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The Guardian knelt, and for a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath.
Its colossal frame, a jagged amalgam of skeletal metal and streaming numbers, trembled as though reality itself were questioning its own rules. Every movement flickered like a broken signal, like the forest around them couldn't decide if it existed at all.
Erevan's chest thumped painfully fast. Impossible. This is impossible. How was it still… standing?
A sharp, intrusive window burned across his vision.
[Guardian of the Broken Code Detected]
Classification: Catastrophic Entity
Threat Level: Impossible
He blinked at the words, voice tight, a twitch of sarcasm sneaking in. "Impossible? Perfect. Love the optimism, system. Really comforting."
The Guardian lifted a single arm. Fingers stretched like blades forged from raw binary, slicing the air with precision. With a casual swipe, the earth beneath them fractured. Chunks of the forest cracked and floated skyward, spinning slowly as if gravity itself had decided to quit for the day.
Kaelith's hands moved on instinct. Three arrows nocked simultaneously, streaking through the chaotic air, glowing with a fierce, digital fire. And then… nothing. The arrows shattered midair, dissolving into useless motes of light.
Erevan flailed a hand toward the spectacle. "Yeah… that looked expensive." His voice barely carried over the mechanical roar that vibrated through every bone in his body.
Kaelith's jaw clenched. "This isn't a fight we can win, Erevan! Not like this!"
The Guardian bent lower, and a thousand blinking red eyes emerged across its chest. Each one locked onto him, each one a silent accusation, a spotlight of intent that made him feel microscopic, exposed, pinned.
[Target Acquired: Anomaly Erevan Arclight]
[Directive: Eradicate Error]
Erevan's mouth fell open. "Why is it always me?!"
Before he could breathe another word, a beam of pure static erupted from where he'd stood. He dove instinctively, rolling through air that didn't quite feel real. The blast didn't burn or explode—it erased. The grass, the dirt, even the air vanished into raw black nothingness, leaving an impossible void in the place he had occupied.
"Okay. Cool. So it's not just trying to kill me—it's uninstalling reality." He muttered, voice shaky with both awe and panic.
Kaelith fired again, but her arrows bent mid-flight, whipped away by invisible hands, as if the Guardian itself had rewritten the physics around them. She grabbed his arm, yanking him upright. "We have to run. Now!"
"Run where?" Erevan shouted, scanning the fractured horizon. "It's got cheat codes! Look at this!"
The shard in his chest pulsed violently, its vibration almost anticipatory, syncing with his accelerated heartbeat.
[Prototype Shard Integration: 25%]
[Warning: Instability Rising]
Erevan swallowed hard, gripping it like his life depended on it—because it did. "Fine. Integrate, you glitchy piece of junk. Do your thing."
Pain shot through him, sharp as knives, electric as static fire. His skin flickered, shifting textures across every inch of him. His vision fractured into jagged frames: upright, sideways, upside-down, then nothing at all.
The Guardian's massive arm descended, its blade-finger aimed to split him clean in two. Every instinct in his body screamed. And then… he wasn't there.
Instinct and glitch fused. Erevan blurred, stuttered out of existence, then reappeared behind the Guardian, gasping for air, muscles trembling with adrenaline.
[Echo Activated: Copied Ability – Reality Skip]
[Duration: 5 seconds]
"Oh… that's… actually kinda badass," he panted, awe and disbelief warring in his chest.
The Guardian's many eyes swiveled, a synchronized, mechanical roar splitting the air.
Kaelith's voice cut through the chaos, sharp and trembling. "You… moved like it! You used its ability!"
Erevan's lips quirked into a crooked grin, one corner pulling up despite the pounding in his chest. "Guess I'm finally learning to cheat back."
The shard in his chest pulsed harder, louder, its rhythm thundering in tune with his heartbeat. A new skill flickered into view.
[New Skill Unlocked: Fragment Slash]
[Effect: Cut through reality at unstable angles. May backfire.]
He muttered, half to himself, half to the system: "Don't love the 'may backfire' part, but okay."
His hand erupted into jagged shards of distorted space. The air itself tore as he slashed upward. The Guardian's arm severed cleanly, edges flickering like corrupted textures. The entity let out a howl of pure static, and the severed limb dissolved into cascading strings of numbers, floating briefly before scattering into nothing.
Erevan blinked, staring at the wreckage of his handiwork. "Holy crap… I actually hurt it."
Kaelith's face was pale. "You don't understand. That wasn't supposed to be possible."
A new system notice flickered across his vision, panicked and unsteady.
[Error: Guardian Integrity Compromised]
[Directive Adjusted: Terminate Anomaly Immediately]
The Guardian's chest split, revealing a glowing core, pulsating like a sun ready to detonate. Kaelith grabbed his arm, voice sharp. "If it releases that, this whole zone is gone!"
