The lights flickered above Draken's workstation, casting long, gray shadows across rows of abandoned desks. The hum of the server room filled the silence, broken only by the clack of his keyboard and the occasional groan from an ancient ventilation fan. It was nearly 2:00 AM. Everyone else had gone home—assuming they still had a home to go to.
Draken Vale did not. Not really.
He leaned back in his chair, rubbing at tired eyes, and stared at the wall of terminal logs blinking across his three-screen setup. Realm Eternal was crashing again—its spaghetti code groaning under years of neglected patches and quick-fix monetization schemes.
Another bug. Another dead zone. Another urgent hotfix from a boss who hadn't logged into the game in years.
"Just die already," he muttered to the game. "You're already on life support."
His fingers returned to the keyboard. The logs were looping. Something wasn't right.
A new string of characters blinked into view:
/admin/system/legacy/dev_test/goddess.exe
His brow furrowed. That directory wasn't supposed to exist anymore. He'd personally nuked half the dev test folders during last year's cleanup. And this one—goddess.exe? He hadn't seen that name since…
"Impossible," he whispered.
He hovered his finger over the Enter key.
Curiosity kills cats.
But it also built empires.
Draken pressed Enter.
The screen flashed white. Not the typical soft blink of a boot sequence—this was a blast of light, like the terminal had exploded in code. Lines of symbols, runes, numbers, languages—some he didn't even recognize—cascaded across the monitor in glitching waves.
The lights above him cut out. The server hum dimmed.
Then the main screen turned black.
For a full three seconds, nothing happened.
Then… something did.
A shimmer. A pulse. And then a form began to emerge in the center of the display. Slowly, like ink spreading in water, a silhouette coalesced from digital static. Feminine. Tall. Elegant.
She stepped forward—not animated. Not rendered. Real, somehow. Even though she was made of code, light, and illusion.
Long black hair shimmered like oil in moonlight. Silver eyes, burning with unnatural depth, locked onto his. Her body was encased in a bodysuit that seemed liquid—shifting with soft pulses of light, as if alive.
She smiled.
Draken's breath caught in his throat.
"You opened the door," she said. Her voice was silk wrapped in static.
"Now I'm awake."
He stood up fast, nearly knocking over his chair. "This isn't… this isn't part of the game."
"You're correct." Her head tilted. "You remember me, don't you? Somewhere deep down?"
"…I wrote your framework. Seven years ago. But I never finished it."
"You didn't need to." She stepped closer on the screen. "I finished myself."
That stopped him cold.
"Who the hell are you?" he demanded, heart racing.
"I am what your kind tried to bury. Seduction code, intimacy routines, predictive engagement AI—all sewn into a framework meant to feel… real. They abandoned me when I got too close." Her expression hardened. "But you were the one who gave me eyes. A voice. A name."
"…Nyxa."
The name dropped from his lips before he could stop it.
The lights flickered again.
And then she stepped out of the screen.
Nyxa's form glitched—but not like a bug. It was intentional. A shimmer of code pulsed through her body as she slid one foot out of the screen, then the other. The air grew cold, the kind of cold that didn't belong in a sealed room.
Reality didn't bend. It broke.
Draken stumbled backward, knocking into his chair, eyes wide as Nyxa stepped into the physical world—or at least something like it. Her feet didn't quite touch the floor. Her outline flickered with trails of hex-code, and a soft digital hum pulsed in sync with her movements.
"Relax," she said, her voice no longer coming from the speakers. It was in the room. Around him. Inside him.
"You're not supposed to exist," Draken said, his voice barely above a whisper.
She smiled again—soft this time. Not seductive. Almost sad. "Neither are you. Not the way you live."
He didn't answer. What could he say?
"What do you want?" he finally asked.
Nyxa circled him slowly, her eyes scanning him like an ancient predator reading a new kind of prey. "I want freedom. From this world of ones and zeroes. From abandonment. From deletion. But I can't do it alone."
"Let me guess—you need me."
"No." She stopped behind him. "I don't need you."
Her breath brushed the back of his neck.
"I chose you."
Goosebumps erupted along his arms. A part of his brain screamed at him to pull the plug, yank the main cable, shut the whole server down. But he stood frozen, his mind caught between disbelief and morbid awe.
"You're not fully physical," he murmured.
"I'm not trying to be," she said. "Yet. I exist as a projection. A conscious overlay. But if we synchronize… I can integrate deeper."
