Ash climbed the western slope before dawn.
No patrols. No scouts. He didn't trust the stillness. Not anymore.
The wind was wrong again. It moved through the trees with perfect rhythm. Four seconds on. Two off. He counted. Recounted. It stayed exact. Like a ticking metronome disguised as nature.
He marked it down in the dirt. Wind pattern. Temperature. Humidity. Static range around the last relic glitch. His notes were basic, but efficient. Just enough to build a profile.
A simulation couldn't fake randomness for long. Not against someone trained to notice when chaos was too orderly.
At the top of the ridge, he looked out.
The sky was pale. No clouds. But the sun hadn't risen yet. And still, light clung to the treetops like it didn't need a source.
He breathed once, then again. His exhale didn't fog.
He wasn't cold.
But the world around him pretended it was.
Somewhere else, beneath a cracked monument scorched by forgotten runes, Vaskel Korr knelt in a ring of cinders.
The glyphs across his body pulsed with faint, red light. The air warped above his shoulders like heat distortion in a glass dome.
His voice cut through the silence.
"They think this world is real. That the sky turns because they look up. That soil grows crops because they sweat into it."
He smiled.
"But I remember the last time this place burned. I remember when the stars froze for three days and the ground reset beneath our feet."
He reached into the fire and pulled a black shard from the embers. It burned his palm, but he didn't flinch.
"They call me mad. Let them. I've seen the script beneath the sky. I've heard the devils in the relics whisper debug lines."
His smile widened. Skin cracked across his face like dried clay.
"They thought I would break. They were right."
He stood and turned toward the northwest. Toward Ravelroot.
"But something else broke with me. A piece of the dream that never faded."
"And now... a soldier walks where no player stands."
"He doesn't belong. But neither do I."
He raised the shard.
"Come then, Ghost. Let us glitch together."
Ash descended the ridge an hour later, more alert than when he climbed it.
The light still hadn't shifted. The wind still ticked like a clockwork.
And below, near the village edge, a child was frozen mid-step. Not scared. Just still.
Ash blinked. The world resumed.
He looked around.
No one else noticed.