Erevan's throat went dry. "…So we either kill it… or get deleted."
Sir Quacksalot waddled forward, quacking furiously, radiating defiance against impossible odds. Erevan laughed hoarsely. "The duck's tanking it! Oh, I love this stupid world."
Kaelith shook her head, eyes fierce. "Focus! Your shard—use it!"
Erevan clenched his teeth, slammed the Prototype Shard into his chest. The world fractured around him, reality bleeding into itself. The Guardian froze, caught in the tension between obedience and collapse.
[Prototype Shard Resonance Detected]
[Override Option Available]
[Would you like to attempt Guardian Hijack?]
Erevan's grin was wild, unhinged. "Wait… I can… hijack it?"
Kaelith's hand tightened on his shoulder. "Erevan—don't. You can't control something like that!"
He hesitated just a heartbeat. And then he shoved YES.
Pain. Pure, screaming, unrelenting pain.
The shard flared, molten fire ripping through Erevan's chest. Symbols, sequences, raw streams of code poured into his vision, overlaying reality like a storm of fractured glass. Every nerve in his body felt alive, burning, rewriting him from the inside out.
Kaelith's voice was distant, barely audible over the roar inside his skull. "Erevan! Don't—don't do this! You can't survive it!"
He gritted his teeth. Survive? Who said anything about surviving?
The Guardian's massive form shuddered as chains of corrupted code wrapped around its jagged frame. Each pulse of the shard pulled harder, a tidal wave of raw energy that fused with his own body. He felt its heartbeat—or whatever approximated one in that impossible machine—merge with his own.
Hijack Progress: 61%… 78%… 92%
Erevan's lungs burned. His vision fractured into kaleidoscopic shards, overlapping frames of himself, the Guardian, the world tearing apart around them. This is… insane. I can feel every wire, every byte, every shred of code inside it—and inside me.
"Not today, you oversized antivirus!" he roared, teeth bared, voice cracking in exhilaration and terror.
Hijack Success: 100%
Guardian Subjugated
The titan collapsed to one knee, a massive, trembling thing now obedient. Its eyes dimmed, its body folding as if paying allegiance to a new master. Erevan staggered, chest heaving, body slick with sweat and static energy. He laughed shakily.
"Yeah… no big deal. Just rewriting god-level code on a Tuesday," he muttered, voice dry but wild.
Kaelith knelt beside him, eyes wide and unsteady. "Erevan… you just enslaved a catastrophic system guardian."
"Enslaved? I prefer… 'reprogrammed with extreme prejudice.'" His grin was crooked, blood mixing with sweat, but inside, his mind spun with an intoxicating, terrifying clarity.
Yet even as the Guardian bowed, the sky itself tore, threads of light—or no, threads of raw code—snaking down from the Watcher's omniscient eye. They twisted and coiled, striking at the Guardian like harpoons of inevitability.
"No! Stay with me, damn it!" Erevan shouted, gripping the shard like a lifeline, feeling it thrum in tune with every frantic heartbeat.
Kaelith's hand clamped his shoulder, voice straining over the noise of unraveling reality. "You can't fight that! It's not just an enemy—it's the system's will!"
Another thread slammed into the Guardian, piercing its skull. Its remaining eye flickered—red to blue to static—before locking back onto Erevan. The titan rose just enough, a silent plea: don't let go.
The shard pulsed hotter, alive with whispers of power, survival, and dominion.
Option appeared in his mind, clearer than any system prompt before:
[Assimilate instead of Hijack. Would you like to absorb the Guardian's essence?]
Erevan blinked. Wait… eat it? Really?
Kaelith's face drained of all color. "Erevan, no one absorbs guardians. No one survives that!"
He swallowed hard, gritting teeth. "Lucky for me… I'm not 'no one.'"
He slammed YES.
The shard exploded in his chest, fire and data shredding him and then rewriting him. Every molecule, every nerve, every line of code inside him vibrated, merged, became something new. Pain screamed through every fiber of his being—but this time, pain was also power.
The Guardian's wail split the air, a sound of collapsing metal, cascading code, and molten energy spilling into Erevan like a hurricane. His skin flickered with shards of light. Bones hummed with static. His vision shattered into endless, overlapping frames. He was everywhere and nowhere at once, yet entirely himself.
Kaelith screamed, grabbing his arm. "Stop! You'll lose yourself!"
But he barely heard her. The Guardian's essence poured into him, reassembling him from the inside. He felt its weight, its strength, its perspective… and it was his now.
Assimilation reached 100%. The Guardian vanished, leaving only its raw, fused essence inside Erevan.
The world went silent.
Erevan fell to his knees, gasping. His hands shook, raised in front of him. Fingertips split into faint afterimages before snapping back. Floating shards of broken glass reflected a face—not entirely human, yet unmistakably his.
