"You are not supposed to exist."
Those were the first words he heard not from a voice, but from something colder, hollow, broken. Like steel scraping against a memory. The boy opened his eyes. Black sky. No stars. No ground. Only... falling. Air rushed past him, though there was no wind. Just the illusion of movement. His body twisted in a void that shimmered like cracked glass. Lights blinked in and out of existence blue, red, violet not natural lights, but symbols, glitches.
[System Alert: Fatal Error Host Identity Undefined]
[Attempting Soul Integration...]
[Integration Failed. Proceeding with Emergency Bind.]
Pain hit him like thunder under his skin. He screamed but the void didn't echo. It swallowed. He gasped, eyes wide now, trying to make sense of what was happening. He remembered... nothing. No name. No place. Only a flicker a feeling that he had been somewhere else. A hand holding his. A city skyline. Laughter. Then... silence. And now, this.
[Initializing Class Assignment...]
[Class Not Found. Forcing Inheritance Path: NULL ASCENDANT]
[Warning: User is not authorized.]
His body jerked mid-air. For a moment, gravity felt real again then he hit something. Hard. Stone shattered beneath him. A crater spread like spider cracks under his back. Dust filled the air. His body convulsed not from the fall, but from the code crawling under his skin. Glowing blue symbols briefly shimmered on his arms, then faded into faint scars, like they were being etched into his soul. He coughed once. Blood. Then came the voice clearer now. Still mechanical, but almost... amused.
"Heh... look at you. Already bleeding, and we haven't even loaded your tutorial yet."
His eyes darted around. Nothing. Just shadows and fragments. Broken pieces of towers floating in the sky. Inverted waterfalls running upward. Glowing runes carved into the air. The boy pushed himself up, staggering to his knees. He should have been terrified. But he wasn't. Instead, he whispered, hoarse and cracked:"Where... am I?"
[Realm: Nullroot]
[Status: System Core Fractured Dimension]
[Survival Rate: < 4%]
[System Bound: Forced Link Active]
The voice returned, softer this time. Almost human.
"Welcome to the place where broken stories end, little glitch. Let's see if you can write a new one... before something finishes you off."
The silence was strange here. It wasn't peaceful. It was... broken like the world itself had forgotten how to breathe. The boy or whatever was left of him staggered to his feet. His limbs shook, not from weakness, but from unfamiliarity. As if his body belonged to someone else yesterday.
"Yesterday?"
Did he even have a yesterday? He blinked slowly, taking in his surroundings. Fragments of a ruined temple floated mid-air. Staircases that led nowhere. Obsidian shards suspended above, pointing down like swords waiting for permission to fall. Beneath his feet, the ground pulsed faintly not with life, but like a dying heartbeat.
[Tutorial Dungeon Located: "The Hollow Spine"]
[Recommended Entry: Level 3+]
[Current Level: 0]
[...You are a joke.]
The voice again. Glitched. Arrogant. Like it had seen thousands die before him. He clenched his fists, then immediately regretted it. Pain shot through his palms his skin had thin, shimmering cracks across it, glowing faint blue.
"What the hell am I?" he muttered.
[Query Invalid. Identity Fragmented.]
[Designation: NULL ASCENDANT]
[Core Trait: Inversion]
[Skill Unlocked: Passive "Unwritten Law"]
Description: "That which does not belong will break rules simply by existing."
Suddenly, the world around him shuddered. Stone screeched. A deep rumble echoed from beneath. And then… it opened. Right under him, the ground split in a spiral not like an earthquake, but like a mechanism that had just been activated. A massive staircase of jagged obsidian descended into darkness. It was not natural. It was not welcoming. It was calling him. He took one step forward the air changed. He could feel pressure build, not around his body, but inside his thoughts. Like someone whispering doubts into the folds of his brain.
"You're too weak."
"You won't make it past the first floor."
"You'll die before anyone even knows you were born."
He gritted his teeth. The fear was there. Sharp and bitter. But something else sat behind his eyes something colder. He didn't know who he was. He didn't know what had brought him here. But deep down, something whispered back:
"I've died before. This time… I learn how to live."
He stepped onto the staircase. The moment his foot touched the first step, a system alert flashed in the air before him:
[Tutorial Dungeon Entry Confirmed.]
[Difficulty Override Activated.]
[Warning: Inversion Trait Detected Dungeon Will Now Adapt.]
The temperature dropped. The darkness below shifted. And in the distance echoing from the dungeon's black belly came the first sound of life in this forgotten realm. A scream. Not of a monster. Not of a human. But of something ancient, angry, and awake.
The descent was slow… too slow. Every step into the dungeon felt heavier than the last. The walls pulsed faintly with strange light veins of glowing red and flickers of static-blue, like blood and broken data trying to merge. The air tasted like iron and burnt wires. And yet… something pulled him forward. A tug beneath the skin. Like gravity, but deeper. He counted the steps. Twenty-seven. Forty-three. Seventy. At seventy-nine, he saw her. She was lying in the center of a cracked stone chamber, motionless, her white hair spread around her like a snowfield dirtied by ash. A jagged obsidian sword pierced through her chest, anchoring her body to the ground.
And yet…She was breathing. Barely. He froze. Not because of her beauty though there was something hauntingly fragile about her. But because the moment his foot crossed the chamber's edge… the dungeon stopped humming. Everything went silent.
[Unregistered Entity Detected.]
[Soul Signature Conflict: Overlap Present.]
[Accessing Memory Layer...]
[...Error. File Corrupted.]
He stepped closer. The girl's face was pale. Not the absence-of-light kind of pale, but like all color had been drawn out of her by the blade. The sword… it was ancient. More like a spike of shattered darkness than steel. Strange inscriptions pulsed across its hilt, feeding something into her or draining something out. He knelt beside her, unsure if he was breathing. A faint sound escaped her lips not a word, just a gasp. Like her soul was trying to reach out, even if her body had long given up. His hand hovered over the sword. And then, the system voice whispered again but not cold this time.
It was… almost afraid.
[WARNING: This Sword Is Bound to a Divine Lock.]
[Touching it may trigger an irreversible bond or death.]
[Do you wish to proceed?]
[Y/N]
He hesitated. She was a stranger. He didn't know her name. He didn't know what kind of trap this was. Maybe the sword wasn't killing her maybe it was containing something worse. But his hand moved anyway. He didn't think. He felt. A flicker of loneliness. Pain. A familiar ache he couldn't place. Maybe because, like her, he was already broken too. He placed both hands on the hilt. The moment he touched it, the world shattered.
Not physically but like time folded in on itself. His head burned, his eyes flooded with light, and then
A girl's scream.
Fire.
Blood.
Betrayal.
A burning city.
And a pair of crimson eyes, watching the world end… with a smile.
His body convulsed. The sword pulsed. And then with a surge of violet light it dislodged. The girl coughed violently. Her body arched. The color rushed back into her cheeks like life slamming through a broken dam. Her eyes snapped open Silver. Bright. Wild. Terrified. And she spoke one word:
"Why... did you save me?"
Before he could answer, a wall behind them exploded open. Something crawled out of the shadows tall, insectoid, skin twitching with curses, dozens of eyes stitched shut across its torso.
[Dungeon Threat Level: Recalibrated — A-Rank]
[Boss Spawned: Memory Warden of the Hollow Spine]
[Survival Rate: < 1%]
[Recommendation: RUN]
But Renji didn't move. He stood, sword now in his hand the same one that had been inside her.
It glowed faintly… reacting not to him, but with him. And for the first time, he felt something shift in his chest. Not fear. Not confusion. Purpose.