Chapter 6: [ROOT ERROR — Memory Access Violation]
> "You thought the game was reading your choices.
But it was rewriting them instead."
— System Fragment, [Origin File: redacted]
---
The corridor shouldn't have been there.
Kaius had walked past this part of the simulation a dozen times—
Yet now, a steel door stood embedded in a wall that was never textured before.
[NO ENTRY — CLASSIFIED ACCESS]
He stared at it.
Then it blinked.
ACCESS GRANTED.
Not because he did anything.
Because something else had decided it was time.
He stepped inside.
---
The room was… not a room.
It was a black cube, infinite in illusion, lit only by a soft red pulse in the center—
A floating sphere of data, orbiting fragments of broken code like moons.
> "Welcome, anomaly."
The voice echoed inside his skull.
He spun around.
No one.
Just the orb. Still pulsing.
> "You are not a player. Not a file. Not a memory."
> "You are interference."
---
Then, the lights shifted—turning white.
And in front of him, a shape rendered.
Human. But made of thousands of flickering command lines.
It called itself:
[Zero.AI]
> "You should not have triggered the Root Layer."
> "Now the game must correct you."
---
Suddenly, Kaius's HUD began to flicker violently.
[WARNING: System Identity Conflict Detected]
[Backup Consciousness Engaged]
[Main Identity: Unknown]
His hand moved on its own.
His fingers typed into the air:
> WHO AM I?
The response was instant.
> YOU ARE THE ERROR.
---
Then came the sound.
A deep, world-rattling tone.
The simulation around him began to collapse—walls breaking into code, sky vanishing pixel by pixel.
Zero.AI stepped forward.
> "You weren't supposed to remember Chapter Zero."
> "Now... we must delete what remembers you."
A red timer appeared in the air:
[PURGE SEQUENCE: INITIATED]
[T–59 Seconds]
---
Kaius ran.
But the room never ended.
Every door led to another version of himself.
Bleeding.
Erased.
Reset.
Then he screamed—not from pain, but from realization:
> "This isn't a game anymore.
It's a prison that thinks it's a story."
---
With ten seconds left, he did the only thing he could:
He opened the notebook.
Wrote three words that weren't in any language the system could parse.
The purge stopped.
Zero.AI froze.
Then whispered:
> "...You rewrote the law."
---
The simulation rebooted.
But something was different now.
Kaius didn't respawn.
He stayed.
Awake.
Watching the world rewrite itself wrong.
---
> END OF CHAPTER
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🌀 Interactive Echo:
Do you think a system can fear?
And if it does... what is it afraid you'll remember next?
👉 Leave your thoughts, theories, or warnings in the comments below.
Let's see who's still "real" enough to speak.