Erevan Arclight spat out a mouthful of dirt and grimaced. The grit stuck to his tongue, coating his teeth like powdered regret.
He was sitting at the center of a smoldering crater, the same pit carved out by his suicidal sheep army. Smoke curled from the scorched ground, thick with the sting of burnt grass and ozone.
His lungs burned. His chest heaved. The world around him pulsed in and out of focus, as if reality itself had forgotten how to render properly.
His ears rang—a high, endless hum, like someone had struck a bell inside his skull and walked away.
But the world wasn't silent.
It beat.
Like a living thing trying to restart itself.
And then the letters appeared again, faint and hovering, made of cold light and quiet dread.
([Main Questline Unlocked: Survive the Glitch])
(Objective: Investigate the corruption spreading through the world. Avoid termination.)
(Failure Condition: System Reboot – User Will Be Deleted.)
Deleted.
The word lodged in his mind like a shard of glass.
Not death.
Not game over.
Not even the comfort of a respawn timer.
Just... deleted.
Erased. Like dragging a file into the recycle bin and hitting empty permanently.
A hollow laugh scraped out of him. "So that's it, huh? My life's worth a bug report now."
He pushed himself upright, muscles screaming in protest. His hands trembled as he brushed at his jacket—then froze.
The ash smudges on the fabric flickered... and vanished.
Not cleaned.
Gone.
The texture itself blinked out of existence and then popped back in, like reality couldn't decide whether it wanted to be real or not.
"Yeah," Erevan muttered under his breath. "That's totally normal. Nothing screams stability like spontaneous texture deletion."
His HP bar was full again from the level-up, but his nerves? Completely fried.
He inhaled, exhaled. One step at a time.
Tutorial field. Survive. Then... what?
He squinted toward the horizon. The sun itself flickered every few seconds, freezing mid-glow like a broken lightbulb. The forest where the Laughing Beast had spawned looked... wrong.
Half of it had been eaten away.
Jagged holes yawned between the trees—clean, geometric voids, as though someone had pressed the delete key on chunks of the world.
Beyond those holes... something shimmered.
Rooftops. Uneven, crooked rooftops, clustered like teeth at the edge of the void.
A settlement.
A village.
Erevan blinked once. Then twice.
That definitely hadn't been there a moment ago.
His stomach growled, long and loud, cutting through the eerie silence.
"Well," he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "If this place remembered to code in food—or beer—I'll take my chances."
He stared one last time at the broken forest and the flickering sun.
"Fine," he said. "Let's meet the locals. What's the worst that could happen?"
He started walking.
The ground beneath his boots glitched like a broken loading screen. Grass polygons blinked in and out, patches of dirt flickered between textures, and shadows twitched in colors shadows had no business being.
A rabbit hopped across his path. Its ears twitched once—and then it duplicated itself four times.
Each copy darted off in a different direction before exploding into bursts of static.
The afterimage left his vision swimming.
He pressed a hand against his temple. "Great. Visual migraine mode unlocked."
The air buzzed faintly—not with insects, but with static, like he was wading through a television's white noise. It prickled against his skin, crawling beneath his collar.
His pulse quickened. Every step felt heavier, like the world itself was holding its breath.
By the time he reached the first wooden fence, Erevan was almost nostalgic for exploding sheep. Almost.
The fence's paint flickered between red, blue, and "null texture detected." He followed it toward what looked like a gate—until he realized half of it wasn't even finished.
One side was beautifully carved stone, weathered and mossy. The other half? A dull, placeholder gray block. Across it, faint developer text shimmered.
([INSERT TEXTURE])
Erevan rubbed his eyes, then groaned. "Wow. Truly immersive world design. Ten out of ten craftsmanship."
Still, he stepped forward.
The air shifted the instant he crossed the threshold. The glitching forest hum faded behind him, replaced by the uneasy rhythm of... life. Or something like it.
Villagers moved about—or at least, tried to.
A blacksmith hammered at an anvil, sparks flying with every blow, but every third swing passed straight through the metal like the laws of physics had given up halfway.
Across the street, a baker kneaded dough that kept flickering between bread, bricks, and occasionally... rocks.
Children ran laughing down the cobblestone lane, except their laughter skipped every few seconds, repeating like a corrupted audio file. Their bodies looped in place, locked in three-second animations that reset whenever Erevan blinked.
The whole scene made his skin crawl.
It was uncanny—like walking through a dream that didn't know it was broken.
Then, the System pulsed again.
([System Notice: Safe Zone Entered – Pixelveil Village])
Erevan raised a brow. "Right. Because nothing here screams danger."
He barely finished the sentence before a voice cut through the static.
"Oh, traveler!"
A woman sprinted toward him, skirts flaring around her legs. Her brown hair was tied in a messy knot, eyes wide—not just with relief, but desperation.
"Thank thank thank goodness you're here!"
The word thank skipped like a record, her voice hiccuping before smoothing out.
Erevan blinked. "Uh. Hi. Nice… glitching you—I mean, meeting you."
If she noticed, she didn't care. She clutched his sleeve with surprising strength. "The village is cursed! Strange beasts prowl the woods, the marketplace is broken, and our crops keep turning into chairs!"
He stared at her. "Into what now?"
As if on cue, a farmer screamed in the distance. Erevan turned just in time to see a shimmering wave pass over a wheat field.
When it cleared, rows of perfectly arranged wooden chairs stood where the wheat had been.
Hundreds of them.
Erevan dragged a hand down his face. "Sure. Why not. Who needs bread when you can sit on your food?"
The woman's voice cracked with pleading. "Please, hero, you must help us!"
"I'm not a hero," he muttered under his breath, trying to pull free. "I'm just an unfortunate patch note."
