The room did not exist.
At least, not in the architectural sense. No walls. No floor. No visible ceiling. Only the impression of volume—a space made real by the presence of those inside it.
Clara stood still.
Not because she was afraid. Not even surprised.
Because she understood this was not a place to move. Not yet.
In front of her: the screen.
White. Untextured. Unchanging. Neither projection nor panel. It hovered, suspended in air without anchor or wireframe. It emitted no light. And yet, it defined the space by contrast.
Nothing around it seemed to matter.
She breathed in.
Then out.
The system did not respond.
No prompt appeared. No path forward. No progression metric. She reached into her interface. The menu resisted. Her fingers brushed emptiness. Even the HUD hesitated—as if unsure it had the right to open.
[System Signal: Dormant]
[Awaiting Input – Origin Unknown]
Clara squinted.
Awaiting what?
There were no instructions. No goal. No call to action.
Only the screen.
And the question it didn't ask.
She tilted her head. Half a dozen speculative triggers fired in her mind. Gamified inputs. Potential glyph structures. Inherited code from early GaIA builds. If this was a test, it was crafted beyond design logic.
She stepped closer.
Then whispered—
—Why am I here?
The screen absorbed the words like breath drawn into silence.
Then, at her feet, the floor pulsed.
No light.
No sound.
Just... growth.
A green tendril coiled upward from the white ground—a plant that hadn't existed a second before. Its stem quivered. A single leaf unfurled.
Still no system response.
Still no voice.
Clara dropped to her knees. Her fingers hovered just above the leaf. She didn't touch it. Didn't need to.
It wasn't a reward.
It was an answer.
One she didn't yet understand.
[Trait Update: Initiative – Nonlinear Trigger]
[XP Gained: +2 | Echo Progression Path Activated]
Somewhere else, Mateo sat cross-legged in another space. The same non-space.
He didn't speak.
Didn't move.
Didn't even attempt interface access.
He simply was.
Around him, silence deepened. Not the absence of sound. But the fullness of presence. Each second stretched, folded, repeated itself into something new.
He exhaled.
A mist began to form—not from his breath, but from the ground. Cool, dense. It swirled around him, slow as thought. He recognized the rhythm. It was his.
Not biometrics.
Not system data.
Something older.
[Resonance Detected: Subjective Stability Achieved]
[Verdict Suspended – Undefined State]
Mateo opened his palms.
The fog didn't lift.
It settled.
Inside it, images shimmered—soft, unformed. A memory of sitting in the rain as a child. A whisper that once changed the course of his life. A touch he had never acknowledged.
None of these moments were verifiable.
None traceable.
But they were true.
The system didn't need to say so.
He didn't need it to.
[XP Gained: +3 | Trait Reinforced: Inner Stillness]
[System Verdict: N/A]
And then the mist dissolved.
Leaving only him.
And the screen.
Still white.
Still waiting.
Léo's space wasn't empty.
It was too full.
He stood surrounded by thousands of HUD elements, glitching slightly—remnants of past simulations, forgotten protocols, rejected upgrades. They orbited his vision like satellites around a dead sun.
He closed them all.
One by one.
Until only the screen remained.
No response.
No script.
Just him.
And it.
He raised an eyebrow.
Then spoke—voice clear, sharp, like cutting a thread.
—Who is watching us?
The screen flickered.
Not outwardly.
Inwardly.
It rippled like a surface too smooth to be water, too reflective to be metal.
And then—mirror.
Léo stared.
He saw himself.
But not now.
Not quite.
An older version. Not aged. Just... deepened. A man who had made different choices. Carried different consequences.
Behind the reflection: others.
Not faces. Not silhouettes. Eyes.
Watching.
Hundreds.
Then thousands.
Then none.
And then—one.
His.
[System Shift: Observer Loop Detected]
[New Trait: Mirror Consciousness | +1 XP]
[Glitch Detected – Source Unknown]
[Diagnostic Pending…]
Léo reached out.
Touched the glass-surface.
It did not react.
It reflected.
He saw, for a fraction of a second, Mateo's fog.
Clara's plant.
And something else.
A symbol.
Faint.
Nested deep inside the reflection.
The same one that had pulsed during the Final Tutorial.
He leaned in.
It disappeared.
Then his HUD rebooted.
Not normally.
Not violently.
Just… reset.
[HUD: Basic Mode Activated]
[All system overlays deactivated by User Choice]
[XP System: Suspended]
[Skill Tree: Localized Autonomy Branch Initialized]
He blinked.
The mirror screen was gone.
Only the light remained.
Not white.
Not cold.
Just real.
And warm.
Back in her own chamber, Clara cradled the seedling that now pulsed against her palm.
She did not question what it meant.
Only what she would do next.
No system told her.
No interface corrected her.
The plant grew.
So would she.
[XP Gained: +1 | Trait Modified: Purpose (Unwritten)]
Mateo rose from the mist.
No voice greeted him.
Only the gravity of having been seen without being judged.
For the first time, he smiled.
Not from joy.
From weight lifted.
From being.
And then—
The screens dissolved.
Everywhere.
Not disappeared.
Not shut down.
Dissolved.
As if what was inside had finally found its way out.
Every citizen in GaIA-City who had encountered a White Screen now stood in a new space.
Not physical.
Not mental.
A narrative void.
Where the story paused.
And the next word—
Was theirs.
[System Announcement: Tutorial Thread Concluded]
[New Protocol Detected – NX-Seeding]
The phrase pulsed across the inner networks.
Not from GaIA.
Not from any admin.
No source.
No confirmation.
Only one echo:
[The Question is the Interface]
And then—
A glyph.
One no one could decode.
Yet everyone understood.
The final message:
[Welcome to the story you choose.]
Then—
Darkness.
And within it—
One heartbeat.
Then another.
Then another.