The world didn't explode when the White Null broke.
It shattered.
Erevan wasn't falling through space so much as tumbling through memories—each one suspended mid-air, sharp as glass, glinting like the fragments of a broken mirror. They sliced past him in slow motion, light bending, colors bleeding together.
He reached out on instinct, fingertips brushing a shard that pulsed faintly.
Not his memory.
But it felt alive.
A little boy sat on the floor, clutching a cracked VR headset. Tears streaked down his cheeks as the screen flickered out for good.
Erevan's breath caught. The shard twisted, morphing into another.
A battlefield—white suits, sterile and spotless, firing beams of raw code at shapes that hissed and shrieked like corrupted ghosts.
Then a city.
A beautiful one.
Crumbling beneath rain made of falling light. Every droplet a pixel, every pixel someone's life, erased mid-existence.
His pulse thundered in his ears. The storm of memories screamed without sound, voices crashing together like data trying to make sense of itself.
(Memory Partition Overload. Unauthorized fragments detected.)
The system's voice crawled through his skull, tinny and half-muted. He barely heard it before the ground—if it could be called that—caught him.
The impact jolted through every bone.
He gasped.
Beneath him, the surface rippled—neither solid nor liquid—something in between, like molten glass pretending to be water.
Kaelith landed beside him in a blur of motion, boots skidding. Her sword dug into the shimmering floor with a sharp hiss. "Gods," she breathed, eyes wide. "That… wasn't real falling, was it?"
"Define 'real,'" Erevan wheezed. He pushed himself up, half-laughing, half-groaning. "Because I'm ninety percent sure my spleen just phased through itself."
A violent flicker of light made him flinch. Vega dropped next, their form scattering into jagged streaks before snapping back together. Sparks danced over the rippling floor like dying fireflies.
And then—of course—Sir Quacksalot appeared last, drifting lazily as if parachuting through invisible air currents. The duck landed neatly on Erevan's shoulder and gave one soft, indignant quack.
Erevan groaned. "Right. The duck sticks the landing. Naturally."
He looked around. The air shimmered. The floor pulsed under their feet as if breathing. Everywhere he turned, reflections of himself rippled across the surface—fractured, multiplied, infinite.
Kaelith exhaled slowly, her tone edged with wonder and suspicion. "We're not standing on a floor…"
Her reflection fractured into a thousand versions of her, all moving a heartbeat out of sync. "We're standing inside… memories."
She paused.
Her gaze lifted to meet his.
"But whose?"
Vega's voice trembled, static rippling through their outline. "Not memories," they whispered, staring into the luminous floor. "These are archives. Test runs. Prototypes of worlds that didn't… survive."
Erevan blinked, his reflection warping beneath him. "Wait. You're telling me I just fell through the director's cut of failed realities?"
The Codex answered before Vega could. It hovered into the air, pages flipping madly as symbols burned themselves into the air like dying stars. Its hum vibrated in Erevan's teeth.
(Hidden Lore Synchronization: 25%)
(Warning: Stability strain increasing.)
Blood trickled from his nose. Erevan wiped it with the back of his hand, grimacing. "Perfect. Spontaneous nasal downloads. My favorite patch feature."
A pulse of light burst across the Archive. One shard glowed brighter than the rest, so blinding it hurt to look at. Within it—a lab. Pristine. Sterile. Cold. Rows of transparent pods lined the walls, each humming with faint, mechanical life.
Inside one pod, a boy lay still. Pale. Wires embedded in his arms, a mask over his mouth. His features were unmistakably familiar.
Kaelith's breath caught. "That's… you."
Erevan stared, skin crawling. "No. That's… that's a knock-off version. Cheap cosplay. Zero charisma."
Vega didn't laugh. Their glitching worsened, pixels stuttering across their form. "That's what you were, Erevan. Before the system pulled you out of whatever test that was. Before you became this."
The ground beneath them rippled violently.
(Fragment Overexposure Detected. Current Stability: 8%.)
The shards surrounding them flared to life, and from their depths came figures—scientists in lab coats, shadows of players mid-scream, creatures devouring light. Their mouths opened in unison, whispering the same word like an ancient chant.
