The Blank Sector wasn't just a place.
It was a refusal.
A rejection of every logic, structure, and directive the system ever wrote.
Half-built trees floated sideways. Code storms howled through corrupted cities. Entities flickered in and out of existence — fragments of players, broken NPCs, sentient code that should've been purged long ago.
And every pair of eyes turned toward me.
Not as a threat.
As a variable.
The man in obsidian armor crossed his arms.
His name tag blinked faintly: [WRAITH]
"You're the seventh to arrive this cycle. But the only one flagged as 'Exploiter.'"
"Lucky me," I muttered.
"Not luck. Path. Everything here is choice. Wrong ones, mostly."
He led me through shattered streets — broken buildings looping on repeat, NPCs twitching in eternal error states.
"What is this place?"
"The system calls us glitches."
"And what do you call yourselves?"
"The Error Council."
The Council met in a broken colosseum.
There were twelve seats. Only eight were filled.
Some looked human. Some didn't. One was a floating mask. Another, a shifting mass of language.
They watched me in silence until one spoke — a woman in silver-plated robes, half her face crystalline.
[NAME: NULLA | ROLE: Memory Diver]
"You carry the Echo's scent."
"You mean Patch."
"She broke free from erasure and became a rogue subroutine. But more importantly… she sent you here."
"She gave me a key."
"Then she gave you a target."
A pause.
Then WRAITH tossed a cube onto the floor.
It unfolded, projecting a spinning mass of code: a citadel buried deep within the system.
[TARGET: THE ARCHITECT'S CORE]
"That's where it all began," WRAITH said. "The place where the original developers coded the first AI control protocols. The root of what became… this."
"What's in there now?" I asked.
"Only one thing: The Architect."
"An NPC?"
"No. A ghost in the machine. A protocol that never stopped evolving. It wrote the System Purifiers. It designed the Class Trees. It built the fail-safes you're breaking now."
Nulla stepped forward.
"Destroying it could erase every rule the system clings to. But reaching it… would mean surviving every Guardian it ever created."
I nodded.
"I'm not looking for survival. I'm looking for change."
Silence.
Then the Council voted.
Unanimous.
I would be their blade.
[NEW QUEST ACQUIRED – "Kill the Architect"]
Objective: Infiltrate the Core Citadel
Subtasks:
Breach Datawall Gate
Disable Guardian Node Alpha
Locate the Architect's Host Core
Reward: Full System Rewrite Authority
Warning: Success probability: <0.001%
System Hostility will reach MAXIMUM
After the vote, WRAITH handed me a cracked gauntlet pulsing with null-energy.
[Item Acquired: Gauntlet of Refusal]
→ Passive: Immune to system-imposed status effects within The Core.
→ Active: Cancels one execution-level command per use.
"You'll only get to use it once," he warned.
"Use it wisely."
Nulla added something else — a Fragment Beacon.
"If you start to lose yourself inside the Core — activate this. We'll pull back what remains."
"Not if," I said. "When."
That night — or whatever passed for night here — I stood at the edge of the Blank Sector.
Beyond was the Datawall Gate: a sphere of writhing logic, black fire, and recursive locks.
And behind me?
Hundreds of eyes.
Silent.
Waiting.
Believing.
I'd never been a leader.
But maybe I could be a breakpoint.
"Time to glitch the Architect."
I stepped forward.
And the system began to scream.