued.
Fen nodded slowly.
"And eventually," Ayger said, eyes dark, "we can control it."
Outside, the invasion continued.
Inside, two anomalies remained unchanged, unbroken, and profoundly unnatural.
Only they remembered.
Only they adapted.
And the system had no idea what it had allowed to persist.
Accomplishments
Then—
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: FIRST STEPS
BONUS APPLIED
Fen blinked. "That was fast."
Ayger frowned. "Too fast."
Another window appeared.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: EARLY ADOPTER
BONUS APPLIED
Fen laughed. "Oh, come on."
Ayger stared at the interface, eyes scanning rapidly. "It's stacking."
Fen's interface updated again.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: SYNCHRONIZED SELECTION
BONUS APPLIED: TWIN RESONANCE DETECTED
They looked at each other.
"…Did it just reward us for clicking at the same time?" Fen asked.
"Yes," Ayger said slowly. "Which means—"
"Which means we should never desync during critical actions," Fen finished.
They didn't touch anything else.
Not yet.
Instead, Ayger raised a hand. "Second profession."
Fen's smile widened. "You're thinking the same thing."
The system allowed one profession slot by default.
Allowed.
That wording mattered.
" True Blacksmith," Fen said immediately.
Ayger nodded. "True soldier."
The system invasion had introduced materials that did not exist in this world yesterday. Metals with impossible tensile strength. Crystals that stored energy. Interfaces that reacted to craftsmanship intent.
If they wanted to survive long-term—if they wanted to break the system—they needed infrastructure.
They started walking.
The road to the blacksmith took them through farmland that was already changing.
Fen noticed it first.
The wheat stalks near the road bent at odd angles, their growth subtly accelerated, their coloration slightly off. Not diseased. Optimized.
"The system's rewriting agriculture," Fen murmured.
Ayger nodded. "Yield prioritization."
They passed a farmhouse where a man stood staring at his interface, trembling, his wife clutching his arm.
Fen looked away.
He knew where this went.
They reached the outskirts of the village just as screaming began.
Not panic screaming. Pain screaming.
Ayger stopped instantly.
Fen raised his spear—new, system-generated, light and perfectly balanced.
They moved cautiously toward the sound.
Behind a barn, they found them.
Humans.
Or what had been human.
Their skin was grayish, stretched too tight over sharp bone. Their eyes glowed faintly with system light. Their interfaces—visible even at a distance—flickered violently.
STATUS: CORRUPTED
ROLE: CONSUMER
One of them was chewing on something.
Fen realized, with a sick twist of his stomach, that it was a man's arm.
The cannibal looked up.
Its mouth opened too wide.
Ayger swore under his breath.
"The system did this," Fen whispered.
Ayger's expression hardened. "It optimized desperation."
The cannibal charged.
Fen moved automatically.
The spear slid forward, guided by instinct and probability. It pierced cleanly through the creature's chest. The body convulsed, then collapsed.
The interface over it shattered.
Fen felt it then—a pulse.
Not pleasure. Not satisfaction.
Confirmation.
A new window appeared.
ENEMY DEFEATED: CORRUPTED HUMAN
DATA LOG UPDATED
Ayger dispatched the second cannibal with brutal efficiency, his Fighter class translating intent into precise, devastating motion.
They stood there afterward, breathing hard.
Fen's hands shook.
"That," he said, "is worse than the monsters."
Ayger nodded. "Because it's scalable."
They continued on.
The blacksmith was still alive.
Barely.
He was barricaded inside his forge, interface flickering wildly as the system attempted to assign him a profession he already had.
PROFESSION AVAILABLE: BLACKSMITH
Fen felt something click.
This was the moment.
They stepped inside.
The blacksmith looked up, eyes wild. "Don't let it—don't let it change me."
Ayger spoke calmly. "It already has. But we can help."
Fen opened his interface.
"Open system," he said.
A new option had appeared.
PROFESSION ACQUISITION
Fen selected it.
So did Ayger.
The system hesitated.
Then—
ERROR: PROFESSION SLOT FULL
Ayger smiled faintly.
