Riko didn't fall; he kind of melted into the ground. One second, he was falling through broken floors and weird glitch dust. The next, his body went stiff, like when a video game only loads halfway. The ground wasn't solid, not truly. It felt more like standing on tons of puzzle pieces that couldn't decide if they wanted to form a floor.
He groaned and pushed himself up.
The ground moved under him. Little squares of glowing stuff slid around a bit, reshaping themselves under his hands like they had a life. Every step looked like it would fall into the empty space below, but somehow, it held him. It felt like the place knew who he was.
Riko blinked, looking around.
But there was nothing around him and above him.
Above him was only dark sky, no clouds, stars, or sun. Only blackness, cut by glowing blue glitch lines that went up and down really slowly, like huge heart monitors way up high. The lines made shapes sometimes. Circles, squares, even a face for a moment, before disappearing into the dark again.
Riko's breath trembled.
"What is this place?"
He stood up, wobbling as the blocks of data under him moved apart a little. When he moved, they came back together enough so he didn't fall. The place felt shaky, alive, but not right.
"Luna?" he called.
No one answered. His voice didn't even echo. It just disappeared, like the air wouldn't carry sound.
"Kaze?"
Nothing.
He shouted louder. Still nothing. His voice was a little puff of sound that disappeared as soon as he spoke.
This wasn't a space.
It wasn't a place.
It wasn't really anywhere.
It was empty, pretending to be a place.
Riko's stomach twisted. He rubbed his arms, trying to get past the cold feeling, but it wasn't really cold. It truly just felt like nothing was truly watching him. He was surrounded by it and inside empty.
He stepped forward.
The floor shifted as he moved, making a path where there wasn't one before. Square blocks lined up, zig-zagging, like a game making a path for him.
"Okay," Riko mumbled. "This is cool. Totally not scary. A floating path in the empty space. How normal."
He moved forward slowly, watching each block of data as if it might fall. The blocks didn't make any noise when they moved; no cracks, or scrapes. Just silence, like sound wasn't allowed here.
The Level Screen moved at the edge of his vision.
"Screen," Riko whispered, swallowing. "Where are we?"
Nothing happened.
Then the Level Screen popped into view in front of him, floating like a nervous animal. Its edges glitched, like a broken file. The numbers were mixed, levels sliding, stats blinking between good and bad, totally unstable.
Riko stepped back.
"What's wrong? Why do you look like you're gonna blow up?"
The screen shook, symbols moving all over. The letters weren't forming words right, like the system was trying to do it but the place was messing it up.
Riko stepped back, his heart started beating so much faster.
The screen flashed, splitting into three versions briefly, each showing a different glitch image. One was just red error, one was a broken loading bar, and the last was a tall, thin shadowy figure.
"What was that?!" Riko yelled.
The images disappeared.
The screen came back together again, but it flickered like it was about to die. Riko hesitated before stepping closer.
"Screen, where are Luna and Kaze? Did they fall here too?"
The screen didn't answer.
Instead, it vibrated, got brighter, and then blew up in a burst of static that lit up the void with white-blue light.
Riko covered his face and stumbled backward on the ground blocks.
Then, it went black again.
He opened one eye, carefully.
"Oh, come on…" he whispered.
The glitch lines above him had changed, spiraling slowly, like broken gears. The void seemed to be moving too, reacting to the screen's panic.
Riko had goosebumps.
It wasn't just a bad feeling.
It felt like it was changing around him.
He looked at his hands.
They looked okay.
But his shadow didn't.
His shadow moved a second after his hand. Lagged, like a video game. When he stopped, the shadow caught up, sometimes jagged and broken before snapping back into his real shape.
He stepped backward slowly.
His shadow did it two seconds later.
"…nope. Not dealing cursed delayed-shadow stuff. Not right now.
He forced himself to breathe steadily. He'd fought monsters and and Kaze. A giant glitch titan. But this place wasn't an enemy he could punch. It wasn't anything.
It felt like being stuck inside a loading screen that never finished.
Riko put his hand over his chest to calm himself.
"Okay, think. The rift giant hit the ground. The school broke. We fell through. So this is what? Another zone? A broken zone? Some kind of…"
The floor beneath him shook, like a video game freezing.
Riko stopped moving.
The blocks moved, separating a few inches. A gap opened below him, revealing blackness.
"OKAY NOPE—DON'T FALL—DON'T FALL—"
He jumped to the side. The ground pieces snapped back together just in time, forming a solid platform again.
Riko breathed heavily.
"This place lives," he muttered. "It reacts. It listens. It…"
He stopped himself.
Something far below shifted.
A blue light reached upward quietly sonar.
Then another, closer.
Riko stepped back.
He didn't know what was there
But it knew he was here.
The screen beside him flashed again, like being scared symbols and warnings. Static across the screen.
Then finally,
A message formed, shaking.
One sentence.
One whisper.
The System didn't say this out loud.
The System whispers: "…we're not supposed to be here…"