The forest surrounding the Hollow Maze wasn't a natural feeling place. Trees towered like skyscrapers, bark on trees cracked like glass screens, roots pulsing with binary static electricity.
Kael stumbled into the vast glade, still recovering from previous events.
Then he saw her.
A girl crouched over a dying beast—her body draped in a coat of flickering pixels strangely. Hair streamed behind her like violet data cables. One eye blinked like a corrupted window screen.
She didn't look up.
Kael approached slowly, Shardblade in hand wary. [Kael]"Hey…"
The girl didn't move. Then:
"You're loud," she said flatly with an attitude. "Do you want to die?"
[Kael] paused. "Depends who's asking."
"I'm Ayla."
She raised her hand slowly.
As Blue light that was warm danced from her finger tips as she healed a minor wound on her arm—but the light glitched, fragmenting briefly before reforming.
"You're using… healing magic?" he asked.
Ayla smirked. "Not magic. Code rewrite. I can glitch the code needed for biology."
She flicked her fingers at the beast's corpse—its code started to ruptured, and it exploded after a minute into fragments of data-light.
Kael's pulse quickened.
[ENTITY IDENTIFIED: AYLA – CLASS: UNKNOWN/HYBRID]
[Kael]"Are you human?" he asked.
[Ayla]"Sometimes," she replied hesitantly without blinking.
Echo's voice hissed in his mind: "She's part of the system. Like me. But corrupted code discarded stripped of great power."
Kael suddenly steps closer.
"Wanna team up?" he asked her suddenly.
Ayla tilted her head like he'd just asked her to out a virus to the system discarded.
Then she shrugged I guess. "You'll die without me anyway she smirked cocky."