3:08 AM | +5 Minutes Since Reset
The air tasted like metal.
My limbs felt like jelly, but my mind was sharper than it had ever been. Maybe it was adrenaline, maybe it was the System, or maybe fear itself had become a teacher.
"Ten minutes until something worse comes..."
I staggered away from the mutant's corpse, barely able to stay upright. My crowbar was cracked. Blood caked my right palm. I could still hear that echo of the System's warning ringing in my head.
[ALERT: ENTITY-CLASS THREAT SPAWNING IN 10 MINUTES]
[LOCATION: Sector 3C — 400 meters from your position]
I opened the map interface. It wasn't much. Just a crude blueprint of the surrounding five blocks, pixelated and flickering — like a beta version still being debugged.
But the red circle pulsing at the map's edge made one thing clear:Whatever was coming... it wasn't human.And it would spawn right where I used to live.
My apartment.
I had nothing there — except maybe some bandages and the one thing I'd left behind in a drawer. A photo. A key. A name tag.
I hesitated.
But then the interface updated again.
[Nearby Players Detected: 3] [Player Status: Unknown | Communication Locked] [Co-op Bonuses Active in Proximity Radius]
Other survivors.Close.Possibly friendly. Possibly not.
And in the middle of all this, something else caught my eye:
[New Evolution Node Available]
Select Evolution Branch: — Tactical Genius (Intelligence-Path) — Scrap Engineer (Crafting-Path) — Void Whisperer (???)
Void Whisperer?
The option glitched when I hovered over it. Letters rearranged themselves. A whisper ran through my mind like fingernails over ice.
Something told me not to pick it.
So I didn't.
Not yet.
[Selected: Tactical Genius][Evolution Node Installed: Battle Map I][You can now mentally visualize active terrain within 25 meters]
A flood of spatial data filled my vision like a sixth sense snapping online. Corners, rooftops, elevation... cover spots. I could now see traps, paths, and kill zones.
It wasn't power.But it was control.
And control was how I survived.
3:12 AM | +9 Minutes Since Reset
I found the others near a looted convenience store.
One was a girl — maybe sixteen — holding a lead pipe with trembling hands and blood on her chin.
Another was a tall man in a tattered suit, sleeves torn, looking like he hadn't blinked in hours.
The third... I never saw his face.He stayed crouched behind the freezer unit, muttering to himself.
"Stay calm," I called out. "I'm not hostile."
The girl flinched. The man raised a broken plank. I held up both hands.
"Look," I said. "We've all got the same interface, right?"
They nodded slowly.
"Then we all saw the alert. Something's about to spawn near here. We don't have time to fight each other."
That's when the girl whispered, "What if the spawn isn't a monster?"
I frowned. "What?"
She pointed back toward the road.
"What if it's one of us?"
My blood turned cold.
And then — right on cue — the sky split open again.
A jagged rift tore through the clouds, violet lightning arcing downward like divine punishment.
It struck the earth exactly 400 meters away.
Then the System screamed:
[WARNING: ENTITY-CLASS BEING HAS SPAWNED]
[Designation: Devourer Zero — "The First Broken Crown"]
[Power Class: Unknown] [Level: ???]
[Status: Hostile] [All nearby players are advised to evacuate.]
A pulse of black wind washed through the air.
Every window for three blocks shattered simultaneously.
Devourer Zero.
First... what? Crown?
The suited man swore. The girl whimpered. The freezer guy? Gone.
I turned to run.
But then a line of text popped up across everyone's screens.
[System Anomaly Detected…] [One Player within Radius possesses a Unique Mutation.] [Devourer Zero has detected it.] [It is now hunting you.]
Wait... what?
Everyone stared at each other.
Someone here triggered it...
That's when the girl looked at me — and stepped back.
"You," she whispered.
I opened my mouth, but I was cut off.
BOOM.
The street outside exploded, sending asphalt and metal into the air like shrapnel. A hulking figure stepped into the clearing.
Seven feet tall. Cloaked in black smog. A crown of flesh and wires fused to its skull.
No eyes. No mouth. Just a voice like the void:
"GIVE ME THE WHISPERER."
The girl screamed.
The suit guy ran.
And I?
I looked at the interface — and saw something appear in red:
[Hidden Trait Revealed: "System-Linked Anomaly"]
[You were never supposed to survive the Reset.]
[You are the glitch the System can't explain.]
What…?
I'm the reason it's here?
The Entity turned its head toward me.
And then, it spoke directly into my soul:
"YOU… ARE THE ERROR I CAME TO ERASE."