The world shattered.
Or at least… it felt that way.
One heartbeat, Erevan was sprinting across a cracked stretch of corrupted earth—
the next, the ground broke apart beneath him like glass, and he was tumbling through a storm of sky and soil and light that had forgotten which way was up.
The world around him flickered in jagged pieces:
some solid, some smoke, others just flickering outlines of what used to be real.
Every shard twisted and turned, shimmering with fractured reflections of color that hurt to look at.
His stomach flipped. The air tasted like static.
"Oh, that's just great," Erevan muttered, spinning helplessly midair. "Falling through broken reality. Love that for me. Couldn't have picked a calmer Monday."
Kaelith wasn't far behind.
Where Erevan thrashed like a cat in a wind tunnel, she moved through the chaos—graceful, balanced, her body angling with every violent shift of gravity like she'd rehearsed falling through apocalypse her whole life.
Her eyes darted through the void, assessing every flicker, every edge of instability.
Erevan, meanwhile, was busy flailing.
"Do you ever— I don't know— panic?" he shouted, voice cracking against the roar of tearing space.
Kaelith didn't even look at him.
"Yes," she said, tone calm enough to make him want to scream. "Just not where you can see it."
Erevan blinked. "Oh. Fantastic. I feel so reassured now."
He reached for a passing fragment—his hand slid through it like smoke. Another—vanished before he could grab it. His boots kicked at nothing. The only constant was the feeling that everything was falling faster than him.
And then… the light shifted.
Something enormous moved through the void.
A ripple of shadow rolled across the broken horizon, warping fragments as it passed. The air—if it was air—began to vibrate, humming like a thousand electric wires stretched too tight.
Erevan turned just in time to see it.
The thing that crawled out of the static was a nightmare rewritten in code.
Massive. Misshapen. Its edges glitching, body stitched together from jagged blocks of corrupted data that refused to stay still.
A grin—if you could call that thing a grin—split across its face. Too wide. Too sharp. Too wrong.
Half of it was missing, the other half still twitching, reforming, persisting.
The Grinshard.
It had survived. Or maybe it had just refused to die.
Erevan's pulse spiked, breath catching hard in his throat.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
The Grinshard lunged.
A mass of corrupted static and teeth, tearing through the fragments like a living virus. Every roar made the air itself glitch, the space around them screaming in pixels and distortion.
Erevan's brain blanked. "Nope. Nope nope nope—too early for existential horror!"
Kaelith twisted midair, bow flashing into her hands. She loosed an arrow—clean, sharp—
only for it to disintegrate before it reached the monster.
"The fragments are unstable!" she shouted over the chaos. "Physical projectiles won't hold!"
Erevan's stomach dropped. "Okay, great, we can't hit it. What can we do—throw emotional trauma at it?!"
He looked down at his hands.
Empty.
No fish.
No sheep.
Not even his last shreds of dignity.
Then—
weight.
A pulse of blue light rippled down his arm, and a massive hammer materialized in his grip—scrolling lines of code glowing across its surface like molten script.
Erevan blinked. "Oh. Oh, finally! Something useful!"
He swung.
The hammer connected with a nearby fragment—
and reality stabilized.
The floating shard stopped flickering, glowing steady beneath the blow.
Kaelith's eyes went wide. "That… actually works. Keep hitting reality!"
Erevan, panting, lifted the hammer again. "Never thought I'd hear someone say that so casually!"
He swung again. And again.
The Grinshard surged forward, mouth yawning open, ready to devour everything. Erevan roared right back and brought the hammer up with everything he had.
Impact.
The air snapped.
Light burst outward, freezing the monster mid-lunge.
For a single, heart-stopping second, time itself seemed to hold its breath.
The Grinshard's form hung suspended inches from Erevan's face, teeth glinting, glitching in stuttered frames.
Erevan stared. "Okay… that worked a little too well."
Kaelith grabbed his arm. "Now! Before it unfreezes!"
"Before it what un—oh great, there it goes—!"
The creature twitched violently, reality screaming as fractured light cascaded outward like shattering glass.
