The rain poured down like a relentless curtain, shrouding the city in a gray mist. There a man with raven black hair, wearing a white tuxedo stood at the edge of the rooftop, his eyes fixed on the digital display hovering above the skyscrapers.
He wore a black undershirt beneath and a mechanical watch on his left wrist made of bronze metal and adored with intricate patterns. He glanced at his watch and then at the display. The numbers ticked away on both, counting down to midnight.
"Uhh… It's almost time."
He paused, then continued:
"What will happen this time? I've always wondered, always wondered about the world we live in, about the simulation and the very nature of reality."
Is it real? Is it just a simulation? The truth is, I don't know. But what I do know is that we're living in a world called the Final Archive, a simulated reality controlled by the Archivists.
The Archivists. Mysterious beings who maintained and experimented with countless versions of reality. They were the ones who decided the fate of humanity, who pushed the buttons that shaped the course of history.
He sighed and gazed at the distance, his face carried a calm but thoughtful expression.
"Hahhh…"
As a system debugger, I had grown accustomed to the rhythmic pulse of the city's code. I knew every alleyway, every hidden corner, and every glitch that plagued the simulated reality. But today was different. Today was the day of the Record Break.
'…Record Break…'
The wind howled, whipping his hair into a frenzy as he gazed out at the city.
He sighed heavily and straightened his back, feeling a shiver run down his spine, a mix of excitement and trepidation. This was it. This was the moment.
The countdown reached zero, and the world around him began to distort. The buildings trembled, the streets shook, and the sky turned a deep shade of crimson.
The Record Break had begun.
He watched in awe as the world around him unraveled. He had seen it before, but it never got old. The glitches, the distortions, the reset. It was like a never-ending cycle…
…But something felt off. A sense of unease crept up his spine, like a whisper in his ear.
He stumbled backward, his hand grasping for the rooftop's edge. And then, everything went black.
***
When he opened his eyes, he was lying on the rooftop, his head throbbing with pain. The city was quiet, the rain having stopped. The digital display was gone, replaced by a message:
[Record Break Complete. Simulation Reset.]
"Huh…?"
His already fair face went a little pale.
'That was it?'
He stood up, brushing off the debris. His eyes scanned the rooftop, taking in the familiar sights. But something was off. The buildings were the same, the neon signs still hummed but the color of the sky had shifted a fraction of a degree toward ultraviolet.
Something is wrong! My memories felt... different. I remembered the Record Break, but there was something more. Something that didn't belong.
The world felt... different.
And then, he saw it. A fragment of code, hovering in the air like a ghostly whisper. It was a snippet of the original script, a piece of the world's underlying code.
His heart skipped a beat. Somehow he already knew what this meant. He knew what he had become.
'The Last Debugger'
He stared at the fragment of code, his mind racing.
'What did it mean? How did I, a simple system debugger, end up with a piece of the original script?'
The Archivists were known for their secrecy, their control over the simulated reality. They wouldn't just leave a piece of code lying around for anyone to find.
Unless...
Unless this was a message. A message meant for me.
He reached out, his hand hesitating as he touched the code. It felt... alive. The symbols pulsed with a soft, blue light, and he could feel the weight of the world's secrets pressing down on him.
Suddenly, the code began to shift, rearranging itself into a new pattern.
"Huh!"
Of course, he knew what it was. A sudden thought entered his mind.
'It's a coordinate, a location within the city.'
He grinned letting out a small laugh.
The rooftop, the Record Break, the code. It all makes sense now. It was all connected.
The Record Break messed with his memories, his senses and perception of the world but he expected something to go wrong, that was the reason he came to the rooftop in the first place.
'Good thing I volunteered to inspect the event instead of Lyra.'
Ever since the record break finished he got a vague sense of deja vu, first with the change in color of sky, second after seeing the fragment of the code and finally after interacting with it.
Now, his mind and body reacted differently as if one knows things, the other cannot even comprehend.
He sighed again, pressing his hand against the jaw.
I knew what I had to do. I had to go to the location, see what secrets it held and uncover the mystery of this Abnormal Break.
And suddenly, he saw, heard?, as letters started appearing like pop ups in his head.
It carried no tone, no rhythm, just some sentences without any intention or will.
"...Cael...? Are you conscious?"
