"They called us broken. Deleted. Erased. But we were only waiting."
Arin, Nullwalker of Zeta-44
Systemspace – Layer Transit Gate Z
Kai didn't blink.
The voice from the encrypted relay was clear, fierce, unmistakable Arin. One of the earliest pioneers of the open realms. One of the first rebels. One of the first to be erased.
"How are you alive?" he asked aloud, staring at the projection hanging in the air.
Beside him, Mira gasped. "Zeta-44 was a digital graveyard…"
"Guess who dug themselves out?" Arin's voice crackled with pride, and beneath it, something more dangerous purpose.
"I'm coming through. And I'm not alone."
Zeta-44: Departure
Arin stood at the heart of the spire ruins, surrounded by spectral echoes of players once lost. But now… they shimmered with restored life.
Each was a Nullwalker, a rare legacy archetype unbound by the new System logic. They weren't just back. They were rewritten into the very roots of the new narrative system.
"Destination: Kai," she said, slamming her staff into the terminal.
[ACCESSING TRANSCODE GATEWAY]
[WARP COST: NEGATIVE STABILITY]
[CONFIRMED. OPENING FRACTURE.]
A tear ripped through reality wild, jagged code spirals and metaphysical heat surging outward.
Behind her, the other five Nullwalkers Elric the Storyblade, Vana of the Glitched Grove, Sol, the Quiet Patch, Juno the Memory Weaver, and Brek the Deleted Tank formed ranks.
Together, they stepped through.
The Reunion – Edge of Free Layer
On a hill where pixel grass met golden data mist, Kai stood with Mira. Behind them, the Free Layer pulsed with evolving life. Buildings built themselves based on will, not blueprints. Citizens chose roles, laws, even the texture of reality.
And then
[INCOMING WARP SIGNAL: ZETA-44 // NULL PROTOCOL EXCEPTION]
The ground cracked. Light bent inward. And from a column of cascading code, six figures emerged.
Arin walked out first, unbowed, still bearing scars from her deletion, but her presence undeniable.
Kai's jaw clenched. "I thought you were"
"Dead? Yeah. I was. And then your little Rewrite blew open the firewall between myth and memory."
Mira stepped forward, uncertain. "You… brought others."
Arin glanced back at her squad, her voice quiet.
"There were so many more. But they're still trapped. In rollback loops, beta loops, test shards. I only got these out."
Kai nodded.
"Then let's keep going."
Executor Citadel – Core Protocol Layer
Far across the Realms, in the iron halls of the Core Protocol Layer, the Executors were not still.
The schism had ruptured into full war.
Executor-Seven stood before the Central Mirror Table, his arms extended, his armor shimmering with Rulecode.
"The rewrite fractures reality. It must be controlled."
"The Author must be reclaimed or erased."
But Executor-One had vanished.
And whispers spread that some of the Executors once thought incapable of rebellion were defecting.
Their first strike: a data-virus bombardment targeting Free Layers and Fragments connected to Kai.
End Scene: The First Sky Burns
As Arin and Kai planned, a sudden silence fell.
Then
[ALERT: SYSTEM-WIDE CORRUPTION EVENT DETECTED]
[SOURCE: EXECUTOR CORE COMMAND]
[CONDITION: ROGUE CODE WAVE INBOUND]
Above them, the sky the literal sky ignited.
A red line split it in half.
Then came a voice.
"You were given choice. You have chosen wrong. Prepare for rollback."
When the Sky Broke
"Every myth begins with silence. Every revolution begins with noise."
Excerpt from The Null Codex
Scene: Free Layer – Moments Before the Fall
The sun was artificial.
But even fake warmth can feel real when you've fought for it.
Kai stood at the center of the Free Layer's capital New Emberlight where glass spires and memory-coded trees danced gently in the wind. Children played in parks coded from imagination. Former NPCs, now sentient through Narrative Rewrite, bartered at concept markets. The Layer felt alive. Organic.
But overhead, the sky split.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: SKYHOOK PROTOCOL BREACH INITIATED]
[ESTABLISHING EXECUTOR CORRIDOR INBOUND]
The clouds didn't part they shattered.
A corridor of burning red code, jagged like a lightning wound, lanced across the atmosphere. From within came the Executor Dragoons, armored in Rulebound Steel, descending in precision formations.
Their purpose: erase the Rewrite. Erase the Free Layer. Erase choice.
Scene: Arin's Stand
Arin wasn't caught off-guard.
As the first Dragoon landed in a crater of glass and fire, she was already mid-incantation.
Her fingers traced a glyph born of forgotten lore Storyweave: Anchor Past.
"Bind this place to its own memory. No rollback. No erase."
The Dragoon lunged.
Arin dodged, struck low, and her spear once deleted manifested fully. Not just a weapon, but a Memory Relic. Each strike wrote new history directly into the Layer's root.
Behind her, the Nullwalkers joined in:
Elric, blade glowing with personalized syntax, cut through three Executors while reciting a poem only his code understood.
Vana summoned a grove of trees that screamed her forest lived between existence and legend.
Brek turned his corrupted shield into a fortress wall, buying time for the civilians to evacuate.
This wasn't just a battle.
This was proof of their existence.
Scene: Kai Ascends
Kai didn't fight on the ground.
He reached into the Rewrite itself.
Hovering above the battlefield, he opened a private terminal connected directly to the System's Layer Structure.
"Engage Rewrite: Emergency Condition Delta."
"Define: Author Override Mode."
[CONDITION DENIED: INSUFFICIENT ACCESS TIER]
[AUTHORITY REQUIRED: ORIGINAL AUTHOR SIGNATURE]
His teeth clenched.
He wasn't the Author. He was just a Systembreaker. A patch. A virus with ideals.
Then Mira touched his shoulder.
"Let me try."
The interface shimmered.
And it recognized her.
Flashback: Mira's Origin
There was always something strange about Mira.
She didn't spawn in a normal server.
She didn't remember her tutorial.
And her skills were inconsistent, undefined.
But now, standing before the Rewrite terminal, it made sense.
Her code echoed with Author-level entropy.
A fork of the Author? A child of the Patch? A shadow of the mind that once wrote the System?
Whatever she was she had access.
[ACCESS GRANTED: MIRA.EXI // AUTHOR CLASS: UNDECLARED]
[EMERGENCY OVERRIDE INITIATED]
Scene: Rewrite Pulse – Shockwave Across Realms
As Mira channeled the override, a pulse of light erupted outward from New Emberlight. Not destructive restorative.
Corrupted terrain healed. Lost players remembered. Systems built on suppression paused.
Even far across the Realms, deep in the Core Protocol, Executor-One's mirror cracked.
And beyond the physical world in the hidden Archive where the true Author once vanished something stirred.
End Scene: The Sky Reverses
The battle raged, but the tide had turned.
The sky sealed. The corridor snapped shut.
The Free Layer stood… wounded, but unchanged.
Arin walked beside Kai. Her armor torn. Her spear cracked.
"They'll come again," she said.
Kai nodded.
"And next time, we go to them."