The first tremor didn't come from the ground.
It came from reality itself—a low ripple that made the sky quiver like stretched glass about to shatter. For a heartbeat, the air went still. Then it split open.
Something clawed its way out of the fracture.
Erevan froze, breath caught halfway in his chest.
The thing rising before him wasn't alive in any way that made sense. A skeletal titan, built from jagged metal and streaming digits of raw, living code, heaved itself upright. Each movement made the world flicker, like existence couldn't decide what shape this creature was supposed to take.
Sometimes smooth.
Sometimes fractured.
Sometimes… simply gone.
Its skull split down the center, and from within came a sound that wasn't sound at all—just pure feedback. A scream of broken data that scraped against Erevan's bones and made his teeth ache like static in his head.
Kaelith stumbled back, hands flying to her ears. The noise was so sharp it looked like it hurt her. Even Sir Quacksalot toppled sideways into the grass, wings flapping weakly under the invisible pressure.
A glowing message bled across Erevan's vision.
(System Alert: Guardian of the Broken Code Detected)
(Classification: Catastrophic Entity)
(Threat Level: Impossible)
Erevan squinted at the word Impossible. "Oh great," he muttered, voice dry despite the tremor in his chest. "That's the devs' polite way of saying: bend over and die."
The titan shifted.
One massive arm lifted, each finger a blade of molten binary. With a lazy sweep, the world cracked. The ground split like a mirror under a hammer, chunks of dirt and stone lifting, drifting weightlessly into the air.
Reality was unraveling.
Kaelith moved first. Three arrows flashed between her fingers. She fired in one smooth, desperate motion, the shafts glowing with streaks of digital flame.
The arrows struck the creature's skull—then fizzled out, erased midair.
No impact. No sound. Just gone.
"Yeah," Erevan called out, voice half a shout, half a laugh. "That looked expensive."
Kaelith's jaw tightened. Her eyes never left the thing towering above them. "This isn't a fight we can win."
The guardian leaned closer. The movement was slow but deliberate, and with it came a tearing noise—like paper ripping in the sky. Its chest split open, revealing a hundred, no, a thousand glowing red eyes. Each one blinked in perfect sync, locking onto Erevan.
Another message slashed into view.
(Target Acquired: Anomaly Erevan Arclight)
(Directive: Eradicate Error)
Erevan threw his arms up, voice cracking. "Why is it always me?!"
The response was a blast of pure static.
A beam of white noise screamed across the battlefield, annihilating everything it touched. Erevan dove, rolling just as the beam ripped through where he'd stood. The space it hit didn't burn or explode—it deleted.
The grass, the soil, even the air just... vanished.
A black wound in reality yawned open before him.
Erevan gaped. "Okay. Cool. So it's not just killing me—it's uninstalling reality."
Kaelith fired again, but the arrows bent midflight, curving away as though the world itself rejected them. She cursed—short, sharp, and ancient—and sprinted to him, yanking him up by the arm.
"We have to run!"
"Run where?!" Erevan barked, gesturing at the fractured horizon. "That thing's got cheat codes!"
The shard in his hand pulsed violently, a burn racing up his arm.
(Prototype Shard Integration: 25%)
(Warning: Instability Rising)
Erevan's stomach dropped. He could feel it—like a live wire thrumming under his skin. The shard wasn't just reacting to the chaos. It was hungry.
"Guess we don't have a choice," he muttered, tightening his grip.
He slammed the shard against his chest.
"Fine. Integrate, you glitchy piece of junk."
(Integration Accelerating…)
(System Error: Merge Not Authorized)
(Forcing Override…)
Pain hit him instantly.
Not pain like a cut or burn—pain that rewrote him. Every nerve screamed, his vision tearing apart into jagged frames. The world turned sideways, upside down, then nowhere at all.
Kaelith's voice barely broke through the distortion. "Erevan!"
The guardian moved, its massive blade-fingers descending—
And Erevan vanished.
He didn't think. Didn't plan. One heartbeat he was about to die, and the next, he was behind the titan, lungs heaving, body flickering in and out of focus.
(Echo Activated: Copied Ability – Reality Skip)
(Duration: 5 seconds)
He bent over, gasping for breath. "Oh… oh that's—holy crap—that's actually kinda badass."
The guardian's eyes—all thousand of them—snapped toward him at once.