All around them, the fragments began to crumble.
A harsh chime echoed in Erevan's vision.
(Emergency Quest: Survive the Collapse.)
(Objective: Reach Stable Anchor Point.)
(Time Limit: 2:00 minutes.)
He blinked, jaw dropping. "Two minutes?! Seriously?! That's not a timer, that's a death sentence!"
Kaelith pointed toward a distant glowing shard pulsing like a heartbeat. "That's our exit!"
"Fantastic! Just need to not die getting there!"
Erevan swung again, hammer striking another fragment—solidifying a shaky path through the chaos. The Grinshard let out a low, bone-grinding roar, dragging itself toward them, its body tearing through corrupted void.
"Go!" Kaelith shouted, launching herself across the first stable fragment.
Erevan stumbled after her, every step a gamble.
Each fragment he landed on flickered beneath his boots like a light about to go out.
Behind him—
the Grinshard lunged.
It wasn't chasing. It was consuming.
Erevan jumped another gap, breath catching in his throat. "Why—why do these things always have too many teeth?!"
He swung again, slamming the hammer down. The path flickered steady for one heartbeat—
And then the hammer slipped from his hands.
It tumbled end-over-end into the glowing abyss below.
"Oh, come on!" he yelled, voice cracking.
Kaelith fired a glowing arrow ahead, the impact solidifying the next step in their path. "Keep moving!"
"I am moving!" Erevan snapped, nearly tripping on his next step. "This is me—moving—very fast—and probably dying!"
His lungs burned. His vision swam. Sweat mixed with static at his temples.
Then—
the Grinshard roared again, a sound like static tearing through bone.
He had nothing left to swing.
No weapon. No shield. No sheep.
Just… fists.
"Alright," he muttered under his breath. "Fine. We're doing this the stupid way."
He clenched his fists and swung at the lunging monster—pure reflex, pure defiance.
And the system pinged.
(New Effect Triggered: Fist of Infinite Bugs.)
Erevan froze mid-punch. "That doesn't sound reassuring."
The punch connected—
and suddenly five identical Grinshards blinked into existence around them, each one roaring, each one just as horrifying as the first.
Erevan's jaw fell open. "This—this is the opposite of helpful!"
Kaelith, without missing a beat, said, "Sometimes duplication means distraction. Just trust me."
"Trust you? You just multiplied my nightmares!"
But it worked.
The duplicates collided, tearing into one another, screeching and glitching as they tangled into a mess of code and limbs. The real Grinshard faltered, its form stuttering between frames, confused about which one it was.
"Almost there!" Kaelith shouted, sprinting toward the glowing doorway that pulsed brighter with every heartbeat.
Erevan forced his legs to move, his body screaming in protest. His boots slammed onto the last few stable fragments.
The ground behind them disintegrated into static.
The Grinshard's real body lurched forward for one final strike—
"Hold on!" Kaelith yelled.
She grabbed his wrist and yanked.
The world blurred. The fragments dissolved. The void reached for them with pixelated claws—
—and then they hit ground.
Solid. Real.
Erevan tumbled across dirt and grass, rolling to a stop on his back. The air hit his lungs like water after drowning. The sky above was blue. No red static. No flicker. No noise.
Just… quiet.
He gasped, chest heaving. "That… was the worst two minutes of my life. Possibly anyone's life."
Kaelith landed lightly beside him, adjusting her quiver like she'd just walked off a casual jog instead of surviving a digital apocalypse.
"That's one word for it," she said calmly.
For a long moment, Erevan just lay there—flat on his back, staring at a sky that didn't flicker.
Real blue. Real clouds. Real wind brushing across his skin.
The silence was so heavy it rang in his ears.
He let out a shaky breath. "I'm… alive?"
He turned his head slightly. Kaelith was crouched beside him, steady as ever, checking her bowstring and arrows like she hadn't just sprinted through collapsing reality. Her hair fluttered in the breeze, strands catching faint light.
"Define 'alive,'" she said dryly.