The System interrupted with another pulse of glowing text.
([Side Quest Unlocked: Fix the Marketplace Glitch])
(Reward: EXP +200, ??? Item)
(Failure Condition: Villager Economy Collapse)*
Erevan tilted his head back, staring at the floating words until one eye twitched. "Oh, great. The universe is bribing me now."
The villager clasped her hands. "Will you accept?"
He looked at her, then up at the text again. "Lady, I don't even know how to say no without this thing turning me into a sheep bomb."
([Quest Accepted])
"Figures," he sighed.
The woman clapped her hands together, her animation loop glitching mid-motion. "Oh, thank you, brave hero!"
Erevan started to correct her, then thought better of it. "Yeah, sure. Let's go with that."
The marketplace sat at the heart of the village, a crooked square surrounded by flickering wooden stalls.
Some stalls were full of baskets overflowing with apples—until the fruit blinked out of existence, leaving empty crates behind. Others twitched violently, cycling between fabric, stone, and snakes.
Yes, snakes. Digital, jagged, half-rendered snakes frozen mid-slither before popping out of existence.
Erevan squinted. "Yup. Totally a safe zone."
The ground trembled. A low hum filled the air, pulsing like a heartbeat through the cobblestones.
Cracks spread across the ground, pixels warping and distorting.
Then came the chime.
([System Notice: Glitch Event Detected])
The fissures widened.
Something clawed its way up from the cracks—a skeleton wrapped in rusted armor, its jaw clattering open in a silent scream.
Erevan's stomach dropped. "Oh, perfect. Just what I needed. Undead DLC."
The skeleton took one step forward… then froze.
Its bones shuddered.
And then—
it started tap-dancing.
Erevan just stared.
"You've got to be kidding me."
The skeleton twirled left, shuffled right, hips moving with perfect rhythm, sword still raised like it was performing for a haunted Broadway show.
The System chimed again.
([Enemy: Dancing Skeleton Lv. 2])
(EXP: Variable)
(Special Trait: Immune to Embarrassment)
The skeleton moonwalked toward him, armor clinking to the beat of music that didn't exist.
Erevan pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alright. Fine. You wanna dance? Let's dance."
He snapped his fingers. A glowing rune flared in the air beside him.
"Come on, Fluffy. Time to do your thing."
A sheep materialized, bleating proudly, a glowing countdown ticking above its woolly head.
3… 2… 1…
The skeleton spun into a pirouette.
The explosion cut its routine short.
Smoke rolled through the square, followed by the satisfying clatter of bones hitting the ground.
([Enemy Defeated])
(EXP +60)
(Copper Coin +3)
(Loot Acquired: Left Tibia (Glitched))
Erevan crouched and picked up a bone. The description blinked erratically.
(Left Tibia (Glitched): May be a weapon. May be a flute. Roll dice to decide.)
He gave it an experimental swing. The bone squeaked like a kazoo.
He closed his eyes for a long, tired second. "Beautiful. Exactly the kind of epic loot every hero dreams of."
He shoved it into his inventory and sighed. "Okay. Who's next?"
Ten minutes later, the marketplace looked like a battlefield.
Smoke curled from scattered scorch marks. Piles of shattered bones littered the cobblestones. A few glitching apples floated mid-air before vanishing entirely.
Erevan stood in the center of the chaos, shoulders slumped, hair sticking out at odd angles.
His ears were still ringing. His clothes smelled faintly of burnt wool and regret.
"Safe zone, my ass," he muttered, swiping soot from his face.
Around him, villagers peeked out from doorways, their expressions flickering between terror and joy in perfectly repeating loops. A baker clapped on repeat, frozen in a two-second animation of eternal gratitude.
The System finally broke the silence with a soft chime.
([System Notice: Side Quest Complete – Fix the Marketplace Glitch])
(Reward: EXP +200)*
(Reward: Item – Glitched Codex (Page Fragment)*)
Erevan exhaled through his teeth. "Finally."
Something materialized in his palm — a fragment of parchment, torn and glowing faintly around the edges.
It shimmered like glass trying to remember it used to be paper.
The letters on it scrambled, rearranging themselves into jagged, twitching words.
([ThE SySteM Is NoT YoUr EnEmY. oR MaYbE iT Is.])
Erevan's grin faded.
"What the hell…"
He tilted the page, but the text kept shifting, flickering like it was alive — like it knew he was reading it.
Then the letters broke apart completely, reassembling into garbled nonsense.
([Error: Unable to Translate Further])
The light dimmed, leaving only silence and a faint hum that crawled under his skin.
Erevan turned the fragment over once, twice. No answers. Just that uneasy pulse — a feeling that whatever this was, it wasn't finished talking.
He tucked it carefully into his inventory, the glow vanishing as it merged with the data stream.
The static wind whispered through the half-rendered square, carrying faint echoes of laughter — not from villagers, but from something far away. Something that sounded wrong.
Erevan straightened, brushing ash from his coat. "Yeah," he muttered softly. "Totally fine. Just a haunted world full of exploding livestock, tap-dancing skeletons, and cryptic digital warnings."
He started walking, boots crunching over cracked pixels.
Behind him, the broken stalls glitched once more, flickering between whole and hollow — as though the world itself was breathing, watching, waiting.
Erevan didn't look back.
Not yet.
([Questline Updated: Survive the Glitch])
(Objective: Continue investigating corruption sources.)
(Next Destination: ???)
The text shimmered, then blinked out of existence.
Erevan's reflection lingered in the empty air for half a second — tired, stubborn, and maybe just a little amused by his own misfortune.
He let out a small laugh under his breath. "Guess deletion will have to wait."
And with that, he stepped toward the road that shouldn't exist.