Its roar cracked the air, splitting branches, peeling bark, shaking the world itself.
Kaelith stared at him, wide-eyed. "You… moved like it. You used its ability."
Erevan straightened, smirking even as pain danced behind his grin. "Guess I'm finally learning to cheat back."
The shard burned hotter against Erevan's chest than he could have imagined, like molten glass pressed to his ribs.
Every nerve felt alive, screaming, rewiring itself. His vision fractured into a thousand jagged slivers—sideways, upside down, somewhere else entirely—and the world shifted around him like a broken hologram.
Pain tore through him in waves, each one sharper than the last. He gasped, fingers curling around the shard, knuckles white, teeth clenched. The ground beneath his boots seemed to quiver in sympathy, cracking in jagged patterns that mirrored the chaos inside him.
Kaelith's voice cut through the storm, fragile but fierce. "Erevan! Fight it! Don't let it swallow you whole!"
He wanted to answer—wanted to scream—but every word caught in his chest, twisted into static. The shard was speaking now, not with words, but with pulses that rattled his very bones.
Power. Freedom. Release. You are not bound.
Erevan gritted his teeth, forcing himself upright. Each breath was a razor cutting through his lungs. His chest pulsed with light and heat, threads of glitched energy crawling along his skin like tiny, biting worms.
And then it happened.
His body snapped into motion on its own. Reflex and shard merged, instinct overriding thought. With a surge of raw, alien force, he blurred forward, phasing past the guardian's descending blade. Reality seemed to skip with him, stretching and compressing in impossible ways.
(Echo Activated: Reality Copy – Duration: 10 seconds)
Erevan's first strike wasn't strength. It wasn't precision. It was imitation. Every motion the guardian had made a heartbeat ago was now his own, flowing through him like a borrowed rhythm. He landed behind the titan, fist colliding with its armored joint. Sparks of corrupted light burst outward, but the guardian barely staggered.
Pain lanced up his arm. His skin flared, shifting and splitting into glitched overlays, as though part of him was no longer entirely Erevan. He staggered, every step a fight to stay tethered to his own body.
Kaelith lunged in, blade flashing, trying to hold the guardian's attention. Her eyes burned with a mixture of fear and determination, and for a split second, he caught the way her lips trembled with unspoken worry.
"Erevan!" she shouted, voice sharp, snapping him back to the moment. "Control the shard, or it'll devour you before that thing does!"
He swallowed, tasting copper and static. The shard's whispers had grown insistent, wrapping around his thoughts, tugging at the edges of his mind. You are not bound. You are power. Take it.
His fists clenched, the shard's chaotic pulse syncing with his heartbeat. The world wavered, bending around him in impossible angles. He felt every possible strike, every possible dodge, before he even moved—like seeing a thousand futures in a single blink.
The guardian swung again, massive arm slicing through air and light. Erevan didn't think—he just was.
He twisted, phased, struck. Sparks erupted where his fists met the titan, fractures of reality exploding like glass. A secondary arm of glowing, glitching energy manifested for a heartbeat, swinging with him before snapping back. Pain screamed in tandem with exhilaration.
"This… this is insane," he muttered, teeth gritted. "And… kinda awesome."
Kaelith stumbled beside him, breath ragged, sweat dripping down her brow. "You're pushing it too far! The shard… it's not stable yet. Don't let it overwhelm you!"
But Erevan could barely hear her over the roar inside his own chest—the shard, alive, pulsing, demanding. It was chaos in his veins, every heartbeat another code fragment, another impossible rhythm flowing through his body.
(Prototype Shard Integration: 40%)
The shard flared, feeding him, binding him, reshaping him. His vision split into multiple frames, possibilities flickering like broken mirrors. He could see the guardian's next moves before it made them, a symphony of destruction laid bare before him.
His own voice echoed back at him from deep inside, distorted, mocking: You are not hero. You are anomaly.
Erevan laughed—half in fear, half in disbelief. "Yeah… I can feel that. Loud and clear."
The world trembled with every beat of his pulse, the shard's energy writhing in his chest like it had a heartbeat of its own. Every step, every strike, every dodge drew him closer to the edge. Edge of power, edge of self.
And for the first time, he tasted it: the raw, addictive thrill of being more than just human. Of being an echo of something… greater, dangerous, and wholly unpredictable.
