Darkness pulsed.
Kai's vision swam with fragmented colors and data streams that flickered in and out of existence. It wasn't pain exactly—more like being unmade and reassembled at the code level. Somewhere between sensation and thought, he could feel the System reacting to his presence here. Not violently. Just… warily. Like it had noticed something it didn't know how to handle.
He stood slowly.
The glitched cavern around him crackled. Jagged polygons shimmered midair. The terrain itself felt inconsistent, like reality here was still loading… or falling apart.
And yet, it was stable enough for now.
Kai looked at the palm of his hand. Red strands of code flickered beneath the skin like digital veins. His HUD had been overwritten—no longer a standard interface, but something raw, open-ended. Instead of menus, he saw syntax trees and function call branches. Instead of stats, there were variables. Some with values. Some with question marks.
One tag blinked at the center:
[CLASS: ERROR][TITLE: GLITCHWALKER]
He stared at it. Glitchwalker. What the hell did that mean? The System had never mentioned it. No instructor ever had.
"The System is flawless," Instructor Venn had once said, pacing across the projection stage. "No unknowns. No errors. All paths, all classes, are calculated and distributed. There is no such thing as 'random' here."
Kai laughed bitterly. "Guess I'm the exception."
He opened his status sheet. It wasn't a player GUI anymore—it looked like a raw dev log. Debug lines. Access permissions. There were options to inject variables. Toggle flags. Nothing was protected.
Name: Kai Ardent
Level: —
Class: Error
Skills: Reality Rewrite (Alpha)
Status: Unregistered Entity
"Unregistered," Kai muttered. "They weren't kidding. I'm a ghost in their machine."
He turned slowly, eyes scanning the corrupted space. Geometry looped improperly along one side of the cavern, and fragments of long-deleted assets hovered midair—parts of what looked like an old UI skin, maybe from an alpha build.
Then he saw it. A console.
Embedded in the wall like a terminal, its screen flickering between red and static. Kai approached carefully. As he neared, the text resolved:
[CORE FRAGMENT DETECTED][REINITIALIZE: Y/N?]
"Core fragment?" he whispered.
He didn't know what that meant, but it felt important. Dangerous.
Don't touch it, his mind warned.What if it's a dev trap? What if it deletes you?What if… they were right to leave you behind?
Kai hesitated. He thought of Lyra's eyes as she turned away. Not even confused—just... empty. They all looked at him like that. Like he didn't belong.
He clenched his jaw.
"Let's see what your system's so afraid of."
He tapped the screen.
[Y]
A soft hum followed. The floor rippled. For a second, the cavern stabilized.
Then:
[WARNING: AI CONSTRUCT DETECTED]
A shimmer of light appeared a few feet away. A shape formed—humanoid, feminine, translucent and flickering like bad hologram footage. Her face was elegant but incomplete, like someone had started sculpting her and left halfway.
"Designate. Unauthorized. Classification: Nullpoint. You should not exist," the construct said flatly.
Kai took a step back. "You and me both."
The figure twitched. "System core integrity compromised. Query: What are you?"
"I wish I knew," Kai muttered. "Let's figure that out together."
She tilted her head. "Permission flag anomalous. Protocols disabled. Running sandbox construct: Combat Trial."
Wait, what?
The ground trembled. Panels slid open in the stone. A second later, the cavern floor erupted—three figures rose from the dust. Glitched-out, humanoid training dummies, sparking with unstable energy.
Kai's HUD flickered. For a moment, he thought it would crash. Instead, it updated:
[Combat Scenario Initialized][Threat Level: Simulated - Tier D][Objective: Survive]
"Of course it's survive," Kai muttered.
The first dummy rushed forward. It was fast—faster than anything he'd faced in cadet training. Not clean movement. Jittery. Unpredictable. It moved like a corrupted file playing at double speed.
Kai dodged left. Barely.
His body still worked. The reflexes, the training—it hadn't abandoned him. But he needed a weapon.
His eye caught a loose fragment of debug terrain—a piece of unrendered metal pipe floating in midair. He reached out and instinctively did something that shouldn't have worked:
[Reality Rewrite: Pipe → Reinforced Staff] [Success. Temporary Object Created. Stability: 22 Seconds.]
The metal warped, twisted, and solidified into a short staff of glowing red-black code.
Kai grabbed it.
The second dummy lunged. Kai swung hard—too hard. The staff connected and shattered the creature's shoulder joint. Glitched sparks flew.
The enemy collapsed, twitching, its model struggling to reassemble.
A prompt flashed:
[+1 Glitched Data Core]
"What the hell do I even do with that?"
No time to think. The third dummy jumped—this one from above.
Kai rolled. Not fast enough. A hit grazed his side, pain blossoming as the construct's corrupted blade scraped across his ribs. It didn't draw blood, but it hurt. Like static burning across nerves.
"Okay, okay," he panted.
He raised the staff again, but it flickered. 22 seconds were almost up.
"Reality Rewrite: Delete Object - Enemy. Target Third Dummy."
[Command Accepted] [Override: Error. Partial Execution Only.]
The third dummy stuttered in the air—then half of its model disappeared. Its torso blinked out, leaving legs to drop uselessly. It dissolved into static.
The trial ended.
[Trial Passed] [Reward: Skill Upgrade Option Unlocked]
"Skill upgrade?"
The flickering AI construct reappeared.
"Candidate Kai Ardent: System compatibility unknown. You are an anomaly. Do you seek continuation of this path?"
Kai hesitated.
Was he angry at Lyra?At the system? At himself?He didn't know. Maybe all of it. But the fire in his chest was real.
He remembered the ceremony. The silence. How none of them looked surprised.
But the world didn't fix mistakes. It deleted them.
"I don't want continuation," Kai said. "I want revenge."
The AI construct flickered.
"Desire logged. Thread continued. You are now under Observation."
Then she vanished.
Kai sat down, breathing heavily. His side still ached. The adrenaline made it worse now that the danger was over.
He pulled open his HUD again and inspected the Reality Rewrite skill.
Reality Rewrite (Alpha)
Allow basic manipulation of system elements.Affects: Terrain, Simple Matter, Code Fragments.Unstable. May cause feedback errors.
An option blinked at the bottom:
[Stabilize Core: 1 Glitched Data Core Required]
He tapped it.
The world shimmered. Something locked into place. The red glow in his HUD dimmed to a manageable level. Less glitchy. More refined.
Still Error-Class, still unofficial, but… it was something.
Back in the real world.
The cadet dorms buzzed with victory. Holographic overlays of player stats lined the hallways. Achievement unlocks. Ranking placements.
Kai's pod sat dormant. Unlinked.
An administrator passed by, paused, and frowned. "Still unclassified?" he muttered. He tapped the terminal, brows furrowing. "Flagged. Status: System Error. That's not supposed to…" He sighed. "I'll send a ticket to DevSec."
He walked away, shaking his head.
The pod remained dark. Inside, Kai's physical body still registered as synced. But the tether? No longer tied to normal system space.
He was somewhere else now.