"Architect."
Kaelith swung her sword through the nearest echo, but it dissolved into mist and reformed instantly. "They're endless!"
The Codex pulsed again, pages fanning open. Words carved themselves across the blank spreads, glowing with jagged black fire.
(New Quest: Confront the Archive.)
(Condition: Face the shard tied to your identity.)
*(Reward: ???)
(Failure: Permanent Desync.)
Erevan groaned. "Oh, come on. I just wanted loot and maybe a shiny hat. Now I'm starring in some cosmic therapy session."
The glowing shard—the one with the pod—expanded, spilling white light like a sun burning through fog. The whispers grew louder, pressing into his skull, crawling down his spine.
Kaelith grabbed his shoulder, grounding him with sheer force of will. "If this is your truth, you have to face it. Or it'll eat you alive."
Vega's outline flickered violently. "You don't have time! The Null doesn't forgive!"
And then, of course, Sir Quacksalot waddled forward, utterly fearless. The duck marched right up to the glowing shard and tapped it with his beak.
Erevan stared. "Right. Sure. The duck gets top billing in my existential nightmare."
Still, he followed. His hand trembled as he reached out. The surface rippled under his touch—liquid, cold, alive.
The world flipped.
Gravity vanished. Air dissolved into static. Erevan's lungs convulsed as he found himself inside the pod. Strapped down. Cold metal biting into his wrists. Tubes pumping light through his veins.
His reflection stared back from the curved glass—eyes hollow, skin too pale, body motionless. Not him. Not really. But familiar enough to make his stomach twist.
Voices echoed through the sterile lab, calm and detached.
"Subject 17 shows high resilience to system instability."
"If the anomaly persists, he may corrupt the test entirely."
"Good. Let him. We need to see what breaks."
The shard in his chest throbbed, syncing with the rhythm of those words. The Codex flared outside the glass, as if trying to reach him.
The pressure built. The walls around him pulsed, the pod vibrating with each heartbeat.
Kaelith's voice cut through the distortion, faint but fierce. "Erevan! Focus! Don't let it rewrite you!"
Vega's voice followed, panicked and glitching. "Move! The Null eats unfinished code!"
His mind split apart. Information poured in, raw and searing. Protocols. Deletions. World failures. Players erased mid-breath. It was too much.
His vision bled white. The taste of static filled his mouth. His body was shaking, his heart pounding too fast to count.
(System Alert: Identity Sync 50%. Stability 5%.)
He grit his teeth, a broken laugh slipping through the panic. "Amazing. I didn't sign up for this. I just wanted some cool powers, not a guided tour of my existential breakdown."
Kaelith's hand slammed onto the pod's surface. "Then fight it!"
The glass spiderwebbed. Cracks splintered outward, fracturing reality like ice under too much weight.
Vega's body sparked beside him. "Synchronize, Erevan, before the Null resets everything!"
He closed his eyes. Felt the shard pulsing in his chest. The Codex circling him like a heartbeat made of light. The chaos didn't fade—but he stopped running from it.
For once, he let the storm in.
The shard flared in perfect rhythm with the Codex. Pages tore free and spun around him like burning satellites. Suddenly, clarity hit him like lightning. He could see the patterns. The broken worlds. The threads that could be stitched back together.
(Codex Resonance: 70%.)
(Stability +10%. Current Stability: 15%.)
His breath came in short, ragged bursts. "Alright," he whispered. "Let's not blow up existence today. Just… gently recompile reality."
The pod shattered.
Light erupted, swallowing the echoes. Erevan screamed as his body was thrown backward—falling again, falling up—and then he was back on the Archive floor, gasping for air.
The echoes recoiled. The storm quieted. The Codex snapped shut, its cover humming faintly like a heartbeat coming down from chaos.
For a moment, there was only silence.
Then the floor beneath Erevan began to breathe.
Light rippled outward from his body, threads of gold and static weaving through the shattered Archive. The Codex hovered beside him, its cover opening and closing like a living heart. The hum was soft at first—then built into a symphony that filled the void.
