Pain.
Amon's skull throbbed like a drum, each heartbeat sending a fresh wave of agony through his temples. He groaned, pressing his palms into his eye sockets, trying to push the pain outward, to compress it into nothing. The static was worse now louder, more insistent, like a swarm of insects buzzing just beyond his hearing. It filled his skull with a high-pitched whine that made thinking nearly impossible. His right eye burned with a persistent ache, the lid sealed shut as if glued by dried blood. The sensation was maddening.
Where—
The world tilted violently. He was lying on his side, his body jostled by motion. Cold metal dug into his back, pressing against his ribs with every bump in the road. He cracked his left eye open, squinting against the light that seemed to assault his retina.
Bars.
Iron, rusted in places, warped in others as if someone had stretched the metal like taffy. The bars curved inward at unnatural angles, creating an almost organic pattern that made his stomach turn. Beyond them, the blur of trees and sky, streaking past in a nausea-inducing rush. He was in a cage, bolted securely to the bed of a wooden wagon that rattled and swayed with every imperfection in the road. The air smelled of ozone and damp wool, mixed with something else something acrid and chemical.
I'm moving. They took me. I'm a prisoner.
Memories flooded back in a torrent: the forest, the masked stranger, the dagger, the code pouring from his mouth like corrupted audio. The sensation of teleporting wrong, of phasing through solid matter. His stomach twisted violently, and he felt bile rise in his throat. He swallowed it back down with effort.
He sat up too fast. The wagon lurched over a pothole, and his vision glitched the world splitting into three identical copies of itself before snapping back together with a sensation like reality slamming a door. His brain felt like it was running on multiple processors at once, each one showing him a different version of the moment.
Okay. Okay. Think. Focus. There has to be a way out of this.
He gripped the bars, his fingers wrapping around the cold metal. The bars hummed faintly under his touch, vibrating like a plucked string resonating with some frequency just beyond normal hearing. He pulled with all his strength, channeling every ounce of desperation into the movement—
Nothing.
The bars didn't budge. But for a second, his hands phased through them, his fingers emerging on the other side of the cage before the world reasserted itself with violent force and shoved him back inside. The recoil sent him sprawling backward, his shoulder screaming as he hit the metal wall of the cage. The pain was bright and sharp.
"Ah. You're awake."
The voice came from the front of the wagon, cutting through the static in his head like a blade. Amon twisted, pressing his back defensively against the bars. The stranger from the forest sat on the driver's bench, the reins loose in their gloved hands. But something was different.
Their mask was gone.
She was young. Early twenties, maybe, though her eyes held something older something that had seen too much. Sharp features, dark hair cropped short with an undercut that revealed pale scalp beneath, a jagged scar running from her temple to her jawline like a map of old violence. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, pupils contracted to thin slits like a cat's or like something that hunted in the dark. Skin pale as porcelain, with faint traces of circuitry-like patterns visible along her neck and jawline, as if someone had drawn circuit boards directly onto her flesh.
Not human.
Not entirely.
Amon's breath hitched. His left eye widened. "You—"
"Me," she said, a smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. "Surprised? Disappointed? Confused? Choose one."
He didn't answer. His gaze flicked to the satchel beside her, the one she'd been carrying in the forest. It pulsed faintly, as if something inside were breathing. The rhythm was irregular, almost like a heartbeat skipping beats.
She followed his look and patted the bag with a gesture that managed to be both casual and threatening. "Relax. It's not for you. Yet."
Amon swallowed. His throat was raw, scratched from when those binary syllables had torn their way out. "Where are you taking me?"
"Somewhere you'll be useful." She flicked the reins with practiced ease, and the wagon jolted forward, continuing down the forest road. "Somewhere the Purists won't think to look, anyway. Name's Kaelra, by the way. And you, Glitchling, are the first of your kind I've seen in ten years. Maybe longer. Hard to keep track of time in this world."
Amon's fingers twitched against the bars. The metal hummed in response to his anxiety. "Glitchling," he repeated, tasting the word. It felt wrong in his mouth, like it didn't belong to him. "That's what that thing in the forest called me."
"That thing," Kaelra said, not looking back at him, "was probably Guild. We're not fond of the term 'thing,' but it fits when you're hunting something that doesn't exist in the Guild's databases." She tilted her head slightly. "You ask a lot of questions for someone who just woke up from having their consciousness forcibly reset."
Amon's right eye pulsed with renewed pain. He flinched, pressing his palm against the sealed lid. "What do you mean, reset?"
"I mean that stunt you pulled in the forest that code-burst thing you did? That's what happens when a Glitchling overloads their systems trying to protect themselves. Fries your short-term memory, scrambles your perception. You've been unconscious for six hours." Kaelra finally turned, her slit-pupiled eyes locking onto his with unsettling intensity. "But you? You're different."
Amon's right eye continued to throb. "Different how?"
"You fought back," Kaelra said simply. "Most Glitchlings, they're passive. They glitch, they corrupt, they eventually get purged by the Purists."
A shout echoed from ahead, cutting off any response Amon might have made. The wagon began to slow, the horses' pace decreasing to a cautious walk. Kaelra tensed visibly, her entire body shifting into a predatory crouch. Her hand dropped to the dagger at her belt, fingers wrapping around the hilt with the ease of long practice.
