The horizon stretched out like a broken painting—colors bleeding into one another, reality splintered into a thousand glittering shards.
Each fragment shimmered with a faint, glitching light that made the world feel... unfinished.
And there, piercing the fractured sky, stood the Obelisk of Echoes.
At first, it looked like a smudge of ink against the pale expanse—small, almost forgettable. But with every step Erevan took, it grew taller. Then taller still. Until it seemed to swallow the clouds, towering above everything that dared exist beneath it.
The stone wasn't stone at all. It shimmered like fractured mirror-glass, each facet reflecting places that didn't belong here. Worlds that shouldn't exist.
Erevan squinted, drawn to one shard that pulsed faintly, like it was watching him back.
And for the briefest heartbeat—he saw home.
His own bedroom.
The messy bed. The pile of clothes on the chair. His dusty monitor still frozen on a paused game.
Then it blinked away. Gone. Like it had never existed.
"Okay," he muttered under his breath, his voice trembling just enough to betray him, "definitely not haunted. Not at all."
Kaelith slowed her steps beside him. Her bow stayed ready, but her fingers trembled, ever so slightly. Not fear, exactly… more like the weight of something wrong pressing down on her chest.
"The air…" she murmured, almost to herself. "It's wrong here. Every breath feels… empty. Like the world forgot how to breathe."
Sir Quacksalot waddled ahead of them, utterly unfazed by cosmic horror. His tiny wizard hat bobbed with each step, his quacks echoing just a second too late—perfectly repeated by the Obelisk itself, as though it were mocking him.
The sound made Erevan's skin crawl.
He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, trying to hide how fast his heart was hammering. Curiosity had always been his downfall, and he could already feel it dragging him closer to disaster.
"So," he said finally, forcing a smirk he didn't feel, "what exactly does an Obelisk of Echoes do? Besides providing, y'know, top-tier nightmare fuel?"
Kaelith's eyes stayed fixed on the rising monolith. "Some say it records every soul that's ever touched this world," she said quietly. "Others believe it's a scar. A wound where realities collided and bled into each other."
"Right. Love that. Great tourism pitch. Zero stars. Would not recommend."
Each step closer made the Obelisk's surface twist more violently, the reflections turning from strange to wrong. Reality bent like heat waves, and the air thrummed as though it carried whispers they couldn't quite hear.
When they finally reached the base, Erevan felt his stomach drop. The sheer size of the structure wasn't just seen—it was felt. It loomed like a living thing, aware of them.
Etched runes covered its surface, writhing like lines of code. Not carved. Not static. Alive.
Erevan blinked hard, trying to focus, but the symbols wouldn't hold still. They rearranged themselves, flickering into patterns that refused to make sense.
Then a faint chime broke the silence.
(WARNING. Major Anomaly Detected. Proximity Alert. Initiating Obelisk Protocols...)
Erevan groaned. "Oh good. Protocols. That's never bad news."
The ground trembled beneath their boots. The Obelisk pulsed once, twice—then split open down the middle, a jagged wound of black light yawning wide. Shadows poured out, heavy and cold, like smoke that remembered pain.
Kaelith's bow came up in an instant, arrow drawn tight. "It… invites us," she whispered.
Erevan's stomach turned. "I'd prefer an invite to a tavern. Maybe one with beer. And chairs. Soft chairs."
But his feet were already moving.
Of course they were.
Curiosity, stubborn and stupid and unstoppable, had him by the throat again.
The closer he stepped, the heavier the air became. It clung to his skin like static—buzzing, itching, sinking into his bones.
And when the shadows parted to reveal a dark passage beyond, Erevan realized something terrifying.
It wasn't that the Obelisk was opening for them.
It was opening because of them.
The moment Erevan stepped inside, the world shifted.
The air grew thick, almost electric, humming through his bones like static caught in his bloodstream. The walls were alive with movement—waves of glitching symbols running like digital veins through pulsing black stone.
Each step echoed.
Not once.
Not twice.
But in layers.
His footsteps repeated back at him from a dozen unseen directions, overlapping slightly out of sync—like someone else was walking beside him.
No.
Several someone elses.
He caught flickers of himself reflected in the walls. One version older. One wearing armor. One completely faceless. All gone in less than a heartbeat.
His chest tightened. "Okay… love this. Love the haunted funhouse vibe."
Kaelith moved silently at his side, bow raised. Her face stayed calm, but the tension in her shoulders betrayed her. "Don't stare too long," she warned softly. "The echoes notice."
