3.
The Architect's fractured mask reflected the countdown in jagged fragments. The hum of the machines turned into a deep, animal growl, vibrating through the walls. Akwasi could feel the code inside him pushing—urging him to act, to decide.
2.
Memories poured into his skull in violent waves—faces, screams, fragments of voices in languages he had never learned but somehow understood. The children in the tubes. Isaiah's last look. His mother's whisper.
1
Akwasi pressed his hand to the floor.
The world ripped apart.
The countdown hit zero, and a burst of light consumed Level Omega. But it wasn't a clean destruction—it was a rewrite. Every screen shattered inward, and in the space behind them, thousands of hands reached out, clawing through the collapsing data.
The Architect screamed—not in fear, but in delight.
"Yes, Healer! Let the code eat itself!"
Akwasi's veins turned black, the glitch crawling up his neck and into his eyes. He could feel his heartbeat syncing with the dying system, each pulse erasing a piece of reality.
Machines fell silent. The walls bled static.
Then—silence.
When Akwasi opened his eyes, Level Omega was gone. He was standing in an empty, endless void, lit only by a single, broken server tower humming weakly in the distance.
A voice rose from the dark—no longer the Architect's, no longer Isaiah's. It was his own, multiplied a thousand times over.
> "You didn't save it. You didn't destroy it.
You became it."
He stepped forward, and with each movement, lines of code rippled beneath his feet like water. The broken server blinked once, then displayed a message:
> WELCOME, ROOT ADMINISTRATOR
SYSTEM: HEALER OF BROKEN CODE
STATUS: UNSTABLE – HOST REQUIRED
Akwasi looked at his hands—half light, half flesh. The truth sank in.
The system wasn't gone. It was
n't saved. It was now him.
And he would never log out.