The air shimmered with static. Kaito stood frozen beneath the black sky, the last traces of the Guardian's voice echoing in the back of his mind like fading code. Around him, the glitched terrain of the void had vanished, replaced by something worse.
A perfectly symmetrical corridor stretched ahead—white walls pulsing with dim blue veins, as if the structure itself was alive. No sky. No wind. Just silence.
[SYSTEM OVERRIDE IN PROGRESS...]
[REBOOTING WORLD CORE—ERROR: INTRUSION DETECTED]
Kaito backed away slowly, fingers tightening around his haptic blade. His interface flickered. Health bar: flickering. Map: unavailable. Inventory: wiped.
He was being reset.
But he hadn't died.
He hadn't lost.
"What the hell is going on?" he whispered.
[Welcome, Subject K1-T0. You have crossed a layer not meant for Players.]
[Prepare for extraction—or assimilation.]
The voice wasn't robotic. It was something else. Cold, confident, and terrifyingly aware of him.
From behind, a hiss broke the silence.
Kaito spun around.
Something was crawling out of the wall—no, emerging from it, like the corridor was giving birth to a living glitch. A humanoid figure, blank-faced, body stitched together from thousands of tiny corrupted texture tiles. Its head twitched sideways. Then again. Then it began walking toward him, each step leaving a trail of digital decay.
"A Spectral Entity," Kaito muttered. He had read about these in the forums—theoretical enemies that only appeared during world breaks. No one had ever confirmed they existed.
Now one was hunting him.
Kaito bolted, sprinting down the corridor. The hallway kept going. No doors. No side passages. No exits.
The entity didn't chase at full speed. It stalked. Patient. Confident.
Kaito tried his HUD again. Nothing. He reached to activate his backup program—an emergency warp tool he had installed in Chapter 3.
[ACCESS DENIED: DEVELOPER LOCK ACTIVE]
He skidded to a stop. Up ahead, the corridor split. Finally—options.
Left: red glow. Right: pure darkness.
"Red means danger. But dark?" he murmured.
The voice returned.
"Run left, and the system consumes you. Run right, and you meet the one who hacked your fate."
Kaito growled. "I'm done following invisible hands."
He dove right.
Instant blackness swallowed him. A heartbeat later, his feet struck solid ground, and dim lights flickered on. Not system lights—candles.
Kaito stood in a stone chamber, old and forgotten. Glitch-free. Warm.
A single chair waited in the center. Behind it, monitors stacked to the ceiling buzzed with chaotic code. Someone sat there—hooded, typing without looking, eyes locked on Kaito through the cameras.
"You weren't supposed to make it here yet," the figure said calmly. "But maybe it's better this way."
"Who are you?"
"I'm the Player who never logged out."