The system chose you because it thought you'd break cleanly. You didn't. You frayed."— Echo Trace #14.8, Scrubbed by Control.
Aren blinked—
And when his eyes opened again, they weren't his.
They were someone else's version of his eyes, looking through a layer of code-thin reality.
[VISUAL HOST OVERRIDE: 37% COMPLETE][CAUTION: YOU ARE DREAMING FROM THE WRONG END.]
He reached for his chest, expecting the usual warmth of breath.
But instead?
Static.
A hum beneath his ribs.
Like he was a device, not a person.
He woke into three places at once.
His body in the Archive.
A cold street lit by purple glass — another world entirely.
A chair, restrained, somewhere clinical, with wires in his neck and System Text etched into his skin.
He screamed.
Not because of the pain.
But because he didn't know which scream was real.
And all three stopped at the same time.
[YOU ARE EXPERIENCING MULTI-TEMPORAL RECALL COLLAPSE][YOU ARE NOT ALONE IN HERE.][DO NOT RECOGNIZE YOURSELF.][THE MOMENT YOU DO, THE SYSTEM WILL CHOOSE.]
Aren looked down.
His hands were glitching.Flickering between different versions — calloused, clean, cut, cybernetic, burned.He clenched them.
"Pick one," a voice said.
He turned and saw her.
But it wasn't Lira.
It was a version of her that never joined him.Hair shorter. Eyes guarded. Uniform instead of empathy.She wore the colors of System Enforcement.
"Aren.""You're not allowed to access the Rewrite Layer."
He tried to speak, but words turned into noise.
"You're not a Reader anymore," she said.
"You're the Glitch."
Memory crashed.
He was in the Archive again.
But this time, pages fluttered when he walked.
The Archive was responding to him now. Not just reacting — adapting.
[REWRITE CLASS DETECTED][YOU MAY ALTER PERCEPTION-LOGIC WITHIN UNSTABLE THREADS.][WARNING: THE SYSTEM WILL NOT FORGIVE YOU.]
A book unlatched itself.
It didn't fall — it folded into the air, flattening into words before Aren's eyes.
And it spoke.
Not in sound.
But in intent.
"There is no Reader anymore.""Only Aren, and what he dares to become."
"So what are you going to do?" asked a familiar voice.
Lira.
But… not. This one wore white. No eyes. Just smooth skin and a carved mouth — like something that remembered being her, but forgot how to feel.
Aren didn't answer.
He stepped into the open book.
And the system didn't stop him.
:: SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT ::
:: USER AREN//REWRITE_INSTANCE:01 HAS BREACHED OBSERVATION LIMITS.:: ALL NARRATIVE THREADS WILL NOW RECOGNIZE USER AS A CONVERGENCE CANDIDATE.:: THE STORY NO LONGER BELONGS TO ITSELF.:: YOU ARE NOW WRITING BACK.