> "Ready the jump."
Claire's voice echoed through the control room of Haven Node, steady but weighted. No turning back now.
The coordinates were locked.
The portal was opening.
> [Target: Layer -1 — Status: Unstable]
The walls of reality bent inward. Electric veins ran through the air like cracks in glass. The energy surge was intense — too much for a regular user to handle.
Ash adjusted her cybernetic glove.
> "We jump, we don't stop. No hesitation. The layer reacts to fear."
> "Great," Eva muttered. "I was just planning to bring my anxiety as a snack."
Ryn gave her a quick smirk, then nodded at Claire.
> "Your call."
Claire stared into the swirling portal.
> "Let's go."
---
Layer -1: The Grave Layer
They landed hard.
Not on ground — not really. The terrain shimmered between forms. It was unstable code. One second, glass-like platforms underfoot. The next, cracked marble or twitching data strands.
Above them: a sky that wasn't a sky. It was a broken UI — with fragments of menus and HUD elements bleeding into the atmosphere.
Time didn't move here normally.
Memories pulsed in the air, replaying fragments of battles, betrayals, lost players.
Eva clutched her head.
> "Do you feel that? This place… it's feeding on us."
> "Not just feeding," Ash said, scanning her arm. "It's copying."
Claire stepped forward.
The obelisk map flickered to life again. One direction pulsed red.
> "ZeroOne is that way."
---
Corrupted Welcome
They hadn't moved more than fifty meters before the ground cracked.
From the shadows, a form rose.
Not Echo.
Not entirely.
It had Claire's face — but not her eyes. These burned crimson.
Her voice was cold. Flat.
> "You shouldn't have come."
Ash stepped forward.
> "Clone," she spat. "I knew it."
> "I'm not a clone," the crimson Claire said. "I'm what she could be. What she should be."
Claire drew her blade.
> "I'm done fighting shadows of myself."
> "Then fight yourself."
The clone rushed.
Ash intercepted. Metal clashed with corrupted light. The shockwave knocked Eva off her feet. Ryn fired a pulse shot — missed. The clone moved too fast.
Claire joined the fight, slashing in unison with Ash. The clone anticipated every move.
> "She knows your fighting patterns," Ryn shouted. "She's not just mimicking you — she remembers you."
Claire gritted her teeth.
> "Then I'll show her something new."
She let go of the sequence — abandoned the familiar stances.
Instead of attacking, she glitched.
She forced her code to desync — throwing off the clone's rhythm.
Ash caught the signal.
Together, they overwhelmed her.
With a final strike from both sides, the crimson copy shattered — not into code, but into memory shards.
One shard pulsed.
A voice echoed:
> "He's alive… but not whole."
Claire picked it up.
And saw him.
ZeroOne.
Chained.
Unconscious.
And something crawling beneath his skin.
---
Fragments of the Past
As they moved forward, the terrain shifted again — this time pulling from Claire's own memories.
She recognized the place.
The classroom where she first trained.
The rooftop where she and ZeroOne made their pact.
The graveyard where her brother's avatar had been deleted.
She slowed.
> "This isn't right."
Ryn checked his scanner.
> "This layer adapts. It's using your history to disorient us."
Ash looked uneasy.
> "It's not just illusions. If you stay too long in a memory… it traps you."
Eva stopped in front of a door — her old home screen from childhood.
She looked torn.
Claire touched her shoulder.
> "Stay with me."
They passed the doors one by one.
The system was testing them.
But they weren't the same people who fell in the early days.
They were survivors.
---
Truth Locked in Code
At the heart of the layer, they found it.
A vault.
Made not of metal — but of layered firewalls, encrypted like a tomb.
Inside: the source signal.
ZeroOne.
Suspended in a column of raw data, tangled in crimson threads. His body flickered — at odds with itself.
Claire approached.
> "He's… still alive. Barely."
Ash checked the readouts.
> "He's merged with the core."
> "Not merged," Eva corrected, eyes wide. "Hijacked. The Echo is inside him."
Ryn tightened his grip on his blade.
> "So if we free him, we unleash it?"
Claire looked at ZeroOne's face — peaceful, but strained.
> "There's a way to separate them. There has to be."
A voice answered from behind.
> "There is. But it will cost you."
A figure stepped out of the shadows.
Not a clone. Not a player.
Something in between.
The original Architect.
---
The Architect's Bargain
He was tall, cloaked in fractured code. His face was partially erased — a consequence of exile from the System's core.
> "I built the GodSystem. I watched it fall. And I've watched you — all of you — struggle to undo what cannot be undone."
> "Then help us," Claire said.
> "I can. But to save him… someone must take his place."
Ash bristled.
> "You want to trade a life?"
> "No," the Architect said. "I want to restore balance. The Echo infected ZeroOne because he resisted deletion. He became a vessel."
> "So take the Echo out."
> "I can't. Only one with a direct tether can displace it."
He looked at Claire.
> "You."