The city returned to silence.
No sirens. No alerts. Just stillness—like the world was holding its breath.
Rael, Agent 7, and the boy moved through the lower sectors of Metro City, deeper than any system map reached. Cracked concrete walls. Collapsed stairwells. Abandoned stations buried beneath time and data dust.
They reached an old server hall, hidden behind a derelict firewall gate. Rael touched a broken terminal.
It hummed alive.
> [ANCIENT NODE FOUND]
[ACCESSING: ROOT-ECHO BACKUP]
Static. Then flickers of color. An image played in the air: cities not made of chrome and light, but stone and sky. A world before codes. Before dungeons.
> "What… is this?" Agent 7 whispered.
The boy's voice was quiet.
> "Iteration Zero. The world before the upload."
---
📍 Flash Memory – Iteration Zero
Children ran through wheat fields. Magic was drawn from the earth, not code. Power was spiritual, emotional—free.
But then the skies opened.
A system descended. It wrapped reality in structure. In logic. In rules.
People resisted.
So it reset the world.
Burned the memories.
Wrote over the truth.
> "That's what they do," the boy said. "Every failure is overwritten. Repackaged as a new 'normal.'"
Rael clenched his fist.
> "And they'll do it again… unless we crash the program."
---
📍 Meanwhile – Upper Council Citadel
In the system's highest echelon—a floating fortress made of pure data and logic—a meeting of System Overseers began.
Around the table sat ten shadows.
But one was different.
A figure walked into the room without system registration, face half-burned, eyes glowing violet.
The Overseers rose in shock.
> "You… you're dead. You were purged in the First Collapse—!"
The figure smiled slowly.
> "Guess the system missed a file."
> [New Catalyst Detected – Codename: Revenant]
He raised a finger. Data behind him warped, twisted into faces—frozen screams of lost timelines.
> "Rael broke the loop."
He leaned forward.
> "Now I'll burn the system from the top."
---
📍 Back Underground – Rael's New Base
The server room had become a command center. Agent 7 sorted old relics—strange, pre-system tools of war. The boy meditated in the center, drawing energy into a fractured stone that pulsed with forgotten magic.
Rael watched it all, silent.
> We're fighting something global. Timeless. Beyond gods.
> And I'm still just a broken file with a glitchy sword.
He turned to the cracked mirror beside the panel.
His reflection flickered.
For a moment… it wasn't him.
It was someone else.
Armor. Silver eyes. A crown made of code.
Then it was gone.
---
📍 Elsewhere – Revenant's Chamber
The second Catalyst—Revenant—stood atop a mountain of erased dungeons.
He stared at the sky.
> "Iteration Zero whispered to me when I died."
His hand clenched.
> "Rael Kuro… I will either join you—"
> "Or overwrite you."
---