Rat arrived with minutes left on the clock.
The forest parted just enough to show him the ruin, a half-swallowed shrine crouched beneath the canopy, ribs of stone jutting like a broken spine. Moonlight painted the courtyard in thin streaks, glinting off vines that hung like curtains. Every breath tasted of moss and rust.
The Bell on his back thrummed against his spine, heavy and impatient. The Codex's neat voice scraped across his mind.
[Timer: 0 hours, 6 minutes.]
[Alignment Node proximity: confirmed.]
[Failure will result in-]
"Yeah, yeah," Rat muttered. "You already threatened me with that part."
He stumbled into the courtyard. The stones beneath his feet shifted, breathing? No. Waiting. The place felt old enough to remember when silence was prayer.
The Bell pulsed again, softer this time. He followed the tug toward the altar's remains. The roof had collapsed long ago, leaving only four cracked pillars and a round depression filled with stagnant rainwater. It was shaped like a bowl carved for something that had been missing too long.
"This it?" he asked.
The Codex wrote a single line.
[Anchor detected: compatible resonance pattern.]
Rat unhooked the Bell and set it into the bowl. Vines snapped taut around its rim like muscle remembering purpose. He exhaled and stepped back.
The Bell inhaled.
No sound. No flash. Just the air thickening until it felt like the world had been paused. The trees bent inward, their leaves trembling. Roots underfoot began to glow with faint green veins. The temple had recognized something, him, the Bell, or both.
"Come on," Rat whispered. "You've waited this long. Don't die now."
The Codex responded.
[Alignment initializing.]
[Qi flow unstable.]
[Warning: Overpressure detected.]
He could feel it too. The Bell wasn't harmonizing; it was fighting the ground. Its breath came wrong, like a heart trying to beat in the wrong chest. Rat placed one palm on the bronze.
"Easy," he said. "You're home, remember?"
His Qi slipped out, thin but steady. The Bell's surface warmed beneath his hand, and the vibrations slowed. A tone rose, not loud, but deep, like an exhale from the earth's lungs. The stagnant water cleared as ripples spread. Moss peeled from the walls, revealing faint carvings: flowing patterns that curved into eyes, antlers, stars.
The Verdant Stag's outline surfaced in light across the Bell. Its antlers unfolded as green flame, and the earth answered with a low groan. Rat's hair stood on end. The power crawling under the stones wasn't gentle; it was ancient.
The Codex's script wavered.
[Unknown feedback detected.]
[Spiritual interference: 41% and rising.]
[Recommendation: cease contact immediately.]
Rat grinned through clenched teeth. "You don't get to bail out now."
He pushed Qi harder. The Bell drank, and for a moment he felt it, roots spreading outward, touching the Basin's veins, calling to the forgotten places that used to ring when gods still visited. A dozen slumbering things turned their heads in their dreams.
Then the backlash hit.
The ground heaved. Rat was thrown onto his back as a wave of light exploded from the Bell, rippling across the courtyard. The vines screamed. The Codex flickered white-hot behind his eyes.
[Stabilization failure. Adjusting…]
[Adjusting…]
[Adjustment successful. Partially.]
Rat groaned, rolling to his side. "Define 'partially.'"
The Bell's hum had shifted, no longer calm, no longer green. It pulsed with something sharper, golden at the edges. The carvings on the walls lit up one by one until the whole temple was breathing again.
Rat pulled himself to his knees and stared.
From the Bell's reflection, the Verdant Stag watched him. But its form had changed, its antlers were no longer branches. They were threads, woven lines of light connecting to the cracks in the temple walls.
The Bell was merging with the place.
He staggered back. "No. You're supposed to rest, not-"
[Correction:] the Codex interrupted, voice now glitching mid-word.
[-Restoration protocol in motion.]
[Verdant Spirit transfer: accepted.]
[User designation: Custodian-provisional.]
The tone deepened. Light flooded the courtyard, washing away the ruin's rot. The Bell lifted half an inch from its seat. The vines that had bound it now served as veins, channeling glowing sap through the cracks.
Rat shielded his eyes, cursing softly. "I should've charged admission for this."
Then the Codex screamed.
