The world around Erevan didn't just break—it screamed.
Not the hollow crack of glass or the low groan of some collapsing structure, but a sound that clawed at the skull like a thousand corrupting lines of code, ripping apart everything it touched. The floor beneath him, shards of jagged crystal, twisted and warped into impossible shapes. Above, the void spun in dizzying spirals of corrupted light, the horizonless skyless expanse folding into itself with no concern for logic.
The Codex pulsed violently in his hands, hissing as if molten metal had been doused in ice water. Every breath tore through his lungs like fire, and the shard embedded in his chest wasn't just throbbing—it pounded, sending sharp glyphs crawling across his skin like burning tattoos, glowing with chaotic energy that refused to settle.
He staggered. One eye remained human—wide, brown, desperate—but the other had become a vortex of spiraling blue and white code, devouring the Null around him and rewriting it with every blink. Erevan felt as if he existed in two contradictory weights at once: burdened by the dying dimension pressing on him, yet impossibly light, like his physical body was irrelevant.
[Reality Architect (Lv. 1) – Active]
Effect: Anchor one rule per activation
Stability: 0% (Warning: System Instability Critical)
A chorus of grins echoed through every fracture of the Null. The Whisperer—relentless, mocking—pressured him from every direction:
Broken child. Half rewritten. You do not belong to yourself anymore. You belong to me.
Erevan spat a thin stream of blood onto the shard-floor, a grin crawling across his face despite the metallic taste filling his mouth. "Yeah? That's where you're wrong, shadow."
Kaelith stood rigid, her golden eyes wide with disbelief, blade raised in a defensive stance. "You're… changing, Erevan," she said, voice tight with strain. "I don't know if this is remaking you… or killing you."
Vega flickered violently, jagged trails of glitch-fire streaking across the Null. "Either way," they hissed, their static-laced voice urgent, "you're our only anchor. If you stabilize this skill, we survive. If not… if you don't exist to hold it, then we're gone."
Erevan forced himself upright, legs trembling, Codex gripped so tightly his knuckles turned white. The Whisperer surged, its endless teeth curling toward him like black smoke eager to consume.
[Rule Anchor Available]
Input Rule: ____
The glyph-eye swirled violently, showing the Null as it was—but layered over it was a flicker of another reality. A sterile room, humming softly, glass tubes filled with floating fluid, the ghost of a child inside. Was that… me?
He slammed his eyes shut, forcing the intrusive memory away. Focus. He had one shot. One rule to anchor, one tether to reality.
"Alright," he gritted out, teeth clenched. "Rule number one."
The Codex hit the shard-floor with all the force he could summon. A desperate, final effort.
[Rule Anchor: Gravity ON]
The Null jerked violently. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the unbearable weight of his own body returned. Floating shards, twisting glyphs, and the Whisperer's maws all slammed downward, piling into the jagged ground.
The Whisperer shrieked—a sound of sheer violation—as black ink-like fragments of its shadow body flattened under the invisible, cosmic press. "You dare rewrite my domain?!"
Erevan bared his teeth, triumph spiking through pain. "Patch notes, shadow-slime. Gravity exists now. You're welcome."
Kaelith lunged instantly, blade blazing golden light, slicing through collapsing shadows. Each grin shattered under her assault like fragile glass.
Vega found enough stability to project a concentrated beam of glitch-fire, pinning the Shadow's flattened limbs against the shards, creating momentary points of resistance.
But the Codex pulsed again, violently vibrating in Erevan's hands.
[Warning: Stability Overdrawn]
[Rollback Sequence Imminent]
Erevan's glyph-eye throbbed painfully. "Rollback? No. Not now! Not when I've finally got something solid to stand on!"
The Null convulsed. Half the battlefield obeyed gravity, forming a precarious platform. The other half twisted violently, a logic-defying Escher nightmare.
The Whisperer surged again, all ten thousand of its grins gnashing: You cannot anchor reality. You are unmade. Your existence is flawed.
Erevan dropped to his knees, Codex searing through his grip, shard in his chest screaming in unison with the tearing Null.
Kaelith's hand pressed firmly against his shoulder, a desperate tether to sanity. "Stay with me! You have to anchor again!"
"I can't!" he coughed, blood splattering across the glowing pages. "One more rule, and I become dust."
And then, as absurdity always found a way, Sir Quacksalot appeared. The small duck waddled through chaos, quacking like the fury of a god incarnate, and struck the Codex with a frantic peck.