"Expected," he said.
He selected something else.
PROFESSION: TACTICIAN
The system accepted it.
Fen followed suit.
The world lurched.
Information poured in—battlefield awareness, pattern recognition, threat prioritization. Maps overlaid his vision. Probability trees branched through his thoughts. He could see the village now, not as geography but as tactical space.
Fen staggered.
Ayger steadied him.
The system chimed.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: MULTIDISCIPLINARY
BONUS APPLIED
The blacksmith screamed.
The system finalized his transformation, stabilizing him rather than corrupting him.
Fen realized, distantly, that by acting first, they had changed his fate.
They stood in the forge, surrounded by heat and metal and impossible futures.
Ayger exhaled slowly.
"So," he said. "We can steal professions."
Fen laughed weakly. "Borrow."
Ayger shook his head. "No. Steal."
Outside, the world was burning, evolving, screaming.
The government had already activated their failsafe—martial law, emergency powers, consolidation of authority. Within hours, they would become the ruling class. The system had handed them the tools to enforce order through violence and optimization.
It felt unfair.
But the twins would correct that.
They had infinite attempts.
They had memory.
And now, they had a plan.
---
He watched the light glint along the blade and tried to calculate probabilities.
Fen should have been back by now.
The Contest's separation had been immediate, but not total. Ayger had expected something—a signal, a system update, a win-state notification. Some indication that his brother had survived the first trial.
Instead, he'd received this:
CONTESTANT STATUS: TERMINATED
The words appeared in his peripheral vision, cold and clinical. No fanfare. No explanation. No option to dismiss them.
Just: Terminated.
Ayger stared at the notification for a long time.
His hands didn't shake. His breathing didn't quicken. His face remained perfectly neutral.
Inside, something cracked.
Terminated.
Not "defeated." Not "eliminated." Terminated.
Fen was dead.
The thought arrived with perfect clarity, settling into Ayger's mind like a stone dropping into still water. Fen had gone into his trial—probably charged ahead without thinking, probably ignored every warning Ayger had given him—and died.
Ayger closed his eyes.
He didn't panic. Panic was inefficient. Instead, he ran through possibilities with the same methodical precision he applied to everything else.
Death was the most likely outcome. The system had proven itself capable of physical manifestation. The trials were real. Therefore, the danger was real.
Which meant Fen was gone.
Ayger opened his eyes again.
The kitchen was still the same. Same wooden table. Same cracked window. Same faint hum in the air that hadn't been there yesterday.
Ah.
There it was.
Ayger focused on the hum, letting it resolve into pressure behind his eyes. A prompt waiting to be acknowledged.
He let it surface.
SYSTEM STATUS: ACTIVE
INVASION PHASE: INITIALIZATION
Ayger's heart skipped.
"Invasion," he repeated softly.
That was earlier than expected. Earlier than possible. The Contest was supposed to be separate from the invasion—a preliminary event, a selection process.
Unless it wasn't.
Unless the Contest was the invasion.
Or—
Ayger's mind raced.
Or time had rewound.
The thought should have been absurd. Impossible. But Ayger had learned long ago that "impossible" was just another word for "not yet understood."
If time had rewound, that meant Fen's death had been undone. Reset to a checkpoint. Which meant—
Which meant Fen might still be alive.
Ayger looked back down at the knife.
If this was a loop, he needed to confirm it. Needed to test the hypothesis before he allowed himself to hope.
And there was only one way to test it.
"Empirical evidence," Ayger said aloud. His voice was steady. That was good.
He didn't hesitate.
That was the important part. Hesitation introduced variables. Doubt. Fear.
Ayger brought the knife up, aimed carefully at his own throat, and—
Slipped.
The blade bounced off the edge of the table with a dull clang, spun through the air, and clattered to the floor.
Ayger stared at it.
"…Wow," he said. "That was undignified."
He bent down, picked up the knife, and checked the edge. Still sharp. Good.
He adjusted his grip, braced himself against the counter for stability, and tried again.
This time, he didn't slip.
