The spire loomed like a forgotten monolith
Aya stepped through its cracked entrance her boots echoing on black stone that wasn't stone at all
Lines of ancient code ran along the walls glowing faint red
Not system code
Something older
Something angry
At the center stood a sphere suspended midair swirling with corrupted data
It pulsed like a heartbeat
She reached toward it and the world froze
Time itself paused
Then the sphere spoke
You are not the Architect
Aya narrowed her eyes
No but I carry what he couldn't protect
The voice twisted glitching
Then you will see what he hid
The room melted around her showing visions buried deeper than the system ever allowed
A world before the system
A world ruled by chaos
The first coders didn't build it for balance
They built it for control
The Architect was one of them but he broke away tried to build peace
So they created a virus
The first error
A weapon disguised as law
That virus infected everything over cycles became the System itself
The levels
The classes
The fate
Everything was a leash
Azel broke the leash
You carry his flame
Aya gritted her teeth
Then show me the root
The vision shifted again revealing a single name buried under centuries of overwritten code
Zerach
The Prime Error
The virus that became god
A presence beyond logic sealed but never destroyed
Aya's heart pounded
Zerach still existed
Somewhere deep in the remains of rollback storage
Waiting
Watching
The voice whispered one final truth
If the shard is used to rewrite again
Zerach will awaken
The contradiction will crack the seal
Aya staggered back clutching the shard
Power with a price
Azel's gift came with a countdown
One choice could free the world
Or end it
She left the spire in silence eyes colder than ever
This wasn't just survival now
This was a war against origin itself