Erevan's head snapped toward her. "Wait, they notice? Like—actively notice?"
She didn't answer.
The silence pressed in.
Then—
(Quest Stage Two: Obelisk of Echoes)
(Objective: Activate the Core Node)
(Reward: Rare Skill, 3,000 EXP)
(Warning: Core Node Stability – 12%)
Erevan exhaled sharply. "Yeah, not ominous at all. Totally fine. Definitely not how horror stories start."
They followed the corridor until it opened into a vast chamber—cathedral-high, endless shadows spiraling into glitch-light.
At its center floated a massive sphere of cracked crystal, pulsing faintly like a dying heart. Data—actual streams of it—flowed through the air in shimmering threads, feeding into the sphere's core.
Every pulse made the air vibrate. It buzzed in his teeth, hummed behind his eyes.
Kaelith stopped short, voice barely a whisper. "This isn't elven craft… nor mortal. This is… older." Her hand brushed the air as if touching something sacred—or cursed. "It feels wrong. Deeply wrong."
Erevan's laugh came out thin and nervous. "Feels like licking a power socket. Painful and probably illegal."
Sir Quacksalot waddled fearlessly toward the hovering crystal, his tiny wizard hat tilted at a heroic angle.
"Hey, buddy, maybe don't—" Erevan started.
Too late.
The penguin pecked the crystal.
A deep hum rolled through the floor like thunder trapped beneath the earth. The entire chamber shuddered. Runes flared, screaming in light.
"Quacksalot!" Erevan yelped. "You absolute menace!"
The penguin sneezed—an adorable, high-pitched choo!—and a burst of frost exploded from his beak, coating the walls in glimmering ice.
Kaelith grabbed Erevan's arm and yanked him backward just as shards of code splintered from the ceiling like glass rain. "It's destabilizing!" she shouted.
Erevan's HUD flickered violently. His HP, MP, stats—everything glitched into unreadable symbols. The world wavered, tearing at the edges of perception.
Then, through the static, a voice—deep, melodic, layered, wrong.
"You should not be here."
Erevan froze. His usual sarcasm faltered for the first time. "…Okay. Yeah. That's new. That's horrifying. Ten out of ten on the nightmare scale."
The shadows around the crystal began to take shape—faces, hundreds of them, forming and dissolving like ghosts made of corrupted data.
Some wept silently.
Some screamed soundlessly.
Some only stared—blank, hollow, endless.
Kaelith's voice cracked with awe and dread. "These… these are souls."
The chorus of voices rose in unison, vibrating through the air, through their bones.
"Fragments. Lost data. The discarded remain."
The crystal flared violently—light bending, shattering.
And then something began to form.
A towering figure. Massive. Armored. Its body fused from shattered plates of code and corrupted steel, its helm cracked open into a void where a face should've been.
The light pulsed, dimmed… and the air went still.
Erevan took one slow, horrified step back. "Please tell me that's just… a screensaver."
Kaelith's fingers tightened around her bowstring. "No."
The shadows rippled, and the Echo Warden opened its chest cavity with a metallic scream.
The sound tore through the chamber like a file being shredded.
And then it moved.
The Echo Warden towered before them, a grotesque monument of corrupted steel and fractured armor. Static bled from its body like smoke, and where a face should have been, there was only a hollow void that flickered with dying light.
When it roared, the sound wasn't sound at all—it was pain. Like a thousand shredded files being devoured at once. The vibration crawled through Erevan's chest, making his ribs ache and his teeth buzz.
He stumbled backward, eyes wide. "Nope. Absolutely not. I'm out. Hard pass."
But there was nowhere to run. The Obelisk's walls pulsed in sync with the creature, sealing them in a cage of warped geometry.
Kaelith drew her bow in one smooth motion, her jaw set tight. "We cannot flee," she said sharply. "If the Obelisk collapses, the plains go with it."
"Cool, cool," Erevan muttered. "Love being responsible for reality. Totally what I signed up for."
The Warden moved—fast. Too fast.
Its blade, half-sword and half-scythe, came crashing down. The floor screamed beneath the impact, splitting into jagged fragments that dissolved into raw static.
Erevan threw himself sideways, rolling across broken geometry that flickered under his hands like unstable pixels.
Kaelith loosed three arrows in rapid succession, each one striking clean—but the Warden barely flinched. Its wounds sealed instantly, glitch-light crawling back into the cracks.