The guardian loomed above them, a monstrous tower of jagged code and fractured light. Every step it took sent ripples across the unstable ground, shards of earth lifting and spinning as if the world itself were surrendering. Its eyes—cold, merciless, countless—locked on Erevan like a predator tuning in on the heartbeat of its prey.
Kaelith moved beside him, blade glinting as she dodged a swipe that could have shattered a mountain. Sparks of fractured energy flew around them, a storm of light and code. Her breaths came in sharp bursts, but her eyes never left the titan.
"This… this isn't like the others," she muttered, voice tight. "It's synchronized. With the system. One mistake and we're erased."
Erevan swallowed, chest burning, vision still flickering between clarity and corrupted shards. He grinned, crooked and tired, a little reckless.
"Good thing mistakes are my specialty," he said, letting the shard thrum in his chest, pulsing like a heartbeat synced to chaos itself.
The guardian's massive arm swung down. Erevan dove, the ground beneath shattering, sending jagged fragments flying like shards of broken glass. His lungs screamed, his muscles ached, but the shard flared in response—responded to him, merged with his pulse, whispered secrets he hadn't thought he'd understand.
Power. Unchain it. You are anomaly.
Erevan's hands glowed with fractured energy. His fists struck again, not with force but with rhythm, each hit a pulse of corrupted resonance. The guardian staggered for a fraction of a second, almost human in its hesitation.
Kaelith froze, eyes wide, lips parted. "That… wasn't normal."
"Yeah," Erevan muttered, chest heaving, a thin line of blood at the corner of his mouth. "I'm… starting to get the feeling I'm not either."
The shard pulsed faster, bright lines of glitching energy crawling over his arms and chest. Whispers tangled in his mind, sometimes commands, sometimes promises, sometimes threats. You could end it all. Or be the end itself.
Erevan's fingers curled into fists, grounding himself. Every nerve screamed with warning, but he felt the shard's pulse sync with his own heartbeat. This is it. Now or nothing.
The guardian's next strike was impossibly fast, a sweeping blow designed to erase everything in its path. He could feel Kaelith's panic, hear it like a heartbeat next to his own. She was counting on him. She always did.
"You ready?" he muttered under his breath, though it sounded more like a challenge to himself than to her.
Her answer was a nod, sharp, fierce, unwavering. Together, they danced along the edges of annihilation—blade and pulse, strike and phase, light and shadow.
The shard surged, filling him with everything it had stored, all the chaotic energy, all the impossible possibilities. Reality bent around him, fragments of time and space splitting, overlapping. He could see every strike, every dodge, every failure before it happened—and yet it didn't matter. He acted, unbound, unpredictable.
Kaelith's blade clashed with the guardian's arm, sparks flying like fireworks, while Erevan phased around the titan, striking at joints, at cores, at patches of exposed code. Each pulse tore him further from himself, but every strike was perfect, almost effortless.
This… this is the shard. This is me. And maybe… both.
The guardian's attacks grew more violent, more desperate. Its eyes narrowed. For the first time, Erevan felt hesitation ripple through its monstrous form.
The shard's whispers crescendoed, threading through every thought, every nerve. Unleash it. Stop resisting. Claim what you are.
Erevan's chest heaved. Sweat burned his eyes, his skin prickled with glitch-light crawling like tiny spiders, but he forced himself to stand taller. I'm not letting it decide for me.
Kaelith shouted, voice sharp over the roar of the collapsing ground. "Erevan! If there's anything you've been holding back—now!"
The shards of energy across his skin flared violently, threads of shadow and light coiling and snapping. His vision split into multiple possibilities, all real, all screaming for attention. He clenched his fists, teeth gritted, mind teetering on the edge.
"If I give in… I don't know what happens," he rasped, voice raw.
Her eyes met his, fierce, unwavering. "Then decide who you are before it decides for you."
Silence. Just for a heartbeat.
And then the shard roared.
You are not a hero. You are an anomaly. Claim it.
The fractured ground beneath him pulsed in perfect rhythm with his heartbeat. Lines of corrupted energy snaked outward like veins across reality. The guardian paused, hesitation flickering in its endless eyes.
Erevan lifted his head, grin tugging at the corner of his lips, chaos threading through every movement.
"Fine. Let's see what happens when the error fights back."
The shard surged, raw power coursing through him. Reality cracked, bent, and flowed around his fists. The anomaly within him had awoken. And for the first time, he felt truly untouchable.