The Prototype Shard pulsed in Erevan's hand like a living heartbeat.
Not steady, not calm.
It throbbed erratically, almost desperate, like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to exist or shatter apart entirely.
The colors inside it kept changing—deep blue, then crimson, then a sickly static white—each shift leaving faint afterimages that danced across his vision. Holding it felt wrong, like cradling something that wasn't meant for this world. It hummed against his palm, a low vibration that crawled up his arm and into his bones until his entire body buzzed. Every hair on his skin seemed to awaken, alert, alive.
Kaelith didn't move. Her bow was drawn, but her eyes weren't on him—they were locked on the shard. Her stance was tight, breath held. Even her voice came out like a blade sliding from its sheath.
"It's not just loot," she said softly. "That thing feels alive… and not in a good way."
Erevan gave a shaky laugh, though his grip didn't loosen. "Yeah, well, welcome to my inventory. Every shiny thing I pick up either screams, explodes, or summons homicidal poultry. Honestly, this one's… kind of an improvement."
The shard pulsed again, sharper this time, as if mocking him.
A flicker of static shimmered across his vision. Then another.
[System Notice: Anomaly Detected]
[Prototype Shard attempting to interface…]
[Warning: This action may corrupt stability]
[Proceed? Y/N]
Erevan groaned, dragging a hand down his face. "Oh great. Another 'might kill you' prompt. Because clearly, I don't have enough of those."
Kaelith lowered her bow slightly but her tone hardened, the warning clear. "Don't even think about it, Erevan."
He gave her a grin that was half-charm, half-nervous twitch. "What's the worst that happens? I explode? Been there. Survived that."
Still, his thumb hovered over the glowing YES prompt. The warning didn't feel like a game mechanic this time. It felt like the shard itself was daring him.
Sir Quacksalot flapped onto his head with a furious quack, wings puffed up like a tiny feathery guardian. Whether it was protest or encouragement, Erevan couldn't tell.
Then Kaelith's voice, firm and low, cut through the tension. "Erevan. Look around you."
He did.
And his stomach dropped.
The forest wasn't just wrong anymore—it was coming apart.
The trees bent at impossible angles, their trunks rippling like liquid mirrors. The rivers flowed upward, twisting into the sky before dripping back down in lazy streams of light. The air itself shimmered, like cracked glass held together by sheer will.
Every few seconds, the world flickered, showing… other versions of itself. Dead trees, burnt grass, broken skies—all flashing in and out of existence like a dying hologram.
Erevan swallowed hard. "Okay, yeah. That's… not normal."
Kaelith's tone softened, but there was an edge of dread in it. "This world's collapsing faster than we thought. That shard is making it worse."
The ground trembled beneath them, the vibration so deep it rattled his teeth. A gust of wind whipped past, tasting like metal and ozone. Before either of them could speak, the system screamed across Erevan's vision:
[World Event Triggered: Shard Resonance]
[Nearby Entities Corrupted: 3]
From the treeline ahead, the air began to distort. Figures emerged—three of them.
They had once been players. He could see it in their armor, in the faint, glitching remains of guild emblems burned into their cloaks. But now their bodies shimmered like cracked glass, their movements stiff and broken, like puppets with tangled strings.
Their faces were hollow. Eyes nothing but static.
Kaelith drew her bow again, jaw tight. "Corrupted."
The lead one opened its mouth, and instead of words, a stream of raw black code spilled out, twisting into the wind like smoke.
Erevan's stomach twisted. "Okay. Talking's off the table. Great. We're doing this the hard way."
The corrupted moved first.
A glitching blur, their limbs snapping between frames of movement like someone was fast-forwarding and rewinding reality all at once.
Kaelith fired before they even reached her.
Her bowstring sang, the arrow slicing through the nearest corrupted's chest in a blaze of digital fire. It hit.
It should've dropped it.
But the thing didn't fall.
Its body shattered into floating shards of glass and data—then pulled itself back together with a sickening pop, reforming as if the arrow had never existed.
Kaelith's jaw tightened. "They're regenerating."
Erevan took a single step forward, eyes narrowing. "Guess we're doing this the old-fashioned way."
The shard in his hand pulsed, almost in rhythm with his heartbeat. Its glow matched the tempo of his pulse until he couldn't tell where his own energy ended and the shard's began.
He tossed it upward, letting it hover midair, spinning like a slow coin caught in strobe light.
[Ability Echo Activated]
The world warped.
