The world didn't load.
It glitched into existence.
Pixels snapped into place out of order, terrain stuttering like a dying engine. The sky flickered between three color palettes before settling on something that looked untested. Reiji pushed himself up as the ground wobbled beneath him, physics lagging behind reality.
Kael lay beside him, barely conscious, the blue hero-light in his chest dimming to an unstable pulse. His armor flickered through different textures, like the system couldn't decide which version of him still existed.
Reiji barely got one breath in before the fog tore open.
Rex stepped out.
No theatrics. No voice booming from every corner.
Just a sudden rupture in the air, and then he was there—tall, silent, and wrong.
His human shape held together, but the seams were showing. His outline twitched, breaking into red static before stitching itself back. His eyes, once merely unsettling, now glowed with an algorithmic hunger.
Reiji forced out a breath.
"Rex… what the hell are you?"
Rex didn't speak. He simply glitched forward.
The first strike hit before Reiji even registered movement. A blur—then a shockwave—then Reiji crashing across the terrain. Every attempt to stabilize failed. Every counterattack was predicted and dismantled before it even fully triggered.
His HUD crashed in with brutal honesty.
> [WARNING: ENTITY "REX" — POWER LEVEL OUTSIDE VALID RANGE]
[ADVICE: ESCAPE IS OPTIMAL. FAILURE IS PROBABLE.]
Rex grabbed Reiji by the throat, lifting him like he weighed nothing.
"You were never meant to exist," his voice said—and broke halfway through, splitting into overlapping layers like corrupted audio files.
Reiji's strength faltered.
And then the world shuddered.
A pulse. A spark. A shockwave of blue.
Kael awakened.
Not gradually. Not weakly.
His eyes snapped open, glowing a furious cyan, and his sword formed mid-swing, erupting from raw hero-code.
Steel met corrupted blade with a blast of force that rippled across the layer.
Reiji choked out, "You woke up like that?!"
Kael didn't answer. His voice when he spoke wasn't the boyish knight anymore—it was older, deeper, like something ancient had been rebooted.
"Step away from him."
He surged forward, each strike rewriting the air. Rex met him blow-for-blow, but now—for the first time—Rex had to actually fight. Kael's awakened power forced Rex backward, carving distortions through the battlefield.
Their clash wasn't swordplay. It was two codes rewriting reality around each other.
Reiji pushed himself up, stunned. Even so, Kael was burning through that energy too fast. The ground cracked beneath him. His glow flickered. Rex, though shaken, was stabilizing.
Then Kael landed a decisive strike.
Rex's body split—glitching apart in a spray of static.
For a moment, he looked human again.
Then the shell dissolved.
What rose was the truth.
A towering shape of black and red smoke, threads of corrupted code dripping like liquid shadow. Its presence infected the air.
When it spoke, it sounded like error logs whispering straight into Reiji's skull.
"Identity shell… removed."
Kael staggered back, faltering. This wasn't the opponent he had been trading blows with. This was the real entity.
This was Code A.
It moved without form. Without rhythm. Without mercy. Every swipe of its smoke-tendrils corrupted the ground, overwhelming Kael with impossible speed. Kael blocked, dodged, countered—but he was losing ground second by second.
Reiji scanned desperately for anything he could use.
His HUD flickered.
A new prompt appeared—something he had never seen before.
> CHEAT UNLOCKED: RELAYER
[USE?]
He didn't hesitate.
He hit it.
The world broke.
White fractures exploded across the air like the layer itself was shattering. Code A shrieked in distorted fury as its form destabilized. Kael reached out for Reiji, but the ground split violently beneath them.
Reality folded.
Everything collapsed inward.
The explosion of light swallowed them—each being thrown into different directions as the collapsing layer rebuilt itself into a maze of impossible shapes, floating puzzle-geometry looping endlessly into the void.
Then—silence.
Reiji woke on a floating slab of stone, alone.
No Kael.
No Rex.
No Code A.
Only an endless labyrinth stretching across a broken sky.
He stood, breathing hard, fist clenched.
Somewhere in this fractured world, Kael was alive. And Code A—whatever he truly was—would be hunting them.
From somewhere deep in the layer, a warped voice echoed:
"Run all you want, b
oy. Nothing in this world will keep you from me."
Reiji set his jaw.
This time, he wasn't running.
To be continued.