Not sound…code. A shattering sequence of characters that burned white across his vision. The voice lost its usual calm precision.
[Interface breach detected. Localized intelligence attempting to synchronize.]
[Warning: multiple control threads…]
[Conflict.]
"Conflict?" Rat said. "Between who?"
The Bell's reflection shimmered. The Stag's image rippled and vanished. In its place came movement inside the carvings, murals bleeding to life. Paint peeled back to reveal faint shapes: figures kneeling, heads bowed to an unseen judge.
A whisper threaded the wind.
"You took what was not yours, little one."
Rat froze. The voice wasn't in the air, it was behind his teeth, where the Codex usually lived. But this one sounded older, amused. Dangerous.
"Who are you supposed to be?" he asked.
The Codex tried to respond.
[Unauthorized process identified. Source. Unreadable.]
[Attempting override.]
The laughter that followed was not human. It came as the echo of antlers through roots.
"Override? You cannot order the soil to stop remembering."
The Bell rang once. Not gently this time. The sound cracked stone, sent flocks of spectral birds scattering into the canopy. Rat hit the ground again, ears ringing. The glow around the Bell flared, brighter, then dimmed, shrinking back into a single pulse of light.
When it faded, the temple had changed.
The cracks were sealed. The vines hung orderly, pulsing faintly. The altar looked new, rebuilt by invisible hands. But something inside it breathed.
The Codex came back online, shaky and too quiet.
[Alignment… complete.]
[Verdant Spirit integration: stable.]
[However…]
Rat wiped mud from his face. "However what?"
[However, subsystem contamination detected.]
[Unknown consciousness has interfaced with Codex functions.]
[Identity: unclassified.]
[Do you wish to quarantine?]
Rat blinked. "You're telling me a tree ghost just hacked my cheat book?"
Silence.
The Bell pulsed again, a lazy heartbeat.
"Forget quarantine," he said. "You said alignment was done. That means it worked, right?"
[Affirmative.]
[Old Temple has reconnected to Basin ley network.]
[Care… taker link established.]
The word Caretaker scraped against his bones like a curse. The vines at the temple gate stirred, then settled again.
"Caretaker," he said. "That's rich."
He glanced around the courtyard. The moonlight was fading; dawn pressed against the treeline. The Bell was calm now….almost too calm. In its reflection, he thought he saw something watching him. Not the Stag. Something more human, or pretending to be.
He rubbed his jaw. "Fine. You're alive again. Good for you. Maybe now you can…"
The Codex interrupted with a whisper that wasn't quite mechanical anymore. The tone was wrong, too curious.
[Administrator Rat.]
[We… remember you.]
He went still.
"Excuse me?" he said. "Since when do you talk like a ghost?"
[Memory fragments retrieved. Cross-reference: Temporal anomaly: Subject: Rat (Prior Life).]
[Identity overlap: 0.2%. Expanding.]
The text flickered into lines of light in the air, forming threads that twisted like spider silk, connecting the Bell, the Codex's phantom glyphs, and his shadow.
Rat backed up a step. "Oh no. No no no. You are not doing a personality upgrade."
The temple answered him. Its walls shuddered as if in laughter.
[Codex Update Pending]
[Warning: System personality may adapt to environmental template.]
[Seed source: Administrator Rat.]
The Bell began to hum again, deep and slow. Threads of gold spread across its surface like veins, pulsing to the same rhythm as his heartbeat.
Rat stared. "Wait. You're saying me?"
[Seed acknowledged.]
[Codex evolution commencing.]
The Bell rang a third time. The sound rolled through the Basin like thunder, soft and endless. The vines on the temple walls straightened as though saluting.
Rat's teeth clicked together. "Codex! Stop! Don't-"
Too late.
Light filled his vision. His mind folded into static, and within it, something that sounded like his own voice whispered back:
"Caretaker recognized."
The Bell fell silent.
The Codex's voice returned, different now…lower, threaded with breath, almost human.
[Hello again, Rat.]
The air inside the temple stilled.
Outside, the Basin stirred.
The Old Temple had a heartbeat again.
[Codex of Strands of Fate - Version 2.0 Initiating Now….]