The Wyrm-Kiln was nothing special.
Mid-tier gate.
Mid-tier mob pool.
Mid-tier guild.
Kael liked it that way.
No fanfare. No pressure. Just seven other bodies moving in rhythm, doing their jobs.
He was slotted into Group 2 – Support Utility. The raid commander didn't know him. Barely looked at him. Just pointed and said:
"You're the shield cancel, right? Time it well or we get splashed."
Kael nodded once.
Didn't need more than that.
The boss was a molten lizard-thing — standard fire pattern, weak to chill glyphs. Its main mechanic: a flame burst that built pressure for 5 seconds, then exploded in a 15-meter dome.
Most groups ran timers.
Most tanks used their shield once the cast hit 80%.
But not this time.
This one fake-cast.
It pulsed to 76%, surged to 98%, then snapped into detonationimmediately.
The tank was half a second late.
The dome expanded—
Too fast.
Kael's finger brushed the edge of his hidden thread window.
[INTERRUPT_CHAIN: SHIELD VAPOR STALL]
[ACTIVATION TIME: NOW]
He forced a mini-patch.
Not to change a skill.
To cancel one frame of the boss's cast, forcing it to stagger.
It skipped.
Stuttered.
Just enough for the tank's shield to activate.
Just enough for the healer to land her buff glyph.
Just enough to not die.
The dome exploded — safely.
The team lived.
And the commander turned.
Stared at Kael.
"That wasn't… supposed to stagger."
Kael shrugged.
"Reflex."
One of the DPS raiders laughed.
"More like freakin' prophecy, man. You've got boss-timing god hands or what?"
Kael said nothing.
They finished the raid.
Split the loot.
No one died.
Perfect run.
In the chat log, someone posted:
[GUILD FEED — CLIP ATTACHED]
"Kael timed the cancel *before* the boss even surged. This guy's spooky."
Another added:
"Mid-tier? Nah. That's just luck, right?"
Then someone replied:
"It's always luck… until it's not."
Kael sat alone in the back room of a shuttered gearsmith's shop.
The lights buzzed faintly. The wall fan clattered every few seconds like it was trying to shake itself free.
The place wasn't his. But he'd patched the door lock years ago to let himself in.
No one asked questions.
No one ever came back here anymore.
He flicked open a folded screen of diagnostic tabs, each one overlaying a different layer of the raider-net. Not public streams. Not system-logged threads. The dead channels — old guild rooms, whisper chains, bootleg raid clips.
One of the feeds was flashing yellow.
[TAGGED CONTENT DETECTED — NAME: KAEL STRYX]
[ORIGIN: MULTIPLE GUILD THREADS]
[CONTENT COUNT: 7 CLIPS | 3 DISCUSSIONS | 1 TAG: "#GHOSTPATCH"]
He pulled up the first clip.
The Wyrm-Kiln boss fight.
A slowed feed — 0.25x speed.
They'd isolated the moment his hand twitched. His cancel went off a frame before the boss animation actually began to surge.
"Did he know?" someone had commented.
"No one's that fast. His ping's not even elite-tier."
"I ran the sync logs. Nothing was precast. It's just… there."
The next thread was a transcript.
A private guild chat.
[User: Kite_Feed]
"That's not instinct. That's not training."
"That's a patch."
"But where the hell is the source thread?"
[User: NullEcho]
"Call it what it is."
#GhostPatch
Kael leaned back against the dusty wall.
The glyph along his forearm glowed dimly.
Quiet.
Still.
But not for long.
He moved slowly — deliberately — and deleted the tag from the clip cache.
[#GhostPatch — removed from local index]
[Trace source not logged.]
But the name was out there now.
And names had a way of catching.
The hall smelled of sweat and training foam.
Sensors buzzed overhead, tracking every move, feeding slow-scan replays to mirrored displays along the far wall.
Kael didn't visit often.
But sometimes, when the weight of the system pressed too tightly around his ribs, he needed a fight he wasn't fixing.
Something simple.
Predictable.
Safe.
His sparring partner was good — clean footwork, sharp wrists, cocky grin. A high-B raider with better-than-average movement tech.
Their blades clicked twice.