A whisper echoed in his mind, cold and calm:
[New Core Ability: Code Rend – Tear apart enemies at the code level, bypassing defenses.]
[New Passive: Guardian Echo – Partial immunity to Purge-class attacks.]
Kaelith knelt before him, gripping his face, eyes searching for the man she knew. "Erevan… do you know who you are? Do you know your name?"
Erevan blinked, voice raspy but steady. "…Erevan Arclight. Still me… mostly."
Sir Quacksalot waddled forward, quacking furiously, headbutting his knee. Somehow, the tiny duck hadn't glitched. It remained stubbornly… duck.
Erevan laughed hoarsely. "See? Even the duck believes in me. That counts for something."
And above them, the Watcher's eye was not done. Its gaze pressed down like a physical weight, threads of code writhing, calculating, deciding.
The sky cracked open. Not with thunder or lightning, but with the subtle, suffocating weight of omniscience. Threads of code, alive and thrumming, snaked down from the Watcher's eye, coiling and twisting like chains of inevitability.
From those threads, a figure emerged—a Purge Host. Cloaked in interlacing strands of shimmering light, faceless except for symbols shifting where a face should have been. Its presence pressed against Erevan's chest, heavier than gravity, colder than death.
Erevan staggered upright, fists clenching. "Well. Guess Daddy System finally decided to get personal."
Kaelith grabbed his wrist. "We run. Hide. Now."
He shook his head, teeth gritting. "Run? You've seen what happens when I run. They just send worse. It doesn't stop until I stop it."
The Purge Host raised a hand, and time seemed to hesitate. Wind stilled. The world froze in an almost unbearable silence. Then, with a flick of its finger, annihilation erupted.
Erevan instinctively crossed his arms. Code flared across his skin, forming a glitching barrier. The wave ripped through him like knives, shredding reality—but the barrier held, just barely.
Guardian Echo Passive Activated – Purge Resistance: 18%
"Eighteen percent?" Erevan muttered, voice dry. "What is this, a bad credit score?"
Kaelith fired an arrow. It shredded midair, erased by invisible defenses. "It's not fighting—it's rewriting reality!" she yelled.
The shard throbbed in his chest, begging him to act.
Option: Deploy Code Rend. Warning: Will destabilize user further.
Erevan grinned, wild and unhinged. "Yeah, yeah, warnings, blah blah. Let's go!"
His hand split into jagged pixels, slicing the air and tearing reality itself. A rip opened in the Purge Host's shoulder, spilling raw static like blood.
The Host recoiled. Kaelith's jaw dropped. "You actually hurt it."
Erevan smirked, wiping blood from his nose. "Guess I'm getting the hang of this."
The Host raised both hands, symbols glowing brighter, preparing something catastrophic. And then—the Watcher's eye blinked. Once.
The Host froze. Threads pulled back slightly, hesitation in their movement.
Erevan frowned. "…What just happened?"
The system's whisper was quieter this time, almost reluctant.
Observation Shift Detected – The Watcher is… recalculating.
For a fleeting heartbeat, Erevan felt it—not fear, not anger—but curiosity.
The Purge Host lowered its arms, watching, testing.
Erevan spat blood, wiping his mouth. "Great. So I'm an experiment now. Love that."
Kaelith's face was pale, eyes wide. "No one has ever made the Watcher hesitate… not in recorded history."
The Host tilted its head, symbols shifting with meticulous precision.
New Directive: Extract Anomaly Alive
Erevan's stomach dropped. "…Alive?"
Threads shot forward—not to kill, but to bind. Chains of light wrapped around his body, dragging him skyward despite his thrashing.
Sir Quacksalot leapt, quacking furiously, biting one thread. It snapped. The Host twitched. Kaelith fired arrow after arrow, cutting others, desperately slowing the pull.
Erevan screamed, fists clawing at the invisible chains, heart hammering. The Watcher's eye expanded, swallowing the horizon, pressing down on him like the weight of every impossible law in the universe.
And then—a system prompt appeared.
Critical Decision Point Reached
Choice A: Submit. Be taken. Discover the truth.
Choice B: Resist. Risk deletion.
The world paused. The Watcher waited. The threads writhed, ready to claim him, ready to erase him, ready to win.
Erevan clenched his fists, feeling the shard pulse violently in his chest. His lungs burned. His vision flickered, distorted, a million possible outcomes looping through his mind.
I am not a pawn.I am not a glitch.I am not your anomaly.
His lips curled into a grin, wild and reckless, because humor was all he had left. Besides, if I die, at least I'll die on my terms… not theirs.
Fists tightening, teeth grinding, eyes blazing with defiance, he stared into the infinite gaze above him.
"I'm not your pawn. I'm not your anomaly. I'm your problem."