Erevan groaned. "Breathing. Heartbeat. Horrible muscle pain. So yeah, that counts."
His laugh came out cracked, but real. He closed his eyes, the grass cool against his neck. "That was… that was too much. I almost died so many times. Again."
"You're improving," Kaelith murmured, deadpan. "You almost did it gracefully this time."
He cracked one eye open, glare half-hearted. "You say the sweetest things."
The faint ping of a system notification broke through the silence.
(Data Fragment Acquired.)
Erevan winced. "Oh great. That sound again. What now?"
A shimmer flared in front of them, flickering into the shape of a holographic screen. Lines of static ran down it, and then—
—a human figure appeared.
They wore a sterile white lab coat, tangled wires trailing from the walls behind them. The feed glitched, skipping frames. Their face was blurred, almost censored by interference, but the voice—the voice was unmistakably human. Tired. Strained.
"This is… test subject… system malfunction—" the audio cut in and out, words dissolving into static. "Containment failure… subject's memory suppressed…"
Erevan's pulse spiked. "Wait, what?"
The figure leaned forward, the distortion deepening. "If you are seeing this… then the experiment has already failed."
The image shattered into a thousand flickering lines and vanished.
Silence.
For several long seconds, Erevan didn't breathe. The wind rustled through the grass, and it suddenly sounded too real, too close.
He swallowed, his throat dry. "What experiment?"
Kaelith turned toward him sharply. Her eyes were focused, sharp as a blade. "What did it say?"
"Nothing… good." His voice came out small, almost lost. "Something about containment. Memory. And failure."
Kaelith's gaze lingered on him for a heartbeat longer, then drifted to the horizon. "Then we're walking on the remains of something that shouldn't exist."
The system chimed again.
(Quest Updated: Discover the Truth Behind the Experiment.)
Erevan flinched at the cold tone. "I swear this thing's just doing that to mess with me now."
A low, distant rumble answered him. The ground trembled faintly under their feet—just enough to remind him the peace wouldn't last.
Far out on the horizon, a corrupted roar rolled across the plains. The same distorted, insectile sound as before.
Erevan clenched his fists, jaw tightening. "You hear that?"
Kaelith nodded, calm as ever. "Another anomaly."
"Of course it is," he muttered, dragging himself to his feet. His legs felt like lead, his chest still burning from the run. "Can't even get a five-minute nap in this hellscape."
Kaelith stood beside him, scanning the treeline. "You can rest when you stop glowing."
He blinked down. His body shimmered faintly—tiny motes of digital residue dancing around him like dust.
"Oh," he said flatly. "That's… concerning."
"Residual corruption," she murmured, stepping closer. "It'll fade if we stay in stable space long enough. Probably."
"Probably?"
Her mouth twitched—almost a smile. "You're still talking, so yes."
Erevan huffed a laugh, rubbing a hand over his face. "I'm starting to hate this game."
Kaelith's expression softened just a fraction. She looked out across the quiet plains, where the wind bent the tall grass in waves. "You're not the only one."
Her voice had that quiet edge again—the one that carried something more than command. Something human.
"But," she added, lowering her bow slightly, "if we survive… we'll figure it out. Together."
Erevan looked at her for a long moment. The tension in his shoulders eased, just a little.
"Yeah," he said finally, letting out a slow breath. "Together."
The air felt cleaner here. Realer. The faint hum of corrupted data in his veins was still there, but quieter—like a storm waiting behind glass.
He tilted his head back, staring at the sky that didn't flicker. The kind of sky you could almost believe in.
And somewhere deep inside him, beneath the exhaustion and the static, something shifted. A whisper of unease, of something unfinished.
The world was too quiet.
Too still.
Like the code itself was watching.
He didn't know why—but he knew this wasn't over.
Not by a long shot.
Because even now, even here, he could still hear the faint hum of the system.
(Warning: 6 Fragments Remaining.)
Erevan closed his eyes and exhaled, the wind tugging at his hair. "Figures," he muttered softly.
The grass swayed.
The sky breathed.
And the countdown began again.