Chapter 7 - Chapter 7 – A Glitch in the Sky (And a Door in My Room)

The morning after a festival always feels like the world has a hangover.Havenford was quieter than usual when I stepped out of The Copper Acorn. Stalls were half-disassembled, confetti clung to cobblestones, and someone snored loudly under a table in the corner of the square.Merra had given me a look on my way out that said "if you're about to start more nonsense, at least bring back bread.""Peaceful," I murmured, stretching.[Statistically temporary.] MMA said. [Your existence correlates strongly with the phrase "and then things got weird again."]"You say that like it's my fault," I thought.[You literally are a walking probability skew.]"…Fair."I'd intended to take a lazy lap around town, check in on Garron's stall, maybe visit the shrine and see if Aria's spirits were still "confused."The sky had other plans.A flicker tugged at the edge of my awareness, like a glitch at the corner of a screen. I looked up automatically.The familiar hairline cracks were still there, faint and shimmering.But now, between two of them, a tiny point of light pulsed. Not bright, not threatening—just… there. Wrong, in the way a single pixel of pure white is wrong in the middle of a blue painting.[You see that, right?] I thought.[Yes.] MMA's tone sharpened. [New anomaly. Not a local fracture. Something… behind the cracks.]The point flickered faster.No one else in the square reacted. A kid kicked at confetti. An old man swept his stoop. Life continued at its small-town pace, blissfully unaware that the universe had just dropped a notification dot in the sky."What is it?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.[Analyzing…] A pause. [It's not a direct threat. More like… a ping. A handshake request.]"From what?"MMA hesitated.[From elsewhere. A worldline trying to… find you.]My stomach did a weird little flip."You mean another world is… calling?"[Something like that. Your bloodline is starting to resonate beyond Eldoria. The work you've done here—closing fractures, reinforcing nodes, participating in key events—has increased your "visibility."]"So I've gone from anonymous bug to… slightly less anonymous bug," I thought.[Correct. And that ping is not going to stop just because you ignore it.]Even as MMA said it, the point of light brightened once, then faded, like a blinking eye."Can I answer it?" I asked.[Not directly. Your Worldline Access is still constrained. But…] MMA trailed off. [There is a workaround.]"Why do you sound like you're about to recommend something deeply irresponsible?"[Because I am.] it admitted. [But it's also the only way to open the next stage of your bloodline without waiting for Eldoria to finish collapsing.]"That's an appealing sales pitch."[Finish your walk.] MMA said. [There will be… preparations.]"That's not ominous at all."I checked in with Garron and Lena (sales were good, Tom had eaten too many sweet buns, Lena pretended not to notice I hovered near the stall a little longer than necessary), then made my way up to the shrine.Aria stood by the offering box, retying a strand of bells that had come loose during the ceremony."You look like you didn't sleep," she said when she saw me."That's my natural aesthetic," I said. "Also, the sky has a new dot."Her eyes flicked up."What kind of dot?" she asked."Glitch dot," I said. "Not a crack. A… ping."She studied the sky for a moment, then frowned."I can't see it," she said. "But the hum changed this morning. Like someone plucked a different string.""That would be my fault," I said. "Apparently my… condition is getting… louder."She gave me a long look."I don't know whether to scold you or thank you in advance," she said."Flip a coin," I suggested.She smiled faintly."If the world asks you to leave," she said quietly, "will you?"The question caught me off-guard."I don't think it can," I said honestly. "Not easily. I'm… sticky.""You sound proud of that.""Scared and proud," I said. "Mostly both.""The spirits are getting used to you," she said. "If you vanish suddenly, they'll sulk.""I'll tell them before I run off to cause trouble in other dimensions," I said. "Promise.""You say that like you're joking," she replied. "You're not, are you?""Define 'joking'."She shook her head, but her expression was more resigned than annoyed."Fine," she said. "When you do something foolish—and you will—try not to break our sky from the outside.""I'll put 'inside-only breaking' on my to-do list."She flicked my forehead with two fingers."Ow.""That's for tempting fate," she said.I spent the rest of the morning in low-impact hero mode: helping an old woman carry a basket, shooing a chicken out of a bakery, answering Tom's hundred questions about "what do demons look like when they're not pretending to be people."Normal stuff.By midday, the point of light in the sky had settled into a slow, steady pulse. Not urgent. Just persistent.[Host.] MMA said as I climbed the stairs back to my room after lunch. [Ready?]"Define 'ready'," I thought.[Accepting that something strange will happen and you'll probably say 'of course' afterward.]"Then yes."My room was exactly as I'd left it—bed, desk, small chest, window.And something new.On the wall opposite the window, where there had previously been nothing but plaster, something shimmered.At first, it looked like a trick of light—a faint, vertical distortion, like heat over a road. Then, as I stepped closer, lines resolved: the outline of a door. No frame, no handle. Just a rectangle of slightly wrong air.I stopped two paces away."