The next morning, Kael's hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Not fear.
Not weakness.
Something else.
A twitch in the nerves, like he was out of sync with his own body.
He watched the tremor crawl up his fingers like static and pressed his palm against the reprocessor's heat sink.
No relief.
His bunkmate, Rell, watched from across the room.
"You look like shit."
"Thanks."
"Like... worse than usual."
Kael rolled his neck, bones cracking like broken glass. "I haven't slept."
"Clearly."
"You ever feel like your body's not yours anymore?"
Rell raised an eyebrow. "You're having an existential crisis at seven a.m.?"
Kael laughed, but it came out wrong sharp and dry.
"No, not that. I mean like… you're still in it, but the engine's firing out of rhythm. Something's rewiring itself while you're awake."
Rell stared. "That's either enlightenment or schizophrenia."
Kael shoved his hands into his coat and walked out.
The lowest level of the Saint Temple Kael found himself there again pulled, not led.
He stopped beside a mirror that wasn't really a mirror.
It had no reflection.
Just a smooth, black surface that swallowed light.
Another leftover from the time before.
"I don't get it," he muttered. "What the fuck is happening to me?"
The silence answered with static.
Then
Words.
No voice.
Just... intent.
You are no longer broadcasting.
You are compiling.
Kael jerked back. "The hell does that mean?"
Silence again.
He slammed his palm against the dark glass. "Stop being cryptic!"
The noise deepened.
His breath caught.
Then, without warning, symbols began to etch themselves into the wall burning glyphs, like acid cutting code through steel.
Kael backed away.
Watched them form.
Each one pulsed with logic, precision.
He didn't understand the language, but he felt what it meant.
It was his blueprint.
He didn't go to his assigned shift.
He didn't check in.
He didn't eat.
He found a terminal instead an old neural-link model buried behind a scrap wall in the Archive's dead zone.
He hooked himself in.
The interface stung as it pierced the base of his neck, but he barely felt it.
Static fuzzed behind his eyes.
The system blinked awake.
Welcome to Entanglement Core Archive: Shell Instance 3.2
Access Level: Restricted
User Class: Zero | ID: Veyne, Kael
Interface Warning: Uncoherent neural pattern detected. Proceed?
Y/N
He laughed.
"Y."
The interface pulsed.
Initiating sandbox…
Light swallowed him.
Kael found himself in the Construct a visual simulation space monks used to meditate and interact with raw Strings.
For them, it usually manifested as a serene garden or a sea of geometric light.
For Kael?
It was chaos.
Endless void.
And in that void Strings.
Thousands of them.
Glowing, pulsing lines, curling in and out of each other like god's own wiring diagram.
He reached for one.
It snapped back.
Another.
Same.
They rejected him.
Too noisy.
Too wild.
Not coherent.
"You're not supposed to be here," said a voice.
Kael turned.
A figure floated nearby.
Pale skin, no eyes, robes stitched from overlapping equations.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the shell," it said. "A ghost of the Code. A memory left to stop people like you."
"People like me?"
"Ones who don't belong."
Kael stepped closer. "Why don't I belong?"
"Because you don't tune," it said. "You override."
"What does that mean?"
"You don't enter the frequency. You replace it."
Kael frowned. "You mean… I rewrite it?"
The figure nodded. "You're not supposed to exist."
"Well," Kael said. "Neither is this place."
Then he grabbed a String.
And it didn't snap.
It twisted around his wrist like a leash.
The shell screamed.
He unplugged violently, blood trickling from his nose and ears.
The neural jack popped free with a hiss.
Kael collapsed onto the floor, gasping, every muscle twitching.
But his mind his mind was clear.
Now he understood.
The monks didn't manipulate reality by force.
They aligned with it.
They became part of the harmony, the song beneath existence.
The more coherent your mind, the more you could sync.
Guide the vibrations like a tuning fork.
But Kael didn't align.
He overrode.
He didn't whisper to reality.
He gave it new orders.
He wasn't part of the Code.
He was root access.
And the system hated that.
That night, he went back to the lower sanctum.
The place where it started.
Where the sphere had first spoken to him.
But the sphere wasn't there.
Instead, someone else was.
A monk.
Not blindfolded.
Young.
Tall.
Robes embroidered with live code.
He turned as Kael entered. "You found it, didn't you?"
"Found what?"
"The fracture. The silence that isn't silence."
Kael didn't answer.
The monk walked closer. "I'm Initiate Rhass. Fourth String Ascendant."
"Kael Veyne. Unranked Zero."
"No," Rhass said. "Not anymore. You're something else. I can feel the distortion around you."
"You're not gonna report me?"
"I was sent to kill you."
Kael blinked. "Well that's honest."
"They think you're a threat. A corruption. Something that can spread."
"And you?"
"I think maybe you're what comes next."
Kael didn't trust him.
But he didn't fight him either.
Rhass sat cross-legged on the floor.
Gestured for Kael to join him.
"Sit. Let's talk."
Kael sat, but kept his hand near a metal shard in his coat.
"Tell me," he said, "how this all works. For real."
Rhass nodded.
"The Order is built on coherence. A mental alignment with the universe's base pattern. That's how monks wield power they match the frequency of matter, thought, even time. The more coherent you are, the more access you have."
"And the Saints?"
"They're legends. Beings whose minds are so perfectly aligned they've become part of the architecture of reality. They don't cast shadows. They bend space when they breathe. They can split planets with a thought, not by will but by resonance."
"And me?"
Rhass hesitated.
"You're not coherent. You're something worse. You're a patch. A mutation. You don't tune the system you destabilize it. You access Strings in raw form, not through alignment, but through contradiction."
Kael felt sick.
"So I'm a virus?"
"No," Rhass said softly. "You're the first true debugger."
Kael looked down at his hands.
They were still shaking.
But this time, it wasn't fear.
It was power trying to find a shape.
Trying to become something real.