Amon peered through the bars.
A roadblock.
Three figures stood in the path, clad in black plate armor etched with golden sigils that gleamed in the afternoon light. Purists. The armor itself seemed to hum with power, runes along the chest and shoulders glowing with a soft, menacing gold. The middle one raised a hand, and his gauntlet brightened like a beacon.
"Halt. Guild business is restricted in these lands. Submit for inspection."
Kaelra sighed, the sound carrying resignation and irritation in equal measure. "Tell that to the Static, friend. I'm just delivering a package. Routine transport. Nothing worth your time."
The Purist's visor flared with golden light, and Amon could feel the intensity of their gaze even through the metal helmet. "Open the cage. Now."
Amon's pulse spiked. His breathing became rapid and shallow. He scrambled back as the Purists approached, their boots crunching on the gravel road with rhythmic precision. One of them paused at the cage, his gauntleted hand hovering over the lock. The sigils on his armor brightened in response, responding to whatever detection magic or technology they used.
Kaelra didn't move from the driver's seat, but her voice dropped into something dangerous. "You don't want to do that."
The Purist ignored her completely, his hand descending toward the lock. There was a soft click as something engaged.
Amon's breath came fast and shallow. His vision flickered, the edges of the world starting to blur. The static in his head rose to a fever pitch. The world stuttered—
—and the Purist's hand passed through the cage bars, his fingers closing around nothing but air.
Amon was gone.
Not teleported, not in any way that made logical sense.
Not hidden.
Erased.
For a single, impossible moment, he didn't exist. No sound, no presence, no consciousness just a gap where a prisoner should have been. Time didn't even seem to apply to the void. Then reality snapped him back into place with the force of a rubber band released—
—directly behind the Purists, gasping and disoriented.
The move was pure instinct. He hadn't meant to do it. He'd had no control over it, no understanding of what was happening. His head pounded like someone was driving nails through his skull, his vision swimming with error messages displayed in searing red:
WARNING: REALITY_ANCHOR_COMPROMISED
WARNING: MEMORY_OVERFLOW
ERROR: EXISTENCE_STATE_UNSTABLE
Each message sent a spike of pain through his temples.
The Purists whirled as one, responding to the sudden disruption in their spatial awareness. The lead one lunged with inhuman speed, his gauntlet glowing with accumulated golden light as he swung at Amon's head. The air itself seemed to crack with the force of the movement.
Amon flinched—
—and the world froze.
Not literally. Not in the way that would make physical sense. But for a split second, maybe less, the Purist's fist halted mid-air, suspended as if caught in lag. Time hiccupped. Amon's left eye burned with a searing pain, and a translucent barrier shimmered into existence around him—hexagonal tiles of pure light, flickering like a broken shield struggling to maintain its form.
The Purist's gauntlet rebounded, as if he'd punched a reinforced wall made of diamond. He staggered backward, surprise evident even through the visor. "A Glitchling?! Here?! How is this possible?"
Kaelra moved.
She was off the bench in an instant, her dagger flaring with blue light as she slammed it directly into the Purist's side. The man screamed, a sound of pure agony and shock, as his armor corroded where the blade touched, dissolving into pixels before reforming as flesh and bone. Blood sprayed in an arc, painting the wagon and the forest road red.
The other two Purists reacted with trained precision. One raised his hands, golden chains erupting from the ground beneath Kaelra's feet like metallic serpents. The other chanted in a language that hurt to hear, a rune-circle forming and burning beneath Kaelra's feet.
Amon's barrier flickered and dimmed. His knees buckled under the strain of maintaining it. The static screamed in his head, and his right eye felt like it was being torn apart from the inside.
I can't—I don't know how to—
The Purist's chains lashed toward Kaelra with deadly accuracy. She twisted with acrobatic grace, but not fast enough one chain wrapped around her ankle, yanking her off-balance. She fell hard. The second Purist's rune-circle detonated with force.
Light.
Blinding, searing light that consumed everything it touched. Amon screamed, a sound that came out as pure static and corrupted audio.
And then—
Silence.
The world rebooted.
Amon was on his knees, gasping for breath, his lungs burning. The Purists were gone. So was the roadblock, the one the lead Purist had occupied. The wagon was still, listing slightly to one side. The horses were vanished. The cage was gone. The entire roadblock was simply... absent, as if it had never existed. A gap in reality where violence should have left its mark.
He looked around, trying to process what had happened through the fog of pain and confusion.
The forest was different. Drastically different. The trees were taller, impossibly so, their bark blackened and charred as if by some ancient fire. Their leaves glowed faintly blue, an eerie bioluminescence that made the forest look like it existed underwater. The air smelled like burnt copper and ozone, thick and choking.
Kaelra lay a few meters away, groaning, her coat smoldering. She pushed herself up on her elbows, wiping blood from her lip. When she turned to look at Amon, her expression was something between shock and awe.
"You did that," she breathed.
Amon looked down at his hands, then slowly touched his face. His right eye was open.
Where his iris should have been, there was only a hollow socket, filled with swirling static living code that moved and danced like living things. And floating in the center of that void, perfectly still despite the chaos surrounding it
A crimson "X".
It pulsed, once, like a heartbeat. Once, like a code executing.
Then the world went dark.