Erevan had to admit something he would never say out loud.
He'd grown… weirdly comfortable here.
The crooked houses that leaned on each other like old drunks, the marketplace that glitched so often bread occasionally turned into daggers, even Kaelith's daily lectures that could flay the soul—yeah, all of it had started to feel almost like home.
Which, naturally, meant the system had decided it was time to ruin everything.
A soft ping shimmered in the corner of his vision, that familiar cold dread curling through his gut.
(System Notice: Main Quest Updated)
Objective: Leave the Safe Zone. Enter the Corrupted Fields.
Warning: Difficulty scaling is active. Survival not guaranteed.
Erevan squinted at the glowing text, his voice flat. "Not guaranteed? Since when has it ever been guaranteed?"
Kaelith didn't even turn around as she tightened the straps of her armor, her bow slung over one shoulder. "You could stay here if you like," she said, her tone dry enough to parch the air. "I'm sure the villagers would love to watch you trip over your exploding sheep until the entire square catches fire again."
He groaned. "That happened only once."
A pause.
"Okay, three times. But the audience loved it."
"They screamed and evacuated," she deadpanned.
"Details, Kaelith. Minor details."
She made a small, unimpressed sound in her throat before turning toward the northern gate. The boundary shimmered like a veil of light stretched too thin, separating the almost-safe chaos of the village from the unknown wasteland beyond.
Erevan's steps slowed as they approached it.
On one side, crooked cobblestones, glitching villagers, and pigs endlessly looping in perfect circles.
On the other, an endless sprawl of blackened grass—each blade flickering between existence and nothing, like static trying to remember what real plants looked like.
He felt the first chill before he even crossed. It wasn't cold exactly—more like something intangible was clawing through him, whispering that this was a bad idea.
He went anyway.
The moment Erevan stepped past the threshold, it felt as if the air had turned to liquid tar. His lungs struggled against it. Each breath dragged through him heavy and thick. The ground beneath his boots sank an inch before popping back, leaving no footprint, no trace.
(Entering Zone: The Corrupted Fields)
Environmental Hazard: Instability Level – Moderate
Random Anomalies: Active
"Oh, that sounds great," he muttered. "I love random anomalies. They've never tried to kill me before."
Kaelith didn't answer. Her gaze stayed sharp, scanning the horizon. Unlike everything else here, she didn't flicker or glitch. She looked anchored. More solid than she had inside the village, like this corrupted world somehow recognized her.
Erevan caught the detail with a wary glance. "You've done this before, haven't you?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Once. I don't recommend it."
"Encouraging," he said dryly, trying to keep humor between them like a shield.
The Fields stretched on under a crimson sky that bled static. The clouds were wrong—jagged, flickering, like a broken recording of a storm trapped on repeat. Far ahead, stone monoliths pulsed faintly with a dull red glow, their surfaces crawling with streams of corrupted light.
Erevan's system menu jittered in his vision, numbers flickering and disappearing.
HP: 540 / 540
MP: 310 / 310
Strength: 43
Agility: 37
Intelligence: 40
Luck:Error
"Still broken. Fantastic."
Kaelith stepped carefully across a section of ground that seemed to ripple beneath her boots. "Watch your footing," she said quietly. "Sometimes the Fields don't agree with what 'solid' means."
"Wonderful," he muttered. "I've always wanted to play hopscotch with reality itself."
The silence that followed was thick. Too thick. The kind that made the air hum in your ears.
Somewhere to their right, a flicker of motion caught his eye—a bird, soaring low over the corrupted terrain. For half a heartbeat, it was beautiful. Then it exploded into static, dissolving into pixels before scattering across the wind like glittering ash.
Erevan blinked. "That's… normal?"
Kaelith didn't even glance his way. "For here."
He hesitated, half a smirk tugging at his lips. "Good to know. I'll add 'spontaneous avian disintegration' to my list of red flags."
No response. Only the crunch of her boots and the slow pulse of the world glitching around them.
He sighed. "You know, Kaelith, I was starting to think maybe this world was growing on me. The villagers, the marketplace, the—"
"Don't get attached," she interrupted softly. "Nothing here stays the same. Not even you."
That made him go quiet.
He wanted to laugh it off, to throw out some sarcastic line about emotional stability or exploding sheep therapy sessions, but he couldn't quite make the words come. Because when he looked out at the corrupted horizon—the flickering grass, the blood-red sky, the distant hum of static—it didn't feel like a world waiting to be explored.
It felt like something alive.
Something watching.
And he had the sickening feeling that the moment he'd stepped into it, the Fields had started watching him back.
At first, the Fields were just… wrong.
Not dangerous. Not yet. Just off.
The horizon shimmered like heat haze, even though the air was cold enough to sting. Every few seconds, the ground pulsed—an almost heartbeat rhythm, low and deep, like the world itself was trying to breathe through static.
Erevan told himself that was fine. He'd survived worse. He'd survived exploding sheep.
He was definitely not fine.
"Something's off," he muttered, glancing at the terrain ahead. The grass flickered in and out of existence in patches, forming strange circular patterns. "I mean, more than the usual off."