[Input Rule Detected: Duck Priority = Absolute]
Erevan choked on laughter and disbelief. "WHAT—"
The Null didn't just twitch—it convulsed. Gravity had bought him a sliver of order, but the chaotic expanse was a living wound, lashing out at every attempt at control. Floating shards clashed violently against one another, the glyphs on his skin spinning with unsteady rhythm, feeding off the instability of his heartbeat.
Erevan staggered, the Codex still trembling violently in his hands, as if it resented being used for sanity instead of annihilation. Sweat poured down his face, dripping into the shard-floor cracks, sizzling when it hit the glowing surfaces. His chest heaved; the shard inside him pulsed in cruel, mocking tandem with the text scrolling across the Codex.
[Warning: Stability Overdrawn]
[Rollback Sequence Imminent]
Every nerve in his body screamed. Pain radiated from the glyph-eye, spiraling across his skull and jaw, a burning, stretching, living ache. Each blink made the Null's fractures ripple like water disturbed by a hurricane. The Whisperer's laughter clawed through his mind, coiling around every desperate thought:
You see? This is what happens when the anomaly plays Architect. You are too fragile to anchor reality.
Erevan choked on a gasp, one hand clutching his ribs while the other tried, desperately, to keep the Codex steady. His limbs felt heavy and unreal at once, a paradox that made every step, every breath, a battle against gravity and nothingness alike.
Kaelith's hand remained on his shoulder, grounding him against the chaos. "Erevan… don't… don't let it break you," she pleaded, her golden eyes wide with fear and awe.
"I'm not… broken," he wheezed, voice ragged, half-laughing at the absurdity. "I'm… being rewritten, maybe—but not broken."
The shards around them groaned, reshaping violently. Half the battlefield obeyed gravity, solid enough to stand on, and half twisted into impossible floating shapes. It was like walking on a puzzle that refused to exist in the same dimension twice.
Vega flickered in and out, trying to maintain a stabilizing presence, but even their digital form seemed to tear against the growing chaos. "Erevan!" their voice cut through the static, urgent and almost human in panic. "If you collapse… if your stability fails completely, the Null won't just reset. You won't exist to anchor anything!"
Erevan's pulse raced. Every heartbeat was a drum of warning, a countdown synchronized to the shattering reality. He could feel the Codex pulsing hotter with every fraction of uncertainty, as if it too hungered for the collapse it threatened to prevent.
He stumbled, his hand brushing across the shard-floor. It felt slippery, as if the Null itself was attempting to reject him, to push him out before he could finish anchoring a single rule. The glyph-eye spun violently, overlaying visions of the Null and flickers of the outside world he barely remembered—the laboratory, the pod, the child he had been before the experiment. Was that really me? Could I… survive if I changed that part of myself?
[System Override Approaching]
Estimated Time: 10 minutes
The Codex's light shifted into a sharp, unyielding crimson. It burned his vision, leaving afterimages of code etched behind his eyelids. His chest ached as the shard pulsed like a dying star, syncing with the Codex's fevered rhythm.
He coughed, a wet, painful sound, and blood spattered across the glowing pages. The Null roared around him, a deafening static of tearing reality and malice. "I… I can't… can't fail now!" he gasped, voice breaking as panic tightened like a vice around his ribs. "I have to hold it… one more input… one more anchor…"
Kaelith gripped his shoulder tighter, her golden eyes locking onto his. "Erevan… fight it! You are more than the code, more than the Null! Don't let it overwrite you!"
"I'm trying," he rasped, swallowing a wave of nausea that surged through him with every flicker of the Codex. The glyph-eye pulsed violently, as if arguing with his human mind. Too weak. Too fragile.
But he clenched his jaw, forcing himself upright. Pain lanced through his chest with every heartbeat, his arms trembling, sweat slicking his skin. His lungs burned. His head felt like it was splitting, torn between two conflicting realities. I can't fail. I won't.
And then… a familiar chaos arrived. Sir Quacksalot, undaunted by the crumbling Null, waddled through the shards like a tiny whirlwind of indignation. The duck's eyes glimmered with the intensity of a cosmic judge, wings flaring. It pecked at the Codex, feathers sparking with a strange golden light.
[Input Rule Detected: Duck Priority = Absolute]
Erevan's voice caught somewhere between hysteria and relief. "WHAT—" He could only choke out the word as the absurdity of the moment clashed violently with the terror threatening to consume him.
For a heartbeat, the Null froze, shadows and glyphs rebelling against the impossible logic of the duck's decree.
