Ne Job: The Intern from Hell — Chapter 71: "Ashes of the Directive"
(~1,800 words, full prose)
The world returned as a whisper.
A faint hiss of wind brushing across scorched stone. Then a heartbeat — his own, steady but strange, like it belonged to someone else.
Ne Job opened his eyes to gray light and the smell of burnt incense. The sky above was fractured, smeared with streaks of divine dust that pulsed faintly like veins in an exhausted god's arm.
He pushed himself up, coughing. His body trembled. The air was thick with remnants of divine energy — shards of broken seals, drifting like snow.
"Yue…?" he croaked.
A few meters away, she sat amidst the ruins, hair tangled with ash, robes torn. Her eyes were open, fixed on the horizon where the Shard Court once stood — now reduced to a silent crater ringed with floating parchment and fragments of law sigils.
When she turned toward him, relief flickered in her gaze — brief, before it vanished behind the composure of a Bureau officer.
"You're awake," she said softly.
"Define 'awake,'" Ne Job muttered, rubbing his temples. "I feel like my brain's been through a celestial blender."
"You absorbed part of the Directive field."
"Yeah, that sounds about right."
He tried to stand, but his knees buckled. Yue reached out instinctively, catching his arm before he fell. The contact sent a strange current between them — not divine, not mortal. Just… resonance.
Ne Job blinked. "You felt that too?"
Her silence was answer enough.
He glanced around the ruin. The Shard Judge was gone. The sealing glyphs, obliterated. Only the Bureau's broken insignia remained, half-buried in dust.
"So…" he murmured, "we won?"
Yue didn't answer. Instead, she looked toward the sky — where faint threads of light twisted upward, like the Bureau's laws themselves were rewriting.
"No," she said. "We survived."
---
The silence that followed was heavy, but not empty.
Yue could feel it — a tremor running through the world's spiritual infrastructure. The Bureau's archives, once immutable, were shifting. She could almost hear the echo of Lord Xian's voice from the final transmission before the collapse: "Directive breach authorized. Let it fall."
She rose, brushing dust from her sleeves. Her mind replayed the sequence — the Directive fracturing, the Chaos Spark responding to Ne Job's pulse, the world screaming in two voices.
Ne Job was standing now, wobbling slightly but trying to act like he wasn't half-dead. Typical.
He frowned, looking at his palm — faint golden lines were pulsing beneath his skin, like circuitry.
"Yue," he said quietly, "what did I… do back there?"
She hesitated. "You did what no intern should've been able to do. You rewrote a Shard Directive. And you lived."
"Cool," he said weakly. "Do I get overtime pay for that?"
"Probably divine audit instead."
"I'll take the pay."
A dry laugh escaped her despite the weight of the moment. But the humor faded as she noticed something behind him — a faint ripple forming in the air, like heat over stone.
"Ne Job—"
The ripple expanded, forming a translucent sigil of recall — the Bureau's emergency retrieval system. But the emblem flickered erratically, glitching between runes.
Yue's eyes widened. "That's not a recall seal. That's a trace."
Before she could react, the sigil pulsed and shattered, leaving behind a lingering voice — cold, resonant, bureaucratically divine.
> "Unauthorized interference detected. Directive breach logged. The Rebirth Protocol is now active."
Then it was gone.
Ne Job frowned. "Rebirth Protocol? Sounds like something out of Lord Xian's paranoia files."
Yue didn't answer immediately. The phrase chilled her. The last time she'd seen that protocol referenced was in classified archives sealed under the Heavenly Vault. A fail-safe to reset the Bureau's structure — even if it meant erasing its personnel.
Her pulse quickened. "We need to find Lord Xian. Now."
Ne Job raised an eyebrow. "You think he survived?"
Yue's gaze hardened. "If he didn't, the Bureau's collapse won't just end Heaven's order. It'll erase us too."
---
They started moving through the ruins, following the faint glow of surviving sigils that formed a trail toward the old registry hall. The once-mirrored corridors were now cracked and flooded with pale light leaking from heaven's underlayer.
As they walked, Ne Job noticed that the light bent strangely around him — as if avoiding his presence. He didn't mention it, but Yue noticed.