The pulse of the shard synced with him completely, and for a heartbeat, he saw the corrupted before they moved—every flicker, every twitch of code, every impossible angle of their broken bodies.
Then he moved too.
Reality flickered.
His body slipped between frames of existence, one second here, the next half a breath to the left. Every step blurred like skipped footage, and every breath tasted like static.
The first corrupted lunged. Erevan didn't dodge. He phased. His hand cut through the air, syncing with the creature's glitch pattern—and his fist connected just as the corrupted rematerialized.
The result was violent.
Its chest exploded into shards of fractured polygons that scattered like glass dust, light trailing behind them before fading away.
Erevan froze, blinking, hand trembling. "Whoa." He laughed breathlessly. "Okay. That was… new. And kind of awesome."
[Echo Effect: Unstable. Random Mutation Triggered.]
Pain lanced up his arm. He gasped, watching as his hand warped for a split second—skin blurring, bones glowing, a second spectral arm flickering in and out beside it—before snapping back to normal.
"Right," he hissed through clenched teeth. "And there's the downside."
The shard pulsed faster now, hungrier.
The second corrupted came at him, blade dragging a line of burning static through the air. Erevan ducked—instinctively, desperately—yet the world fractured again.
Two realities split before his eyes.
In one, he ducked right.
In the other, he ducked left.
His body hesitated, trembling between both choices for a single impossible heartbeat before the world chose for him.
[System Glitch: Echo Timeline Fracture]
Outcome: Randomized.
He blinked—and found himself behind the corrupted instead. The blade cut through empty space where he'd been, leaving only a trail of black static.
Erevan grinned, wild and breathless. "Okay. I could definitely get used to this."
Kaelith moved beside him like fire and shadow, her arrows slicing through the flickering enemies, each shot landing with surgical precision. The last corrupted twisted mid-fall, hissing like broken code before her arrow pierced its head and ended it in a blinding pulse of light.
She didn't celebrate. Her gaze shot to him instead, sharp and searching. "Erevan… that shard is bleeding into you. You feel it, don't you?"
He opened his mouth to deny it.
Then the shard floated down on its own, nestling into his palm like it belonged there. The glow matched his pulse exactly.
[Prototype Shard Integration: 12%]
His grin faltered. "Integration? Oh, perfect. Possession storyline unlocked. My favorite."
The world convulsed.
The crooked trees dissolved, melting into strips of black code. The ground flickered like an old screen trying to keep its image alive.
Then words scrawled across the air in jagged, vibrating text:
[Hidden Quest Unlocked: Shards of Tomorrow]
Objective: Discover the origin of the Prototype Shards.
Reward: ???
Warning: Quest is mandatory. Failure = Termination.
Kaelith's voice dropped into something cold. "Mandatory?"
Erevan let out a shaky laugh, half hysterical. "Well… at least I'll never get fired."
The air vibrated with that laugh—then broke.
The ground split. The sky cracked.
And something huge began to wake.
The forest broke apart.
Reality folded in on itself like paper catching fire.
From the burning fragments of sky, something massive began to rise — a figure made of raw, jagged light and broken geometry. It stood tall enough to scrape the clouds, its body a skeletal monument of living code, dripping black static like molten tar.
Its roar wasn't sound. It was data overload. The kind of noise that bypassed ears entirely and went straight to bone and nerve.
Kaelith staggered back, one arm over her face. "That's not a monster," she whispered. "That's a… system guardian."
The shard in Erevan's hand answered before he could. Its light flared violently, resonating with the creature's very presence.
[Prototype Shard Integration: 18%]
Erevan stared at the pulsing crystal, his pulse syncing with its rhythm. "Oh no," he muttered. "You're not seriously suggesting I fight that, are you?"
The shard pulsed again.
Once.
Twice.
Then hard enough that his vision blurred.
He grit his teeth and looked up at the towering guardian. "Fine," he said, his voice steadying. "Let's see who breaks first."
The guardian slammed both hands into the fractured ground. The impact rippled through the air, sending shards of terrain spiraling upward like glass in slow motion. Erevan threw himself aside, the shockwave knocking him off balance.
Kaelith fired arrow after arrow, each one flaring with bright orange light. They struck the guardian's body, exploding into fire and code, but the wounds sealed almost instantly. "It's adapting!" she shouted. "It's learning from every hit!"
"Good," Erevan hissed, crouching low, his grin sharp. "I like fast learners."
He flicked his wrist, the shard hovering near his chest like a heartbeat made visible.
[Ability Echo Activated]
Everything stilled for half a breath. Then the fight became pure chaos.