Sir Quacksalot didn't just peck at the Codex. The duck exploded into divine chaos, feathers glowing with a blinding, almost holy light. Each quack wasn't a sound—it was a hammer of pure authority, shattering the Null's shadows, scattering twisted grins, and sending shards spinning like sparks from a collapsing forge.
Kaelith's jaw dropped, her blade forgotten for a heartbeat. "By the gods…" she whispered, eyes wide as the impossible scene unfolded.
Vega actually laughed—half glitch, half genuine amusement—as the golden duck-light carved through the chaos. "I think… I think your pet just became a deity, Erevan."
Erevan wheezed, clutching the Codex, chest burning, ribs screaming in protest. And yet—despite the pain, the terror, the deafening chaos—he couldn't stop the laughter bubbling in his throat. "Patch notes, buddy," he rasped, voice trembling. "Duck… is greater than You."
The Whisperer reeled, the black mass of malice recoiling as Sir Quacksalot stomped forward, wings spread like shields of sunlight in the collapsing void. Its laughter slithered into Erevan's mind, snake-like and cruel. You cannot hold this forever. Your rewrite is unstable. Rollback will consume everything. You and your ridiculous god-fowl.
Erevan's glyph-eye throbbed violently, the pain a white-hot flare across his skull. He gasped, sweat and blood mixing, shards beneath him cracking with every heartbeat. He gritted his teeth, forcing a shaky hand over the Codex. "I… I don't care," he growled. "You don't get to own me."
And then the ultimate prompt appeared, cutting through everything—the light, the chaos, the duck's impossibly righteous fury:
[System Notice: Core Rewrite Option Available]
[Confirm Y/N?]
His chest tightened, ribs trembling. The shard inside him throbbed like a drum of finality. Kaelith grabbed his shoulder, shaking him gently, her golden eyes piercing through the haze of pain and fear. "Erevan! Don't erase yourself! You are not code—you're human! You're you!"
Vega's static-laced voice rang out, desperate, glitching, pleading: "If you confirm now, you'll overwrite your humanity entirely! Stop! Don't do this!"
The Whisperer's single, piercing laugh shredded the edges of his sanity. Yes. Rewrite yourself. Become mine. You were always meant to be the core of the system.
The Codex pulsed like molten fire, its light scorching through his vision. His shard screamed in tandem, demanding the final action. Every muscle in his body screamed in exhaustion and panic. He swayed, almost collapsing, but Sir Quacksalot nudged him with impossibly massive, golden wings. The divine duck's eyes—normally absurd, comical—were sharp, knowing, and wholly focused on him.
Erevan's mind split open, visions of two halves of himself clashing: the human boy who had once stared through glass at the city lights, the anomaly who had survived Null's horrors. One whispered surrender. The other screamed defiance.
"I'm… not yours," he whispered, voice cracked, trembling, yet utterly resolute. "I am… Erevan."
His shaking finger hovered over the glowing letter. For a heartbeat, the entire Null seemed to hold its breath.
Then—he pressed it.
Confirm.
The world detonated into absolute, deafening static. Every shard, every twisted grin, every floating glyph erupted in a blinding, shattering crescendo. Pain and light collided in a thunderous storm that felt like the universe itself screaming and sighing simultaneously.
Erevan collapsed to his knees, lungs heaving, sweat and blood streaking his face. The shard in his chest pulsed violently one last time, then settled into a steady, glowing rhythm. Half-human, half-anomaly, wholly himself.
Sir Quacksalot flapped once, triumphant, and waddled back beside him, wings folded, expression almost smug. The Null's shadows had been cleaved, flattened, or scattered, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, there was silence.
Kaelith staggered forward, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You… did it," she breathed. "You survived. You… you chose yourself."
Erevan tried to laugh but coughed instead, a wet, painful sound that was somehow triumphant. "Yeah," he rasped, gripping the Codex. "Patch notes… applied. Duck remains undefeated."
Vega flickered erratically, still half-laughing, half-concerned. "I… I don't even know what to say. That… that just happened."
Erevan lifted his bloodied, trembling hand and let it hover over the Codex's glowing pages. He exhaled slowly, savoring the rhythm of his own heartbeat for the first time in what felt like forever. "I am… me. No one else. Not code. Not system. Not shadow. Just me."
Sir Quacksalot quacked once, sharply, as if punctuating the statement, and the Null—a chaotic, fractured nightmare—lay shattered beneath them, waiting for its next defiance.