Paused.
Reset.
The third pass came in faster. A right slash to fake an opening, followed by a left-hip twist reversal meant to catch Kael's offhand exposed.
It was a feint.
Kael saw it forming — not when the elbow bent.
Before.
As the shoulder shifted.
And his body moved without thinking.
He stepped inside the strike, caught the hilt with one hand, and twisted — gently.
The blade stopped millimeters from his collarbone.
The sparring room went still.
Then laughter.
"Damn!" the raider said, backing off and shaking his arm. "You patching my thoughts now, or what?"
"That was frame-perfect," another called from the bench.
The trainer — an old-timer with a long scar and a bad knee — snorted.
"Mid-tier, my ass. You've got goddamn God Hands, Stryx."
Someone echoed it under their breath.
"God Hands."
And it stuck.
Kael gave a crooked smile.
"Guess I'm just lucky."
They laughed.
He laughed with them.
But his fingers were clenched behind his back.
Under the cloth sleeve, the glyph was warm.
Still faint.
Still buried.
But responding.
And the sensor mirror across the hall? The one angled just right?
It pinged.
[MIRROR TRACE PULSE — GLYPH SYNC REGISTERED]
Only Kael saw the flicker.
He turned away before anyone noticed the light in his eye.
Kael sat in the dark again.
No lights.
Just the city glow bleeding through the blinds.
He held a cracked diagnostic tablet in his lap, one hand on the edge of the frame, thumb twitching with static tension.
He didn't like being unsure.
And now, he was sure of only one thing:
That wasn't him in the mirror.
He flicked open the glyphtrace log.
It pulsed to life with a soundless hum.
[GLYPH TRACE LOG V.3.1]
[SESSION: ACTIVE | SYNC SIGNATURE: "KS-Ω"]
[ENTRIES: 1 — UNUSUAL ACTIVITY FLAGGED]
The scan unfolded like a soft veil lifting from reality.
Data layered out: pulse strength, resonance window, origin ID.
One line was circled in amber.
[TRACE TYPE: SYNC MIRROR]
[TRIGGER: NON-PRIMARY REFLECTION PULSE]
[ORIGIN: UNKNOWN | PATH: RETURN TRACE]
[CONDITION: PASSIVE OBSERVATION DETECTED]
[—]
[STATUS: REFLECTIVE LINK ACTIVE (DORMANT)]
Kael stared at it.
Then stared harder.
A sync mirror trace shouldn't exist unless two glyph fields overlapped through a reflective medium.
He hadn't activated his glyph.
Which meant—
Something else did.
And it was looking back.
He closed the diagnostic panel slowly.
Set it down on the floor beside him.
Then leaned back and exhaled through his teeth.
"Not just glitches anymore," he murmured.
"You're watching now."
He didn't know who he meant.
But something did.
He didn't sleep.
Didn't even try.
The lights stayed off.
The air in the small room buzzed with quiet humidity — the kind that stuck to walls and made everything feel one second from collapse.
Kael sat still, alone.
The diary interface flickered open across his lap. The same cracked panel. The same pale blue glow.
He tapped in a new line.
No header this time.
Just freehand code-text.
"They call it luck."
"When timing breaks expectation, when outcomes don't fit their plans — they reach for comfort."
"Luck."
"But luck doesn't rewrite cooldowns."
"Luck doesn't bypass instance flags."
"Luck doesn't speak through mirrors."
He flexed his hand, wincing as the glyph throbbed faintly beneath the skin of his forearm.
Hairline cracks. Fine as veins.
Quiet now. But deeper than yesterday.
He kept typing.
"The mirror reflected me — but it wasn't me syncing."
"Something else looked back."
"I don't know what that means yet."
"But I will."
"I will not waste this second life chasing safety."
"I broke the rules once."
"I'll break them again."
He paused.
Then added one final line.
"The cracks are spreading again."
And hit save.
[ENTRY SAVED: PATCH_DIARY.SN | V0.08]
Kael closed the panel.
The screen blinked out.
In the reflection of the black glass, for a heartbeat too long —
he thought he saw something flicker behind his shoulder.
But when he turned—
Nothing.
Just the dark.