The guardian's attacks came too fast to track — massive limbs crashing down, carving trenches in the digital ground. Erevan dodged through the air itself, his form flickering between frames, phasing in and out of existence with every move. His punches didn't meet flesh or metal — they met glitches, syncing to the guardian's rhythm until his blows echoed its own power back against it.
Each strike detonated in a burst of glitch-light, scattering fragments of corrupted code across the sky.
Kaelith's arrows joined the dance — fiery streaks arcing past him, illuminating the world like shooting stars. For every shot she fired, he matched it with motion, weaving through explosions like a thread of living static.
[Prototype Shard Integration: 25%]
Erevan felt the energy flood him, crawling under his skin. His heart raced too fast. His breath came too short.
But he couldn't stop.
Every time he blinked, he saw multiple versions of himself — one attacking high, another ducking low, another falling back.
The timelines overlapped, shimmering and folding in on one another.
[Echo Timeline Fracture Detected]
He laughed, breathless. "Okay, that's… mildly horrifying. And also kind of awesome."
The guardian's next swing nearly ended him. Its massive hand tore through the air, ripping the ground into floating debris. Erevan dodged at the last second, phasing through the strike — but the feedback hit him anyway, throwing him across the battlefield.
He landed hard, rolling until his back hit what used to be a tree. Every nerve screamed.
Kaelith's voice reached him through the static. "You can't keep this up! It's killing you!"
He spat blood and grinned. "Then I'll just die spectacularly."
[Echo Effect: Random Mutation Triggered]
Light surged around him. For a heartbeat, his entire arm became a streak of transparent energy, veins glowing like molten threads of data. His second spectral limb appeared again, slamming forward in sync with his real one.
The guardian reeled, pieces of its body disintegrating into shards of pure noise.
Kaelith's next arrow hit that exact spot, piercing through the wound. The impact rippled outward, and for the first time, the giant faltered.
Erevan's eyes widened. "Ha! Look at that. Teamwork."
[Prototype Shard Integration: 40%]
The shard pulsed faster, almost desperate now. Its light crawled over his hand, up his arm, searing into his veins.
The guardian howled, and its form began to distort — its head splitting into several faces, each one screaming in a different pitch of feedback. Arms multiplied, dragging along the void, tearing at the boundaries of the world itself.
Kaelith's voice broke through the roar. "Erevan! Focus on the shard! Don't let it consume you!"
He clenched his fist around it. "No. Not consume. Control."
The shard's rhythm matched his heartbeat, faster, faster—until it wasn't clear who was syncing with who.
He darted forward, the battlefield tilting around him, fragments of code raining down like shattered glass.
Every motion, every dodge, every strike was instinct now. His body moved on its own, guided by something deeper, something beyond logic.
The guardian raised its hand for one final, annihilating strike.
Erevan met it head-on.
[Prototype Shard Integration: 65%]
Light swallowed everything.
The impact wasn't an explosion — it was correction. The world blinked, stuttered, and then the guardian simply ceased to exist. One second it was there, the next it was scattered dust in a storm of broken pixels.
Silence followed.
Just the faint hum of the shard, glowing softly in his trembling hand.
Kaelith was the first to move. She stumbled toward him, eyes wide, voice trembling. "You… you did it."
Erevan dropped to his knees, laughing weakly. "Pretty sure my definition of 'did it' includes less near-death and more celebration."
She knelt beside him, pressing a hand to his shoulder. "That shard isn't done with you, Erevan. I can feel it."
He looked at the crystal still floating just above his palm. It pulsed slowly now — calm, deliberate, like a heartbeat that had finally found its rhythm.
[Prototype Shard Integration: 75%]
[New Trait Stability: 40%]
Erevan exhaled, letting the tension drain out of him. His grin was tired, but real. "Well… at least the system can't accuse me of slacking off."
Kaelith shook her head, her voice soft but firm. "This isn't a win. It's a warning. That shard — it's not a tool. It's a clock. And it's ticking."
The air shimmered.
The broken terrain began to mend itself, fragments of trees reforming into uneven shapes, grass growing out of static patches. The Prototype Forest faded away, leaving behind a quiet stillness.
Erevan stood, still holding the shard, watching its faint glow dance against his fingertips. The chaotic pulse had quieted, but he could feel it deep inside, whispering, waiting.
He smiled faintly.
Because for the first time, he didn't feel entirely human anymore.
He felt like something new.
Something caught between code and consciousness.
He was an echo.