The pain was sharp but brief—a bright line of sensation that his mind cataloged and filed away even as his body began to fail. Ayger's last coherent thought was that this was a terrible way to go and that Fen would never let him live it down.
Then darkness folded in.
SAVE FILE UPDATED
ANCHOR: SYSTEM INVASION—INITIAL DEPLOYMENT
CAUSE OF DEATH: SELF-INFLICTED (INELEGANT)
NOTES: STYLE POINTS DEDUCTED
The words floated in the void, mocking him.
Ayger would have laughed if he'd had a body.
Ayger woke up on a hillside.
He sat up immediately, scanning his surroundings with practiced efficiency. Same hill. Same sky. Same village in the distance, smoke rising from chimneys.
He was alive.
More importantly: he was back.
Ayger laughed.
It was a short, incredulous sound that turned into something almost giddy. He pressed a hand to his throat—whole, unmarked, as if the knife had never touched it—and laughed harder.
"It works," he said.
A blue window appeared.
SAVE FILE: 1 (SHARED)
SYNC STATUS: CONFIRMED
Ayger's laughter cut off.
Shared.
That meant—
He was on his feet and moving before he'd fully processed the thought. If the save file was shared, Fen had reset too. Which meant his brother was alive. Somewhere on this hill, probably panicking, probably—
Ayger crested the rise and saw him.
Fen was pacing in tight circles, hands gesturing wildly as he muttered to himself. Alive. Whole. Here.
"You died," Fen blurted the moment he saw him. "I died too. There's a save system. It called my death 'insufficient preparation' and—"
Ayger hugged him.
It was brief, awkward, and immediately released, but it happened. His arms wrapped around his brother's shoulders and held on for three seconds that felt like the only real thing in the world.
Fen went rigid with surprise, then slowly relaxed.
"…You okay?" Fen asked quietly.
Ayger stepped back and cleared his throat. "Knife accident."
Fen stared.
Ayger sighed. "On purpose."
Fen burst out laughing.
It was the same hysterical sound from before, but this time Ayger joined him. They stood on the hillside, laughing like madmen, while the system watched and the world continued on, oblivious.
When the laughter finally died down, they sat in the grass and compared notes.
"So," Fen said, "I got carved in half by a construct. You?"
"Stabbed myself in the throat. Missed the first time."
"You missed?"
"The table was uneven."
Fen snorted. "That's the most you thing I've ever heard."
"At least I didn't charge a giant murder-knight."
"It was a tactical advance."
"It was suicide."
"It was initiative."
They fell silent for a moment, the humor draining away as the reality settled in.
"We died," Fen said quietly.
"Yes."
"And we came back."
"Yes."
"The system reset us. Like a video game checkpoint."
Ayger nodded slowly. "A shared save file. Every death rewinds us both to the moment the invasion begins."
Fen looked at him. "That means—"
"Infinite attempts," Ayger finished. "We can't lose permanently."
The words hung in the air between them.
Fen's expression shifted—something dark and hungry flickering behind his eyes. "We can experiment. Test things. Die as many times as we need to."
"Learn the system inside and out," Ayger agreed. His mind was already racing, cataloging possibilities. "Every mechanic. Every exploit. Every weakness."
"We could become unstoppable."
"We will become unstoppable."
They looked at each other, and something passed between them. An understanding. A shared recognition of what they'd just been given.
Not a second chance.
A weapon.
"So," Fen said slowly. "We know the future. We know the system. And we can't lose permanently."
Ayger leaned back and looked at the sky. It was still blue. Still innocent. The system invasion hadn't started yet—wouldn't start for hours. They had time.
"Let's break it," Fen said.
Ayger smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. It was the smile of someone who'd just realized the game was rigged in their favor.
"Carefully," he said. "Methodically. We document everything. Every death. Every reset. Every piece of information we can extract."
"And then?"
"And then we become the thing the system should have been afraid of."
They sat in silence for a moment longer, two brothers, planning how to exploit their own mortality.
Somewhere deep in the architecture of reality, something vast and patient continued to smile.
It had given them infinite lives.
It was curious to see what they'd do with them.