…MMA," I thought. "Explain."[Your Worldline Access just hit a threshold.] it said. [The system has instantiated a Lobby Door.]"Lobby. As in…"[The Multiverse Lobby. A neutral hub. A "between" space.]I exhaled slowly."So there really is a room between worlds," I said. "And you put the door in my inn."[Calm down. It's anchored to you, not the building. If you move, it moves.]"That's not comforting. Merra will kill me if I teleport her wall without warning."[She can't see it.] MMA said. [To everyone else, that's just a blank wall. Only you—and possibly select individuals in the future—can access it.]"That's somehow more unsettling."The door pulsed faintly, in sync with the point of light in the sky."Is this connected to that ping?" I asked.[Indirectly.] MMA said. [The ping is another worldline brushing against your bloodline, curious. The Lobby door is your new way of responding without ripping a hole in Eldoria's atmosphere.]"And what happens if I… open it?" I asked.[You take your first step into a stable inter-world space.] MMA replied. [Low risk. High significance.]"Define 'low risk'," I thought.[You will not die, fragment, or accidentally bring a demon into your room. Probably.]"'Probably' is doing an Olympic lift there."[I estimate a 97.3% chance of non-catastrophic outcome.]"And the remaining 2.7%?"[You might get mildly lost for a bit.]"Just… lost?"[And maybe meet someone ahead of schedule.]I blinked."Someone?"[The Lobby is not… entirely empty.] MMA admitted. [Consider this your first harem-related multiverse complication.]"You're dropping NPCs into my interdimensional hallway."[You're welcome.]I stared at the not-door.On one hand: unknown space, unknown people, unknown rules.On the other hand: staying here, pretending I didn't feel that tug beyond the sky, as other worlds pinged like anxious notifications.Aria's question echoed: if the world asks you to leave, will you?It hadn't asked.But others were calling."Alright," I said softly. "Let's knock."I reached out and placed my palm against the distorted surface.It felt… cool. Not like stone or wood. More like touching still water that refused to ripple."Open," I said.I didn't need a magic word.The bloodline pulsed.The door unfolded.The wall didn't move. Instead, space… parted. The rectangle of air deepened, turning from flat distortion to a frame of light, beyond which lay——a room.Not The Copper Acorn.Not Havenford.Not any place in Eldoria.It was a circular chamber, perhaps ten meters across, with a floor of smooth, pale stone etched with faint lines that glowed softly. The walls were a gradient of twilight shades, shifting between deep blue and soft purple. No doors, no windows—just space.Floating in the middle, at about eye level, was a small, crystalline orb, spinning slowly. Trails of light fanned out from it, connecting to invisible points beyond the walls.Multiverse management interface, I guessed.[Correct.] MMA said. [Welcome to the Lobby.]Stepping through felt like crossing the surface of a bubble—no resistance, just a brief tingle and a faint sense of passing through something that wasn't quite air.The moment my foot hit the stone, I felt it.Relief.Not mine.The room's.Like a system had been waiting ages for someone to show up and finally log in."Home sweet glorified waiting room," I said.[This space is anchored to your bloodline.] MMA explained. [It exists outside individual worldlines, but can connect to them. Eventually, this is where you'll manage your travels.]"Eventually," I echoed. "What about now?"[Now, it has two functions.] MMA said. [One: provide a safe buffer when you jump. Two…]A distant "whoa" echoed behind me.I froze.Slowly, I turned.Someone else stood near the threshold where my door had been.She was about my age, maybe a year older, with short silver hair that fell in messy layers around her face, and golden eyes currently wide with curiosity. She wore a jacket with too many zippers over some kind of jumpsuit, a pair of goggles pushed up on her forehead, and boots that looked like they belonged on a spaceship.Definitely not from Eldoria."Well," she said, hands on her hips. "This is not the maintenance crawlspace I was aiming for."We stared at each other.Her gaze flicked up and down, taking in my coat, my very confused expression, the glowing lines on the floor."Uh," I said intelligently.She grinned."Oh good," she said. "You look as lost as I feel. That means we're at least equally doomed."MMA pinged, sounding far too amused.[New Contact: Worldline #S-07 – "Astra Axis: Orbit of War" – Subject: Rhea Solvine (Provisional).]I blinked."Wait," I thought. "S-07? That's a different world already?"[Remember the ping?] MMA said. [Congratulations. You just accidentally answered it.]Rhea squinted at me."Question," she said, lifting a finger. "Where, exactly, is this? Because my HUD just threw a full system error and is now pretending this room doesn't exist.""Short answer?" I said. "Between.""Between what?""Everything," I said.She stared.Then her grin widened."Oh," she said. "I like you."[Harem Flag "Cross-World First Contact" triggered.] MMA noted smugly."Of course it has a name," I thought.Out loud, I sighed."Right," I said. "New plan."I gestured around us."Welcome to the Multiverse Lobby," I said. "My name is Kai Arden. Overpowered idiot, part-time world patch, and apparently your accidental host."Rhea laughed, bright and delighted."This," she declared, "is going to be fun."