Erevan didn't sleep. Couldn't. Not even for a breath.
Every time he closed his eyes, Kyros's grin was burned into the darkness like a brand, sharp and mocking. Sometimes it was Kyros laughing, teeth glinting with malicious delight. Other times… it was himself, but with Kyros's eyes—cold, chaotic, commanding legions of Nullifiers as if the entire world were theirs to bend.
Every blink brought fragments of things that didn't exist. Text prompts hovered in the air like intrusive ghosts. Status windows flickered over Kaelith's face, even over Sir Quacksalot's feathers, displaying metrics Erevan couldn't—or didn't want to—understand. Half-corrupted messages whispered from the void between sounds, taunting him, accusing him, crawling into his skull like tiny, sharp insects.
Kaelith sat across the flickering campfire. The metal edge of her blade caught the firelight as she sharpened it with deliberate, controlled strokes. She pretended not to notice the subtle tremors in Erevan's hands, or the flickering static leaking from the shard embedded in his chest.
But she noticed.
Of course she noticed. She always noticed.
Sir Quacksalot snored like rolling thunder, tucking his head beneath his wing. The absurdity of it was almost comforting—the duck could sleep through void storms, existential terror, and Erevan's own panicked monologues, yet would wake in an instant if someone sneezed too hard within fifty feet.
Erevan exhaled, a rough, uneven sound. He stared at the night sky—half alive with stars, half reduced to trembling wireframes of static lines.
"He's in my head," he muttered, voice low, almost bitter.
Kaelith's gaze didn't leave her blade, but the tension in her shoulders betrayed her attention.
"Kyros?" she asked, calm but sharp.
"Yeah." Erevan's fingers dug into his hair in frustration. "Every word he said keeps playing on loop, like some cursed memory I can't delete. And the worst part? He wasn't lying. I can feel it. This… thing inside me isn't slowing down. It's growing. It's hungry."
Kaelith's voice remained steady, anchored. "That doesn't mean you'll become him. You made your choice. That matters more than anything."
Erevan snorted bitterly. "Yeah, well, apparently the system doesn't agree with me." His shard pulsed violently against his chest, flickering like a trapped heartbeat. He groaned, irritation threading through exhaustion. "Look at this—stability at sixty-seven percent. Integrity failing. Fantastic. My brain is giving me pop-ups. That's… not healthy."
Kaelith finally raised her eyes to him. Silver light glinted in the fire. "Erevan. Do you trust me?"
He froze, caught off guard. "What? Of course. Always."
"Then hold onto that," Kaelith said softly, but with undeniable steel. "When the system whispers lies, I'll remind you who you are. That's what I'm here for."
For a fleeting moment, the firelight softened her features. The sharpness in her jaw, the guarded precision in her posture, all melted into something almost human. And then she turned back to her blade, and the spell was broken.
Erevan wanted to say something—thanks, maybe something dumb to cut the tension—but the shard pulsing in his chest demanded attention elsewhere. Its glow reflected in the fire, throwing twisted shadows across the dirt and the sleeping form of Sir Quacksalot.
A soft prompt appeared in his mind, jagged and intrusive: [Investigate the fragment. Analyze the Watcher Code shard he'd ripped from the Nullifier Prime.]
"Oh, for—" Erevan muttered, swiping it away. "Do these things ever let me breathe?"
Kaelith raised a brow, sharp and unimpressed. "Another quest?"
"Yeah," he muttered, rolling his eyes under his breath. "Wants me to poke the shiny murder-code I ripped out of the Prime. Because obviously, that's safe. Next, it'll want me to cuddle it and whisper sweet nothings."
Before Kaelith could respond, Sir Quacksalot shot upright with a furious squawk, wings flaring. The air shimmered unnaturally. A current of static whispered through the trees, making the fire flicker violently.
A crack split the night sky, and light spilled through, jagged and unnatural.
Out of that fracture stumbled a figure. Not a Nullifier. Not a corrupted beast. A person.
They collapsed onto the dirt, gasping, their form glitching violently between textures. One moment, armor like an adventurer; the next, a blank mannequin; then a half-rendered child, and then back again.
Erevan scrambled forward, heart hammering. "What the hell—"
The figure lifted their head, eyes wide and wild. Whispering, glitching between tones, they begged, "Help… me…"
Kaelith's blade snapped upward, ready. "It's a trap!"
But Erevan's shard throbbed in resonance, tugging him closer. Something about this figure was familiar—broken, but like him.
"Wait." He held a hand out, voice firm but tinged with urgency. "I think… I think they're another anomaly."
The figure convulsed, body splitting into fragments of different models before stabilizing again. Their voice layered, glitching, fractured: "System… failed… reset me…"
Erevan felt his stomach twist. Another anomaly. Another life hanging on the edge of deletion.
Kaelith cursed under her breath. "They're destabilizing!"
The figure screamed, their body erupting into shards of raw data. From those shards, twisted Nullifier drones rose—malformed, twitching, their limbs wrong, their faces hollow voids.
Erevan swore, teeth gritting. "Of course. Because nothing can ever be easy."