***
There on the rooftop, space started distorting like wet cloth, even time lost its meaning for a fraction of a second.
Then, it all ceased to exist as it never transitioned into the new reality restored by Record Break.
The simulated realities overlapped causing a glitch in the current transition. There a figure emerged from behind a toppled tower of memory created by the glitched simulations.
A tall silhouette cloaked in layered black. Hood drawn low. Only their eyes showed, glowing faintly with an unmistakable sheen.
"Uhh-?"
Cael's heart stopped beating for a moment, his gaze fixated on the dark figure of the mysterious entity.
'Who is this person?... Was that lingering code really a mistake, they came to fix it?... Wait! How do they know my name?'
The questions surfaced in his mind. The chilling cold enveloped his body as he reasoned more theories subconsciously, making the sweat rolling down his neck freeze.
Cael hesitated for a moment and raised his trembling fingers in the direction of the figure.
Then, his mind went blank. The figure moved, their eyes somehow shining with liquid darkness devoid of any light. Their face, rigid with marks and scratches like that of a weathered statue.
Cael only got a slight glimpse of it, yet that single frame of scene amazed him more than it should.
He gulped and focused his blurry vision.
The figure now was standing close to him, no more than 30 cm of distance between him and the black figure.
A slight smile appeared on the figure's face making their lips curled up but Cael didn't see it.
Then, his heart shattered.
Without any notice, any exchange of words, gestures or something, the mysterious figure in black had their hand ripped inside Cael's chest gripping the remains of his shattered heart as the blood dropped to the floor from the terrifying wound.
Their lips resting on his, lapping on each other. The floor was behaving strangely just like the space which glitched before.
The blood collecting in Cael's mouth simply flowed back escaping from the harrowing wound.
His mind entered the free state of time.
***
It was like kissing an echo of my own thought with no warmth nor cold felt from it.
My consciousness started to fade away but something inside my shattered heart, something deep in my mind, my subconsciousness, something inside me burned with an unknown feeling, totally stranger, completely alien to the feelings described in the record manual or anything in general which I felt before.
Just before everything collapsed, a single familiar ringing buzzed in my ears.
A soft chime. Then it hit again…
…my [*** ] opened, half-broken, filling my inner vision with flickering fragments. Memories unknown to this world raided my consciousness.
Broken timelines spun around me like shattered glass. In one, I was lying dead on the ground. In another, I'd slit my own throat. And in one; I wasn't even Cael.
My whole body was burning, burning with this strange, weird feeling.
As he started to come back to his senses, the figure pushed him away. He dropped to his knees. His hands moved to grip his burning chest but there was nothing. No blood, no harrowing wound, even his heart was beating.
'How's this possible? What happened?'
Shaken beyond recognition, he didn't even notice that the mysterious figure stepped into the blurry glitches in space. Their own body glitching as a result.
He called out to them somehow gaining the courage and response from himself which he might have never known he possessed.
"Wait!...
The figure moved as the glitches removed the hood from their face. Their hair was silken black and looking at that face one couldn't even tell their gender. He continued:
…what was that? Who are you? What happened?"
He waited for the response but none came. They both stared at each other but the ominous darkness in the eyes of the mysterious person before him made him shiver.
However he continued pressing the questions, his tone shifting to more intense, high pitched velocity with a hint of anger and out right with frustration.
"Answer me! What are you?..."
Silence settled again this one short lifted.
The hood appeared from green-white flashes covering the face of its wearer again as it did a metallic, low pitched voice come from that direction.
"What am I? How interesting. However, do you even know…
There was a slight pause and the glitches turned into windy noise, but the words were still clear as water.
…what are you?"
Cael was taken aback.
'Wh-What?!'
What did they mean?
But before he responded the figure continued:
"If you want to know, I will tell you what you can digest without corrupting you to the core…
Their voices became colder and sinister, breaking into an aria of a children's echo.
…However, there will be no coming back after that point, Cael Ardyn."
The glitches spread like the plaque around them, enveloping the world in corruption. Silence settled again, this time much longer. Both sides were silent of any words or thoughts looking at each other without moving an inch, staying in place like a pre-coded script of a simulation.
There were worse ways to wake up than inside a collapsed reality, but Cael Ardyn somehow managed to even put that to shame.