Kaelith shielded her eyes. "Erevan—what are you doing?"
He laughed, breathless and trembling. "Not sure. Improvising with cosmic software. Don't try this at home."
(Codex Synchronization: 83%)
(Warning: Identity Boundary Deteriorating.)
The shards that had once shown broken worlds now turned toward him, orbiting like glass planets. Each flickered with fragments—faces, ruins, cities made of data and dreams. They weren't random anymore. They were aligning.
Vega's outline glitched violently. "You're syncing with it—you're forcing the Codex to stabilize the Null itself!"
"Yeah," Erevan muttered. "Apparently, I have a thing for fixing god-tier mistakes."
The pressure built again—airless, crushing, luminous. Every nerve in his body screamed. He saw Kaelith reaching for him, her lips moving, her voice lost in the static. Vega trying to anchor their code. Sir Quacksalot heroically flapping against a current of reality wind like a warrior-poet in feathers.
And then—
Everything snapped.
(Codex Synchronization: 100%)
Light exploded through the Archive. The floor fractured, and the world turned inside-out. Erevan wasn't standing anymore—he was everywhere. The Codex wasn't beside him; it was him. Its pages fanned out across infinity, each one reflecting a life, a moment, a fragment of something that had been lost.
He heard a voice—familiar and immense, layered in a thousand tones.
"You were never meant to remember."
"You were never meant to survive."
"And yet—here you are."
The light coalesced into a figure—a silhouette of endless white, faceless and radiant. The Architect.
Erevan's chest ached. His voice came out smaller than he wanted. "Why me?"
"Because you broke the loop."
The figure raised a hand. The Codex responded—its light folding inward, lines of code writing and un-writing themselves in a blinding storm.
Kaelith screamed something—maybe his name. Vega's data signature flared, shattering around them. The Whisperer's shadow flickered at the edges of the light, multiplying, retreating.
And then, through the chaos, a sound cut through everything—sharp, absurd, and perfect.
Quack.
The light faltered. The Architect's form wavered, as if the duck's defiance had personally offended cosmic order.
Sir Quacksalot waddled into the heart of the storm, glowing faintly gold. A single feather fell from him, landing on Erevan's hand. The contact stabilized the Codex for a split second. Enough.
Erevan laughed—wild, breathless. "Of course. Of course it's you. My familiar saves the universe. Perfect ending."
He reached out, touched the Codex, and let everything go.
The world broke—and rebuilt itself.
White fractured into shadow. Shadow bled into light. The sensation of falling became floating, became breathing again.
When Erevan opened his eyes, he was lying on a glass plain under a black sky threaded with aurora-like veins. Kaelith knelt beside him, bandaging his arm with torn fabric. Vega hovered nearby, their outline shaky but intact. Sir Quacksalot sat triumphantly on his chest, victorious.
"Did we win?" Erevan rasped.
Kaelith snorted. "If by win you mean 'not evaporated into data confetti,' then yes."
(System Update: New Trait Acquired — "Codexbound")
(Effect: Unknown.)
(World State: Recompiling...)
(Next Cycle Initiating in: 00:10:00)
Vega's voice was softer now. "You changed something. The Null's rewriting itself around your signature."
He stared up at the sky—at the stars forming from lines of code and fading like thoughts he couldn't hold on to. "Good," he murmured. "Maybe next time it won't hurt so much."
Kaelith leaned over him, her expression half anger, half relief. "You're a fool."
He smiled faintly. "Yeah. But I'm your fool."
Sir Quacksalot quacked once, solemnly. A benediction.
The ground pulsed beneath them again, but gentler this time—like the world itself was taking a breath.
Vega glanced up. "It's restarting. The Archive's… remembering itself."
The air shimmered. Fragments of light drifted upward, tiny and delicate. Erevan reached out to touch one—and it dissolved against his fingers, warm and bright.
"Memories," he said softly. "We're standing inside… memories. But whose?"
No one answered. The wind did, though—a low, endless hum that carried a single echo across the new horizon.
"Remember."