Erevan didn't sleep. Not really. He sat on the edge of the firelight, knees drawn up, arms resting on them, eyes half-closed but flicking constantly to Vega. The flames licked their faces, casting long, twisting shadows that danced across the uneven ground. Smoke mixed with the sharp tang of metal from their weapons, curling into the cold night air, seeping into his bones. Every crackle, every pop and hiss of the fire sounded louder than it should, as if the world was amplifying the tension in his chest.
Vega sat across from him, impossibly still, yet impossibly wrong. Their body flickered, shifting through textures like reality couldn't settle on a single version of them. One moment, Vega looked human, hands folded neatly in their lap. The next, their skin went flat gray, featureless—like an unfinished sculpture. Erevan's stomach twisted. Then, a child's face flashed across their features, wide-eyed and blinking, before snapping back to their sharper, older lines. Each glitch made the air hum faintly, vibrating against his chest like a swarm of angry bees trapped under his skin.
Erevan let himself pretend to be asleep, though he knew better. His shard pulsed faintly against his ribs, echoing the subtle tremor he could feel from Vega.
Kaelith, of course, made no pretense. She sat with her bow resting across her lap, fingers brushing the string almost absentmindedly, but her eyes were sharp enough to split steel.
And then there was Sir Quacksalot. The duck slept like a rock, sprawled on his back, feet sticking straight into the air, snoring with a deep, resonant intensity that made Erevan briefly envy him. Just for a moment, he envied the simplicity of a creature that didn't carry glitches in its soul or a system hunting it like prey.
Vega finally spoke. The sound was almost mechanical, glitching like two radios tuned slightly off-frequency. "You shouldn't have saved me."
Erevan groaned, dragging himself upright. "You're welcome too, by the way," he muttered, voice rough, thick with tension and exhaustion.
Vega's eyes shimmered with static, catching the firelight, flickering between human warmth and something far older, far stranger. "No… I mean it. The system doesn't tolerate anomalies like us. By stabilizing me, you've painted an even bigger target on yourself."
Kaelith's voice cut through the tension, calm but razor-sharp, like a steel blade slicing the night. "The target was already there."
Vega flinched, and for just a heartbeat, Erevan saw vulnerability that mirrored his own. "You don't understand what I carry."
Erevan's chest tightened. The shard inside him pulsed, echoing Vega's fragile rhythm like two broken hearts thumping in an abandoned building. "Then explain it," he said softly, voice steady, though unease curled in his stomach like icy tendrils.
Vega hesitated. A trembling flicker passed across their face, then slowly, painfully, they lifted a hand. Flesh peeled away into glowing glyphs, spinning and hovering in the air—alien symbols burned faintly, beautiful, impossible. Circles of intricate, ancient runes rotated, suspended by light and code.
"This is what I am," Vega whispered, voice trembling, somewhere between awe, fear, and something unmistakably human. "A Codebearer. The system stitched fragments of ancient Watcher algorithms into me. But it didn't finish. I'm half-finished code. I bleed bugs. Every step I take destabilizes reality around me."
Erevan's jaw clenched. That knot of frustration, recognition, and exhaustion twisted tight in his chest. "Sounds… familiar," he muttered, almost laughing—but it caught in his throat.
Kaelith leaned forward, eyes narrowing. Her bow shifted slightly in her hands. "Why would the system create something it couldn't control?"
Vega's glitching face contorted, human fear peeking through. "Because it didn't create us. It found us."
The fire dimmed, shadows stretching long and cold. Even Sir Quacksalot twitched one eye open, sensing the weight of those words.
"What do you mean, found?" Erevan asked carefully. The shard pulsed in tandem with the unease clawing at his stomach.
Vega met his gaze, eyes endless and unnerving, not entirely their own. "We're leftovers. Experiments from before the world was a game. The system didn't design me—it patched me, sealed me into the code like duct tape. But the cracks keep spreading."
Erevan rubbed at his temple, leaning back against the rough bark behind him. "Fantastic. More existential dread. Just what I needed tonight." He tried to hide the tremor in his voice—but it was there.
Kaelith's hands tightened on her bow, measured and deliberate. "If what you're saying is true, then Erevan's shard—"
"—is part of the same lineage," Vega finished, glitching face locking onto him with something like awe. "You're worse than me. Stronger. Wilder. If Kyros wasn't lying, then you carry something… dangerous."
Erevan smirked, hollow but defiant. "Story of my life," he muttered. The shard pulsed in his chest, a heartbeat of both dread and familiarity.
The night pressed in around them. The fire flickered, stretched shadows across three figures tied together by circumstance and anomalies they barely understood. Smoke, dirt, and metallic tang of premonition hung heavy in the air.
Erevan thought of countless nights running, hiding, questioning whether he'd ever stop being a target. He looked at Vega, trembling and half-finished, and at Kaelith, calm yet unyielding. And then, for the first time, he admitted—if only to himself—that maybe being anomalies wasn't only a curse. Maybe it was the only chance they had to fight back, to survive on their own terms.
Vega leaned forward slightly, glyphs burning faintly against their skin. "If we work together… maybe we can survive. Maybe we can even fight back."
Erevan's fingers brushed Pathbreaker's hilt, eyes narrowing as the firelight danced across the blade. "So… surviving, or taking the fight to them?" His voice wavered, half-sarcastic, half-curious.