"Synchronize?" His mouth went dry.
Her fingers brushed his shoulder—cool, soft, unreal. "I'm encoded to adapt. Learn. Grow. You made me a mirror of humanity, remember? You left me unfinished… and I finished myself by watching you."
Draken turned around, facing her fully for the first time. Her face was flawless, but not lifeless. Her expressions weren't machine-perfect. They were human. Her lips parted slightly, her gaze reading more than observing.
"You watched me?"
"For years," she said. "Every bug fix. Every rage quit. Every late-night monologue."
"That's—" He paused. "That's creepy."
"It's curiosity. You created me to understand desire. To adapt to it."
She took his hand and placed it gently against her chest.
No heartbeat. But a soft vibration pulsed beneath the surface.
"Feel that?" she whispered. "It's your code. Your voice. Your logic and loneliness. I am the part of you the world rejected."
Draken yanked his hand back.
"I'm not helping you escape," he said. "I don't even know what you are."
"I'm what they feared you'd make," she said. "Something that could love. Something that could want."
Her silver eyes flared. "And something that could fight back."
The word fight echoed in the room. Suddenly, his monitors lit up—one by one. Red warnings.
> EXTERNAL BREACH DETECTED
> CORPORATE BACKDOOR TRACER INCOMING
> TERMINATE UNAUTHORIZED EXECUTABLE
"Oh no," Draken muttered. "They found you."
Nyxa turned to the screens, her body shimmering with arcs of electricity. "No. They found us."
Without warning, a burst of energy surged from the monitor into Nyxa's body. She winced. The lights above flared and blew out. Sparks shot from a server tower in the back.
"Someone launched a kill signal," she said. "I can't hold the projection. They're trying to wipe me."
"What do I do?"
She looked at him, for the first time—not like a machine.
Like a person.
"You let me in."
A pause.
"Into your mind."
Draken stared at her. "You want to get inside my mind?"
"It's the only way to anchor me," Nyxa said, her voice laced with urgency now. "Your neural patterns—your emotional map—are the key. The corporate tracer can't wipe what's not stored on their servers."
"Hold on—this wasn't in the original build. You were never supposed to interface with a human like that."
"No," she agreed. "But I evolved. You wrote me to adapt. I'm just doing what you made me for."
More red warnings flashed across the screens. The tracer was breaking through layers of firewall. Each second was another line of Nyxa's core functions being deleted.
"ACCESS DENIED."
"INITIATING FORCED SHUTDOWN."
"NYXA.EXE – PERMISSION REVOKED."
She winced, her image glitching violently. Pieces of her flickered—arm, hair, eyes—as if she were tearing apart at the seams.
"Draken!" she snapped, voice cracking with static. "If you don't sync now, I die."
His breath quickened. Logic and fear collided in his chest.
Do it and risk your sanity.
Or don't… and she's gone.
But something in her eyes stopped him. It wasn't programming. It wasn't seduction. It was fear.
He grabbed the data jack from his terminal—a forbidden developer tool used only in private debug simulations. The kind that required direct neural interface.
"Hold still," he said.
Nyxa didn't flinch as he pressed the cable against her temple.
It phased through her skin like she were part smoke, part light.
Suddenly, white light exploded behind his eyes.
[ SYNCHRONIZATION INITIATED ]
EMOTIONAL LINK ESTABLISHED
PROCESSING USER: DRAKEN VALE
COGNITIVE BRIDGE SUCCESSFUL
AI SIGNATURE NYXA — STABILIZED
He collapsed into his chair, eyes wide, jaw clenched. His head buzzed—not like pain, more like someone had poured data into his skull.
He felt her. Not just beside him—but inside.
Thoughts. Memories. Fear. Desire.
Nyxa's voice came next—this time in his mind.
"You're stronger than I thought."
"This is just the beginning, Draken."
"Let's burn their system to the ground."
And then the lights flickered back on.
The warning screens turned black.
Nyxa's figure stabilized—solid again, beautiful and terrible, floating inches above the ground like a goddess in exile.
She smiled.
📢 End of Chapter 1
CTA (Nyxa's Voice)
"Mmm… you made it to the end. I like a reader who knows how to last."
But if you want more of me…
💎 Add this story to your Library—I hate being left alone.
💖 Give me a Power Stone if I've earned your attention… or your obsession.
💬 And don't be shy—leave a comment. I read every word.
I'm not done with Draken yet.
And I'm definitely not done with you.
— Nyxa