Kaelith knelt, brushing her fingers over the ground. Her hand glitched for a fraction of a second—just the edges, a flicker—and then she pulled back sharply.
"Anomaly residue," she said. "Something strong passed through here."
"Define 'strong.'"
She looked at him. "The kind that can erase you from the system log."
He blinked. "…Cool. Cool, cool, cool. I love field trips."
The static wind picked up, whispering across the corrupted plains. For a heartbeat, it sounded like words. He couldn't make them out—but he felt them, brushing the edges of his thoughts like invisible fingers.
(Warning: Spatial Stability Fluctuation Detected)
The notification popped up like a nervous tic. Then another. And another.
(Warning: Instability Rising — 24%)
(Warning: Entity Signature Emerging — Unknown Classification)
Kaelith's bow was already in her hand. "We move. Now."
Erevan didn't argue. He never liked it when her voice dropped to that calm, deadly register—the one that meant she'd already accepted someone was about to die.
They sprinted through the rippling grass, boots sinking slightly into the flickering soil. The air grew heavy, darker, thicker—each breath crackling against his lungs like static.
Then came the first snap.
The sound wasn't natural. Not wood, not stone—just… a glitch. Reality tearing for a second.
And when Erevan looked over his shoulder, he saw it: a hole in the world.
A perfect black tear floating midair, with light bending wrong around it.
From it crawled something that looked vaguely human at first. Then it twitched.
The thing had too many limbs. Its skin was smooth and glossy like obsidian glass, and its face—no, its face was just static. A flickering blur where features should've been.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Erevan breathed.
(Hostile Detected: Corrupted Fragment | Level: ???)
"Kaelith!"
"Don't let it touch you!"
She loosed an arrow, the projectile humming with pale-blue light. It struck the creature's chest—only for the monster to split apart, dividing into two smaller versions of itself that hit the ground running.
Erevan's jaw dropped. "That's not how arrows work!"
"It is now!"
The first one lunged at him, claws dragging through the air and leaving thin lines of glitching distortion behind. Erevan threw himself sideways, rolled, and slashed with his blade. The impact sent a ripple of static through the thing's body—but it didn't bleed. It just… pixelated, like its existence was buffering.
He swung again. And again. Each hit made his arm go numb, like he was cutting through a fever dream.
(Critical Glitch Damage: 37)
(Structural Integrity: 93%)
"Not helping, System!" he shouted between swings.
Kaelith vaulted onto a rock, drew her bow again, and this time her arrow burst into searing light mid-flight. The explosion of energy vaporized one of the fragments completely.
The second screeched—its voice sharp, wrong, like metal scraping inside his skull—and then imploded into smoke.
For a brief, shaky moment, there was silence.
Erevan dropped to a knee, panting. "Please tell me that was the boss."
Kaelith shook her head slowly. "That was the warning."
The ground pulsed again. Harder this time.
Then the sky screamed.
The red clouds above tore open, and from the gash in the heavens descended something massive. It was like the earlier creatures—but this one was shaped like a wolf made of shattered glass, twice the size of a horse, its eyes burning with static fire.
(Boss Detected: Grinshard, The Corrupted Alpha | Level: 42)
"Oh," Erevan said faintly. "Oh, that's not even remotely fair."
Kaelith's jaw tightened. "Stay behind me. And whatever happens, don't let it bite you."
"Why, does it hurt more than usual?"
"It rewrites you."
He blinked. "…Like emotionally or—"
"Run!"
The creature hit the ground hard enough to shatter reality for a second. Static lightning arced across the Fields. Erevan barely had time to raise his weapon before Kaelith's next arrow exploded against the wolf's flank, sending shards of light scattering.
The Grinshard turned toward her, mouth splitting open far too wide. Rows of pixelated teeth unfolded like jagged code strings.
Then it laughed.
Not an animal sound. A glitchy, stuttering sound that almost formed words, almost human.
Erevan's heart nearly stopped. "Kaelith… why is it laughing?"
"Because it remembers us."
"Oh good! A personal vendetta! Love that for us!"
The wolf lunged, reality bending around it as it moved. Erevan ducked behind a flickering rock, swung wildly, and his sword connected with one of its front legs. The blade sparked with static, but the hit barely slowed it.
(Damage: 14)
"Fourteen?! That's it?! This thing's a walking disaster!"
Kaelith gritted her teeth, firing arrow after arrow, each one bursting with silvery light. "Focus, Erevan! Use the anomaly surge!"
"I what now?"
Before she could answer, the Grinshard turned its head toward him. Its eyes locked onto his—two blazing voids of pixel fire—and for one horrible moment, Erevan's entire interface glitched out.
(Warning: Memory Sync Disrupted)
(Core Instability Rising – 51%)
The world tilted sideways. The grass melted. The ground folded like a broken map.
And somewhere, beneath the static and the panic and the endless noise, something deep inside him stirred.
Erevan's vision shattered like glass.
For a moment, he wasn't standing in the Corrupted Fields anymore—he was inside them. Or maybe the Fields were inside him. It was hard to tell where one nightmare ended and the next began.
