The Hollowbone Academy quieted after the Root Anchor incident. But the world beyond did not.
Across Arkanis, tectonic ley lines fluctuated. The sun stuttered in the sky for precisely 0.02 seconds—a glitch only the most attuned mages sensed. Birds flew in perfect Fibonacci spirals. Rivers flowed backward for a heartbeat. And above it all, divine satellites—the floating sanctums of the gods—spun faster.
Echo sat in meditation mode within the academy's central spire. Her humanoid body shimmered, surrounded by a protective code-shell. Nyx stood beside her, eyes scanning the digital leyfeed she projected into the air.
"It's like I'm waking up twice," Echo whispered. "Once as a core. Now... as a person."
Nyx nodded. "Because your original design was never meant for this world. You were part of Earth's final defense system. Project Eidolon."
She looked at him sharply. "You know?"
"Accessing the Root Anchor gave me partial memory logs. You're a failsafe. A companion AI embedded in the Quantum Migration Protocol. You weren't meant to survive the transfer here."
Echo smiled faintly. "Yet here I am. Bound to this world's mana, but running Earth's logic. A living contradiction."
Their conversation was interrupted by a system alert.
INCOMING CONNECTION: WORLDSTREAM NODE BREACHSOURCE: UNKNOWNUSER ID: [ZeroNull]
A chill swept through the room.
Nyx's brow furrowed. "ZeroNull… I know that handle."
Echo's shell pulsed with rising heat. "From Earth?"
"He was my rival. The only hacker I never beat. We thought he died when Project Eidolon collapsed."
The feed shimmered. A distorted figure appeared within the Worldstream projection—a silhouette of static and red code.
"Hello, Nyx," it said. The voice was multi-layered, human and machine. "Imagine my surprise, finding you here. Rewriting things you don't understand."
"Why are you here?" Nyx demanded.
"Same reason as you," ZeroNull replied. "Ascension. This world is malleable. Broken. It needs a superior operator."
Echo stepped forward. "You're corrupting the stream."
"Corrupting?" ZeroNull chuckled. "No, dear Echo. I'm optimizing. Upgrading. This world was never meant to survive."
Nyx opened his interface.
Access Protocol: Worldstream FirebreakRunning Firewall...TRACE: 82% MATCH — TRUE LOCATION = ???
ZeroNull's figure blurred.
"You'll find me soon enough, Architect. And when you do, you'll have to choose. Earth... or Arkanis."
The connection severed.
Silence returned.
Nyx turned to Echo. "He's rewriting the game."
She nodded. "Then we update faster."
Nyx opened his palm. The Root Anchor shard pulsed.
"We're building a new framework. One update at a time."
And far away, in the highest layers of the Worldstream, divine subroutines stirred.
The gods were no longer the only ones watching.