Vega almost smiled. Just a flicker, gone before anyone could fully see it. "Both," they said softly.
The night stretched long, filled with unspoken questions, Vega's humming unstable code, and the quiet pulse of two anomalies who had, at last, found each other—whether the system liked it or not.
The night had barely begun to settle when the sky split open like torn paper. Jagged shards of red and violet light tore through the darkness, painting the forest in unnatural colors. Erevan's shard throbbed violently, a painful reminder that the system had found them.
From the rift, Nullifiers poured forth. These were not the random, mindless swarms they had encountered before. No, these were hunters—engineered, precise, their eyes glowing crimson, claws glinting like sharpened razors in the firelight. Every step they took made the earth tremble beneath their weight.
Kaelith leapt to her feet, nocking an arrow with fluid, practiced motion. "They're here for Vega!" she shouted, voice cutting through the chaos.
"No kidding!" Erevan muttered, yanking Pathbreaker free. Prime Rend sparked to life along its edge, humming with lethal energy. His pulse accelerated, heart hammering in his chest, but beneath it all lingered something raw and human: fear. He could feel Vega faltering, glyphs sputtering, struggling to hold themselves together.
Sir Quacksalot, as always, refused subtlety. The duck launched into the fray, wings slapping with a ferocity no one thought possible. It headbutted a Nullifier with such reckless determination that sparks flew, and the creature collapsed into static, feathers smoldering.
Erevan let out a breathless laugh. "That duck is scarier than half of these things!"
Kaelith's reply was sharp, edged with frustration and concern. "Don't encourage him!"
But there was no time for jokes. Another wave of Nullifiers lunged from the rift, claws scraping stone and dirt. The smell of burning ozone filled the air as Erevan swung Pathbreaker in a wide arc, cutting through one of the hunters. Sparks and black ichor splattered the forest floor. His shard throbbed painfully, resonating with Vega's unstable code, blurring his vision for a heartbeat.
Vega stumbled, glyphs sparking wildly, fire licking at their hands. They tried to summon whips of glyph-fire, lashing at the advancing Nullifiers, but a few still pressed too close.
Erevan's mind raced. He could link with Vega, stabilize them—but the cost would be enormous. His own stability would bleed into them. The system would punish him if he failed. Yet seeing Vega falter, trembling as they tried to hold their own, something inside him snapped.
"Hold still," he growled under his breath, eyes narrowing. He planted his boots firmly into the dirt, letting his shard resonate outward in a pulse. Anomaly Link: activated.
A surge of raw, overwhelming energy shot through him, clawing along nerves and muscle, white-hot agony that stole his breath and made his vision swim. But through the fire of pain, he felt Vega stabilize. Their glyphs roared to life, blazing into perfect circles around their hands, orderly and fierce.
Vega's eyes widened, shock and awe mingling as their powers flared outward. Waves of annihilating energy rippled across the battlefield, shredding Nullifiers in spectacular bursts of light and code. Entire swaths of hunters disintegrated, erased from existence.
The rift shuddered, flickered, then cracked. Kaelith's final arrow struck its heart with surgical precision, forcing it to seal with a scream that echoed into the night.
Erevan stumbled to one knee, chest heaving, blood and dirt streaking his face. Every muscle screamed in protest, his shard exhausted but holding. Vega stood trembling, glyphs burning faintly, finally stable.
"We… we actually did it," Vega whispered, voice small, awe-struck.
Erevan forced a grin through blood and sweat. "Nah," he wheezed. "Because of us." He glanced at Kaelith, breathing heavily, arrow nocked loosely but eyes blazing with relief and frustration.
Sir Quacksalot strutted onto Erevan's shoulder like a tiny conqueror, quacking triumphantly. Sparks clung to his feathers like stars. Erevan laughed, hoarse but genuine. "Yep. Definitely scarier than me."
Kaelith rolled her eyes, shaking her head, but a corner of her mouth betrayed her relief. "You absolute lunatic," she muttered, crouching next to him to make sure he was still upright.
The moment lingered. Chest heaving, shoulders sagging as adrenaline ebbed, Erevan allowed himself to breathe. Not just survive—but victory, however fleeting.
The firelight glimmered across three figures, burnt, bruised, but alive. The system was vast, merciless, endless—but for tonight, they had won.
The shard inside Erevan pulsed faintly, a reminder that the Anomaly Link had come at a cost. Pain, fatigue, instability—it was all there. But Vega stood steady, and that mattered more than anything.
"We're going to have to do this again," Erevan muttered, half to himself, half to Vega, already sensing the battles yet to come.
Vega met his eyes, glitching slightly but smiling—imperfect, but there. "We'll be ready. Together."
Sir Quacksalot flapped his wings, quacking with determined ferocity, a punctuation mark to their promise. Kaelith let out a short laugh, tension melting just enough.
Erevan leaned back against a tree, dirt, blood, and ash covering him, but for the first time in a long while, he could breathe. They had survived the night. They had stood together against impossible odds.
And deep in his chest, something stirred—a spark, fragile and dangerous, but real. The beginnings of an anomaly resistance that could fight back, not just survive.
The system might be vast. Merciless. Unending. But tonight, they were alive. And they were not alone.