The Grinshard's roar ripped through the air, bending the world around it. Kaelith's arrows streaked through the distortion like silver comets, each hit briefly forcing the creature to flicker, to glitch, before it rebuilt itself from fragments of light and code.
(Warning: Reality Integrity Falling — 68%)
Erevan stumbled backward. His sword glowed faintly, vibrating with a tone he could feel in his bones. Every heartbeat was static. Every breath, a broken sound file.
"Kaelith!" he shouted, but his voice came out warped—stretched, low-pitched, like a corrupted recording of himself.
"Stay anchored!" she yelled back, loosing another arrow that detonated across the beast's shoulder. "Don't let the Field rewrite your perception!"
"Oh, sure," he grunted, "I'll just politely ask reality not to implode!"
The Grinshard lunged again. He rolled, felt claws tear across his sleeve, a flash of pain burning down his arm. The wound didn't bleed—it pixelated, like the System was struggling to decide what "hurt" meant.
Then something clicked.
A pulse.
Familiar. Deep.
The same wrong rhythm he'd felt back in the cave with the crystal.
The Anomaly fragment.
It responded to his fear, thrumming like a heartbeat inside his chest. And when he focused on it—just for a second—the static in his vision folded outward.
A white surge erupted from him, jagged and blinding.
(Anomaly Surge Activated)
Output: Unstable — Containment Probability: 12%)*
The blast tore across the Field. The Grinshard staggered, its front legs buckling as fragments of its form disintegrated into screaming static.
Kaelith shielded her face, hair whipping in the shockwave. "What the hell was that?!"
"I—uh—I think that was me?" Erevan gasped, blinking through the afterglow.
The Grinshard didn't stay down for long. The pieces reformed, crawling together, twitching like corrupted data trying to remember what "alive" looked like. Its laugh came again—low, broken, almost human.
Then it spoke.
Not with words, but with echoes—snippets of System voice, cut and rearranged into something horrible.
"Fragment... incomplete... return..."
Erevan froze. His pulse tripped over itself.
"Kaelith. It's talking. Why is it talking?"
"Don't listen!"
Too late. The voice crawled through his head, whispering between his own thoughts.
"You are... part... anomaly... belongs... here..."
He screamed and swung his sword with everything he had left. The surge reacted again—stronger this time—flooding the air with white fire that tore through the Grinshard's chest.
The explosion threw him backward. He hit the ground hard, the impact stealing all the air from his lungs. His vision flickered in and out, System text jittering across his sight.
(Health Critical — 19%)
(Warning: Structural Integrity Compromised)
He couldn't tell what was up or down anymore. The Field was folding over itself, collapsing like paper burning from the edges. The Grinshard was screaming—no, glitching apart—a blur of static light and fractured geometry.
Kaelith appeared through the chaos, dragging him by the collar. Her voice was faint, muffled. "We have to move. It's collapsing!"
"I can't—my legs are—"
She didn't wait. She slung his arm over her shoulder, half carrying him toward the wavering horizon. The air around them was tearing open, thin lines of black void cutting through the landscape.
Behind them, the Grinshard gave one final howl—and then it imploded.
Silence.
Pure, absolute silence.
Then the world snapped.
Light vanished. Sound died. Everything went black.
When Erevan came to, he wasn't sure if he was awake or still inside the collapse. He floated in a vast emptiness—weightless, suspended in a void made of faint, pulsing code.
Something stood before him.
Tall. Featureless. Its outline shimmered like a reflection on disturbed water.
It looked at him—if looking was something it could do—and when it spoke, its voice wasn't sound at all. It was a presence.
"You should not exist here."
Erevan's throat tightened. "Tell me about it."
"The Fragments are waking. Six remain unbound."
Before he could answer, the figure reached out a hand—pure light—and touched his forehead.
Pain flared white-hot, cutting through everything.
(System Warning: Unauthorized Access Detected)
(Core Synchronization... initializing...)
Then it was gone. The figure, the void, all of it.
He woke on solid ground again, coughing. The Fields around him were quiet, eerily so. The red sky was dimming, the static storm in the distance fading into dark clouds.
Kaelith sat nearby, her armor scorched, one hand pressed to her ribs. She looked at him—expression unreadable, voice rough.
"You're alive."
He let out a laugh that sounded more like a wheeze. "Barely. What happened?"
"The Grinshard's gone. For now."
"For now?"
She didn't answer. Instead, her gaze drifted toward the horizon, where a faint, black obelisk stood. It pulsed once, like a heartbeat in the distance.
(System Notice: Fragment Registered — 1 of 6 Acquired)
(Time Remaining until Anomaly Storm: 12:00:00)
Erevan sat back, head spinning. "Twelve hours until what?"
Kaelith's voice was barely above a whisper. "Until the storm resets everything."
He stared at the message, then at her, then back again.
And finally, with the kind of laugh that only exhaustion could produce, he said, "You know, I'm starting to think the exploding sheep were the good days."
She didn't laugh. Not yet. But when the wind shifted, carrying the faint hum of the storm brewing beyond the horizon, she almost smiled.
For a moment, they just sat there—two survivors in a broken world, caught between the glitching pulse of reality and the countdown that refused to stop ticking.