"You're changing," she said quietly.
"Into what?"
"I don't know yet."
He exhaled, half amused, half afraid. "Story of my afterlife."
---
When they reached the registry hall, the doors were ajar, papers scattered everywhere. The Bureau's great ledger — once the unbroken record of divine order — lay split in two on the marble floor.
In the center of the hall stood a figure — tall, cloaked, still. The faint shimmer of divine insignia pulsed from his back.
"Lord Xian!" Yue called.
The figure turned. His face was pale, eyes glowing faintly — but there was something off. His aura was fragmented, as though two frequencies were battling inside him.
"Yue. Intern." His voice was calm, too calm. "You're both alive. Good."
Ne Job stepped forward. "So… mission success?"
Lord Xian's lips twitched — almost a smile, almost sorrow.
"The Directive fell. The Shard Court no longer holds authority."
"Then we—"
"But the Rebirth Protocol has been triggered."
Yue's stomach dropped. "Then the Bureau—"
"Will rebuild itself," he said, "at any cost."
Ne Job frowned. "Define 'any cost.'"
Lord Xian looked at him, eyes sharp now. "The Protocol sees all anomalies as foreign data. It will erase anything… unregistered. Including you, Intern Ne Job."
The silence hit like thunder.
Ne Job blinked, trying to process. "Wait, erase as in—"
"As in erase."
Yue stepped forward. "We can override the protocol, can't we?"
"Not without the core Shard intact," Lord Xian replied. "And you destroyed it."
Ne Job pointed weakly at himself. "Correction — it exploded. I was just… standing there. Heroically."
Lord Xian's gaze softened briefly, almost human. "You did what you had to. And because of that, the Bureau still exists — for now."
Then his tone shifted, colder. "But the Rebirth will come for you. Both of you. You'll need to move before it identifies your signatures."
"Where do we go?" Yue asked.
"The Forgotten Layer," Lord Xian said. "Where erased data drifts. It's the only place the Rebirth cannot see."
Ne Job exhaled. "Sounds cozy."
---
They left the hall just as the first tremor hit — the Bureau's reconstruction beginning. Buildings reassembling themselves in flashes of light, old seals reforming. But the new architecture looked wrong — sharper, mechanical, sterile.
Yue glanced back. "It's rewriting reality already."
Ne Job felt something tug at his chest — the Chaos Spark responding again, pulsing faster. He gritted his teeth. "Then we'd better run before reality finishes the update."
Lord Xian remained at the hall's entrance, watching them leave. When Yue turned to look back, she saw him raise a hand — a faint gesture of farewell, or command, or both.
Then the doors closed behind him, sealing with light.
---
They ran through collapsing corridors, through archives dissolving into data light. Ne Job's body felt heavier with every step — the Spark inside him reacting to the Bureau's reset field.
Yue grabbed his arm, pulling him toward a still-open rift ahead — faintly glowing, leading downward.
"This way!"
Ne Job hesitated. "You sure that doesn't lead to, you know, oblivion?"
Her expression was fierce. "If it does, at least we'll go there together."
He blinked — startled, almost touched. Then smirked. "Fine. Oblivion buddy system."
They leapt.
The rift swallowed them whole.
---
When the light faded, there was no sky, no ground — only endless drifting parchment and the faint hum of forgotten voices. The Forgotten Layer.
Yue exhaled shakily. "We made it."
Ne Job floated beside her, staring into the void. "So this is what bureaucracy looks like when the trash bin overflows."
She didn't laugh this time. Her gaze lingered on him — on the strange golden light now fully etched across his arms.
"You really are changing," she whispered.
He looked at her, half-smiling. "Then I guess I'll need a new job title."
---
Far above them, in the reconstructed Bureau, Lord Xian stood before a new crystal — the heart of the Rebirth Protocol. Inside it flickered two faint lights, struggling to resist deletion.
He placed his hand on the crystal.
"Run, you foolish intern," he murmured.
"Run before Heaven decides it no longer needs you."
And in the silence of the Bureau's rebirth, a faint echo rippled through the layers — the sound of something refusing to be erased.