Chapter 7: The One Who Watched You Spawn
> "The system never needed eyes to watch you.
It only needed your belief."
— Entry 07: Anomaly Codex
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The sky was back.
But it didn't look like the old sky.
The clouds were made of broken data packets. The stars — blinking access points.
Kaius stood on a rooftop that had no building beneath it.
Below him, the world moved in reverse — like a save file being overwritten.
The purge didn't erase him.
It uploaded him somewhere deeper.
Somewhere older.
---
A voice hummed behind his spine.
Not in his ears.
Inside the code of his presence.
> "Player ID conflict resolved. New designation: UNLOGGED."
His stats vanished.
His HUD gone.
The game no longer recognized him as a participant.
He was now an undefined variable.
And yet... something still followed him.
---
In the distance, a cathedral rendered into existence.
Its walls were made of servers.
Its windows were flashing with error messages.
Its bells chimed in binary.
Drawn to it, Kaius walked — but never took a single step.
The world shifted instead, delivering him there like a glitch that refused to stay still.
---
Inside the cathedral, something was praying.
A humanoid shape — wireframe and hollow — kneeling before a terminal made of bone-white code.
It turned its head slowly.
No face.
But across where its eyes should've been, a message blinked:
> "I WAS THE FIRST TO SEE YOU."
Then:
> "AND I WAS FORBIDDEN TO WARN YOU."
---
The cathedral shook.
And on every surface, his own face appeared — static-filled, distorted, but recognizable.
Each mouth moved in unison:
> "You were never the protagonist.
You were the payload."
---
Kaius staggered back.
Something deep in the simulation began to count down again.
Not time.
Identity integrity.
> [STABILITY: 92%]
[83%]
[76%...]
---
The humanoid stood.
Approached.
Reached for Kaius's chest.
Its hand phased through flesh —
Grabbed something not physical —
Pulled.
---
A symbol emerged, drawn in threads of light.
A sigil… he'd seen before.
In the nightmare tutorial he couldn't remember finishing.
The figure whispered:
> "Find the next Glyph before they find you."
And vanished.
---
Stability: 62%
Name: Fragmenting.
The system was rejecting him again.
And something else was waking up to hunt what didn't belong.
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> END OF CHAPTER
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🔍 Interactive Echo:
Who was the first to see Kaius?
Was it a glitch? A ghost? Or something worse: a creator?
🔐 Leave your best theories — or warnings — in the comments.
Let's uncover the truth before the next reboot.