Kaelith's arrows cut through the nearest drone, slicing its code into fragments that fizzled and popped like sparks from a forge.
Sir Quacksalot, puffed up like a tiny warlord of feathers, charged headfirst into another, quacking like a miniature battle horn. The absurdity of it made Erevan's jaw twitch, but there was no time to laugh.
He ignited Pathbreaker, Prime Rend blazing unstable fire along his arm. The first drone lunged at him, limbs flailing in impossible angles, binary screams filling the void. He slashed through it, sparks of static lightning erupting as the creature shattered into shards of corrupted code.
Another claw raked across his arm, searing his flesh with digital burns. He counter-slash, slicing the drone midair into disintegrating fragments.
"Erevan!" Kaelith's voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding. "Vega's still in there! If you cut them down, you'll destroy what's left of them!"
He glared at her, frustration boiling like molten metal. "So what, I'm supposed to… hug the corruption out of them?!"
A pulse of thought—the system wouldn't have offered it if it were safe—appeared in his mind: stabilize the anomaly using the Watcher Code fragment. Extreme risk. Unknown outcome.
Erevan's teeth clenched. "Kaelith, cover me!"
She didn't hesitate. Her arrows rained down with deadly precision, slicing drones apart mid-lunge. Sir Quacksalot latched onto one with a bite that made code scream, feathers smoldering slightly from static sparks.
Dropping to his knees beside the shattered figure, Erevan pressed his shard to their chest. The shard pulsed in sync with the fragment of Watcher Code, trembling violently. Pain lanced through him, molten static pouring into his veins, but he didn't stop.
For a heartbeat, the shadows of Kyros's grin returned in his mind: Yes… break yourself… give them everything…
Erevan's teeth clenched. "Shut up."
He pushed harder, feeding light, life, and stability into the broken anomaly.
Vega—the Broken Codebearer—convulsed violently, body lurching and splitting into fragments midair, glyphs spiraling around the fire like tornadoes of static. Their scream was a shrill symphony of desperation, both human and digital, tugging at Erevan's insides.
"Kaelith!" he barked, panic fraying his voice. "Cover me!"
Arrows sliced through the air. Drones exploded into fragments under precise fire. Sir Quacksalot, a tiny storm of feathers and fury, dove into another drone, tearing at it with reckless courage. Sparks of unstable code arced around Erevan as he funneled every ounce of shard-fire into Vega.
For one terrifying, stretching moment, he swore he felt himself fracturing into Vega—their identities bleeding into each other, every heartbeat syncing with the pulse of the Watcher Code fragment.
Then—snap.
Vega's body slammed against the dirt, solidifying. Their glitches slowed. Shimmers of stability replaced the chaotic sparks. They breathed raggedly but steadily, blinking at Erevan as if he had performed a miracle too vast to comprehend.
Erevan collapsed back on his heels, coughing, blood flecking his lips and hands, sweat and static clinging to his skin. "You… you're alive," he gasped, voice hoarse, raw with relief.
Kaelith grabbed his shoulders, eyes sharp with panic. "Idiot! You could've burned yourself into nothing!"
A twisted laugh escaped him, dry and ragged. "Yeah… but it worked."
Sir Quacksalot waddled over, quacking softly, pressing his tiny head against Erevan's chest. The absurd warmth grounded him, a small tether to the real world.
Vega's eyes, still flickering faintly with residual glitch, locked onto Erevan's. Confusion, fear, and fragile gratitude danced in their gaze. "Why… why would you save me?"
Erevan wiped blood from his lips, grinning sharp and dangerous. "Because screw the system. We don't abandon people like it does."
Kaelith muttered a curse under her breath at his recklessness. Sir Quacksalot nestled closer, soft warmth against burning veins. Vega remained seated, still stabilizing, their flickers of glitch slowly dimming.
For the first time since Kyros's invasion, Erevan didn't feel completely alone.
Yet somewhere deep in the static, beyond the firelight, he felt Kyros's presence—just a whisper, not in form or flesh, just laughter, lingering like smoke. The war, the corruption, the system… none of it was over.
But for now, in the fractured silence of the forest, they were three. Erevan, Kaelith, and Vega. And with Sir Quacksalot, they were unstoppable.
The Anomaly Resistance was born.
[Main Quest Updated: Form the Anomaly Resistance]
[Party Members: Erevan, Kaelith, Sir Quacksalot, Vega]
The firelight flickered violently, casting fractured shadows across the forest floor. Erevan's chest heaved, each breath ragged, as he knelt beside Vega. The figure who had fallen from the fractured night shimmered, glitching between textures—armor, mannequin, child, human, then back again—and shards of corrupted code hovered like malevolent fireflies.
"Stay with me," he muttered, pressing his hands against Vega's chest. The shard inside him resonated with the broken fragment of Watcher Code, pulsing in a rhythm that terrified and reassured him.
Chaos still raged around them, drones clawing, glitching, reaching. But within that storm, a fragile life persisted—alive because he refused to let it die.
And for the first time in what felt like eons, hope burned alongside the chaos.