Erevan swore under his breath. "Alright, glitch-boy. Two can play broken."
He held up his palm, praying the system wouldn't crash on him now. The HUD flickered—and then something blinked into existence.
([Skill Generated: ERROR_SUMMON.exe])
(Effect: Randomized Companion Call)
(Duration: 30 seconds)
Erevan stared blankly. "…Please don't be another slime."
A burst of light exploded beside him. When it faded, a small chicken stood there—wearing a tiny knight's helm.
"…Seriously?" he groaned.
The chicken squawked loudly, flapped its wings, and then—charged.
"Wait, what are you—" Erevan started, but the chicken was already mid-flight.
It hit the Warden square in the chest and detonated in a burst of radiant light.
The explosion shook the entire chamber. The creature staggered, fragments of corrupted code raining down like falling stars.
([Damage Dealt: 1,242 Critical!])
Erevan blinked in shock. "Okay. I take it back. Chicken MVP!"
Kaelith didn't waste the opening. Her eyes sharpened, and her next arrow flared with ethereal energy. She loosed it straight through the crack in the Warden's helm.
The shot hit true.
A flash of light.
A sound like glass fracturing.
The Warden convulsed, its body glitching violently as pieces of its armor collapsed inward.
Erevan clenched his fists. The corrupted air crackled around him, feeding him like raw lightning. His vision blurred, stats spiking in a sudden overload.
He leapt forward—fist glowing with unstable energy—and slammed it into the Warden's chest.
([Damage Dealt: 3,110 Overload!])
The impact rippled through the chamber.
The Warden's massive frame locked up, trembling as glitch-light poured from its cracks like liquid fire. For a moment, it seemed to scream, but no sound came out—just a flicker of static, and then silence.
The creature shattered.
Light exploded outward, fragments of data swirling before fading into nothing.
Then came the ping.
([Quest Stage Two Complete])
(Reward: Rare Skill – Glitch Step)
(EXP +3,000)
([Skill Acquired: Glitch Step])
(Effect: Allows user to step through corrupted space, teleporting short distances. Warning: May cause unpredictable results.)
Erevan dropped to his knees, breathing hard, sweat dripping down his temples. "Now that's what I'm talking about…"
Sir Quacksalot waddled up beside him, patting his knee with a tiny flipper as if saying good job, idiot.
Kaelith lowered her bow, her face pale and unreadable. Her gaze lingered on the dimming crystal at the Obelisk's core. "This place isn't just wrong," she whispered. "It's… awake. And I fear we've only stirred it."
Erevan forced a laugh, though it came out tired and hollow. "Yeah, you're probably right. And I'm sure that's not going to come back to bite us in any horrifying way."
The hum of the Obelisk deepened. The shards floating near the core pulsed one last time—and a thousand whispering voices spoke as one.
"The system lies. The key must not be gathered. Beware… the Patch."
Erevan froze. The words curled through his head like frost, sharp and cold.
He looked at Quacksalot. "You heard that, right? Beware the Patch. Whatever that means."
The penguin quacked confidently and tilted his hat.
Despite everything, Erevan grinned. The ridiculous little creature somehow made the tension bearable.
But the smile didn't last. Not really.
Because as he glanced back at the shards of broken code drifting lazily through the air, something in his chest twisted.
This wasn't just another bug. Not some random system error.
This was intentional.
Someone—or something—was behind it. Watching. Waiting.
He reached out, fingertips brushing a hovering fragment. The code shimmered like liquid light, whispering in patterns that almost made sense.
Kaelith's voice broke through his spiraling thoughts. "We should go. The Obelisk is unstable. Staying here longer… isn't wise."
Erevan nodded, forcing himself to turn away. "Yeah. Yeah, right." He paused, glancing at his penguin companion. "But I'm keeping Quacksalot. Non-negotiable."
Kaelith's lips twitched, halfway between a smile and a sigh. She muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like a prayer—or maybe a curse.
Together, they stepped out of the Obelisk.
The hum behind them softened into silence. The fractured plains shimmered, steadying slightly, as if the world itself exhaled.
But Erevan knew better.
The echoes weren't gone. Just quiet.
The Obelisk's warnings still lingered in his mind, heavy as lead.
Because in a world built on broken code and half-truths… anomalies weren't accidents.
They were targets.
And Erevan Arclight had just painted one on his back.