Root sat in the ruined atrium of the Undone's new base, breathing slower than normal.
Every breath felt slightly off-beat.
Like the world's tempo had changed.
He opened his palm and stared at the sigil—its lines now warped, jagged in places, humming like a thing alive.
"Just a test," he murmured. "Let's see if I can still summon."
Veyr hovered beside him, arms crossed, one eyebrow somehow raised beneath his porcelain mask.
"Might I suggest testing with something non-lethal? Like… I don't know. A ghost rat. Or a friendly rock."
"I'll try a baseline summon," Root said, ignoring him. "Default thread. Class: Supporter. Nothing extreme."
He focused.
The summon glyph formed in the air—a standard triangle of light with three nested rings.
But before he could speak the final word…
The triangle snapped.
A jagged vertical slit formed instead.
The rings spun backward.
And from the rift, something crawled out.
Not a support summon.
Not even a creature.
It was a hand. Porcelain white. Clawed. Grinning mouths tattooed across each finger joint.
Veyr backed up so fast he glitched.
"NOPE. I am NOT babysitting that."
The hand dropped onto the floor and skittered like a spider toward Root's leg, chittering softly in a voice like chewing glass.
[ SUMMON PROTOCOL: REJECTED ]
[ REPLACEMENT ENTITY GENERATED FROM UNWRITTEN CODEPOOL ]
[ TAG: "Five-Fold Grin" | Loyalty: ??? | Duration: Indefinite ]
[ System Note: This summon does not exist. Please do not report it. ]
Root looked up, face pale.
"I didn't summon that."
"Yeah, well," Veyr said, floating behind a couch, "you didn't summon me either. And look how that turned out."
The Five-Fold Grin circled Root's foot like a predator pretending to be a pet.
Its fingers curled in unnatural patterns, each knuckle-mouth silently mouthing something Root didn't want to hear. Not words—meanings. Hunger, mischief, betrayal… joy?
"Okay," Root muttered, extending a cautious palm. "Let's try this slow."
He focused his sigil, issuing a standard anchor command: Bind. Designate. Leash.
For half a second, the hand froze.
Then it flipped upside down, pointed all five finger-mouths at Root, and began to laugh.
"Nope nope nope," Veyr said from behind a broken pillar. "That's a free-range summon. Send it back. Return it to the horrible little dimension it crawled out of."
"I'm trying," Root growled. "It's ignoring system tags."
The Hollow System pinged.
[ Warning: Current summon is operating on Unwritten Logic. Commands may be interpreted, ignored, or repurposed. ]
[ Do not issue vague orders. Do not engage in philosophical conversation. Do not feed after midnight. ]
Root flinched as the hand skittered up his leg and perched on his shoulder like a demonic parrot. One mouth softly whispered, "Master?"
He froze.
"…Did it just call me—?"
"Do not fall for that," Veyr warned. "That's how eldritch parasites start relationships."
Lyra entered with her weapon drawn, stopping short when she saw the hand. "Is that a summon or a curse?"
"Yes," Root said flatly.
"…Cool."
But just as Root prepared to dismiss it, something else happened.
The Grin extended its index finger—pointed toward the east wall of the compound—and etched a glyph in the air using nothing.
A crack in space shimmered. A message flickered:
[ UNWRITTEN EVENT PREDICTION: INCOMING HOSTILE CONTACT – 00:04:39 ]
Root's breath caught.
"It's warning us?"
Veyr floated over slowly, eyeing the hand.
"That thing just read the narrative. Not predicted. Read."
"Which means?"
"Which means it's not a summon."
Veyr turned to Root, expression unreadable beneath his mask.
"It's a storyteller."
The timer burned behind Root's eyes:
[ INCOMING HOSTILE CONTACT – 00:00:12 ]
Each second ticked slower than the last.
The Five-Fold Grin perched silently on his shoulder, now eerily still. Its finger-mouths were closed. Its eyes—if they could be called that—were turned east.
The others had taken positions.
Klem stood at the shattered entrance, axe braced across his chest.
Lyra crouched by the wall with her electric hare summon flickering like nervous lightning.
Veyr floated just behind Root, whispering calculations that never quite reached human ears.
"We don't see anything," Lyra said through clenched teeth.
"You will," Root murmured.
"How do you know?"
"Because it does."
At exactly zero—
The world rippled.
Not exploded. Not shattered. Just… rippled, like someone dropped a pebble into the code of the world itself.
A figure stepped through the ripple.
Tall. Pale. Mechanical wings of broken bronze unfolded from its back with the hiss of decompressed logic. It had no face—only a mirrored mask reflecting Root's own.
[ SYSTEM ALERT: ENTITY 'AUDITOR A-2' ENTERING LOCAL INSTANCE ]
[ Purpose: Unstable Node Termination | Target: Hollow Anchor – Root ]
[ Estimated Success Rate: 91% ]
"A System Auditor?" Veyr snapped. "Here?! That's illegal. That's so illegal. Even I wouldn't do that."
Root swallowed.
The Grin leapt from his shoulder.
It landed between Root and the Auditor, each mouth yawning open, whispering one fractured word after another.
"You… are… not… real… enough…"
The Auditor didn't respond. It raised its hand, and the space around it twisted—trying to unmake Root on a conceptual level.
[ WARNING: USER'S EXISTENCE IS NON-CANONICAL. PURGING ERROR. ]
Root clenched his fists. His Hollow Sigil surged with new light—not gold, not silver… but black and bending.
"You want to erase me?" he said.
"Then try."
The Five-Fold Grin exploded into action—leaping from mouth to mouth, claw to wall, rift to floor.
It didn't fight the Auditor with force.
It fought with contradiction.
Every time the Auditor tried to land a strike, the Grin changed the rules. Its hands rearranged the physics. The walls moved. The gravity flipped. The lighting reversed.
Root stared.
"It's not a summon…"
"It's a glitch engine."
Veyr nodded.
"That thing doesn't follow the world. It writes in the margins."
The battle ended in under a minute.
The Auditor collapsed into itself—its mirrored face shattering into infinite shards of Root's face, each one slightly different.
And then it was gone.
Root looked down at the Five-Fold Grin.
It climbed back up to his shoulder and whispered something only he could hear.
"You are the wrong answer. Keep asking."