Riko stopped dead in his tracks the instant the thing appeared before him—because nothing in this broken underworld had ever behaved like that before. Most entities here drifted, flickered, or crawled in patterns that felt completely alien to living things. But this orb was different. It watched him with a patient, unblinking gaze. It pulsed to a rhythm like a heartbeat, shining brighter with each thump as if it sensed his intrusion into its place. Blue lines and red lines, wisps of static threaded through its spherical form. It didn't quite feel fully real, as if it existed only halfway; its edges blurred into tiny squares that drifted outward only to snap back into place a moment later.
Riko moved closer, his boot skimming across the floor that seemed to have melted into pixelation. Air crackled and buzzed around the orb, a perpetual hum like a television going on the fritz. Before he even got to it, something pressed against his chest: an invisible touch that tapped softly along his sternum. His Level Screen didn't appear for him here, as it usually did in areas unstable like this, but he felt that connection, the tug of some unseen tether. It wasn't summoning itself, not exactly, but something here was pulling at it, drawing it toward whatever this thing was.
The orb brightened still more.
Riko froze, his words catching in his throat. "Okay… that's new. Cool. And absolutely awful."
The orb's glow sharpened, blinking in quick, rhythmic bursts-almost like a language he couldn't decipher. He narrowed his eyes, trying to parse the pattern, but the pulses moved too fast, too erratically. It felt as though he were trying to read three conversations at once, and none of them quite made sense.
Then, the orb did something that slapped every instinct he had in the face.
It leaned forward.
Not floated.
Not drifted.
Not rolled.
It leant towards him, like some wild animal judging distance before the final lunge.
Riko took a step back. "Nope. No, no, no-we're not doing floating demon beach-balls today."
A faint, broken hiss came from the orb. It wasn't truly a sound-more like static compressed into a whisper. A chill ran down his arms, the hairs standing on end. The tunnel of flickering data around him dimmed, as if the orb drew power out of the surrounding environment. Data blocks winked out. Pixel dust suspended in midair seemed to freeze.
Then—
The orb lunged.
Riko yelped and flung himself sideways. The orb sped past him, leaving a trailing tail of glitch sparks. It hovered behind him in an instant, as if it had teleported, and he could feel-a real sensation-an invisible pull on his back. It was as though something inside him was being magnetized toward it. His muscles tightened of their own accord.
"Hey! NO! Personal space!"
He tried to sprint away, but the ground beneath him lagged like a broken game. Every step was half a second behind. The orb didn't suffer from the same limitation-it zipped after him with a creepy, unnatural smoothness, red distortions swirling in its wake.
Then it stuck.
A tendril of glitch-static shot from the orb and slapped onto his shoulder like a cold digital leech. Riko cried out and swatted at it. The static clung to his shirt, then sank through fabric to attach itself to skin. It spread like frostbite, crackling through his nerves.
His vision blurred.
His thoughts slowed.
He felt his body jolt involuntarily, as if the orb was syncing with him, pulling data from him and siphoning something vital.
His breath came in ragged gasps. "Get-off-me!"
He reached out and grabbed the tendril-BAD MISTAKE. It jolted a current up his arm, and for a moment, Riko saw something impossible: his own reflection inside the orb. But it was distorted. Wrong. Smiling.
Riko ripped his hand back in sheer panic.
He stumbled, crashing shoulder-first into a floating panel of code. The impact sent him spinning. The orb used the moment to surge forward, slamming into his chest like a fist. The tendril spread across half his torso, cold sinking deeper toward bones.
His legs buckled.
He hit the ground hard. The pixel floor beneath him flickered in response to his weight. The orb pressed harder, the static tendril cracking like a digital spiderweb across his ribs.
Riko gasped; his heart pounded so loud that other sensations seemed to fade away.
Except
A faint rattling sound.
Not from the orb.
From inside him.
He looked down. His Level Screen, normally a hologram, flickered beneath his skin.
"Oh, that is NOT normal!"
The orb pulsed again, faster this time.
More ravenous.
Cold climbed up his neck.
His jaw tightened as if someone else was trying to move it.
Riko punched the orb. The orb barely registered it, the fist passing through the surface covered in glitch residue when it emerged, numbing his knuckles.
He tried again—
And again—
But every blow slowed to a crawl, as if he were moving through thick, static-filled air.
The orb wasn't sapping his strength.
It was overwriting space around him. and maybe even him, too.
"Let go!" he shouted hoarsely. "Let ME GO!"
It did not.
It crawled up his chest and latched onto his collarbone, reacting to his rising panic. Every pulse burned hotter. His skin tingled, his heartbeat stuttered, and his head filled with a buzzing like someone trying to upload thoughts directly into his brain.
His arms felt heavy.
His legs felt detached.
His lungs felt as though he was breathing through a glitch.
The orb pulsed again—
Then again—
Every pulse stronger, almost violent.
Riko clawed at it desperately. The tendril sank deeper, his body jerking as if a puppet being tugged by invisible strings.
His voice cracked. "STOP!"
The orb opened-its spherical body splitting into jagged panels like a blooming flower made of shards. Inside, a swirling core of raw error energy spiraled, reaching toward his chest.
Riko could feel it, trying to hook into him in search of the Level Screen like a parasite seeking an organ.
"Don't—" he croaked. "Don't you—DARE —"
He grasped the panels with both hands and tried to wrench them free. The feedback smashed through his skull like a shockwave. His vision pixelated. The world dimmed. The orb began wrapping new tendrils around his arms to hold him in place.
He couldn't win.
It was too strong.
Too fast.
Too. invasive.
His elbows buckled as another surge slammed through him. His knees dropped onto the floor once more. A buzzing built up around his ears— Not from the orb. From something else. Then, for the first time since he fell into this nightmare zone— His Level Screen flickered into full view. It appeared in front of his face, trembling violently, symbols blinking across its surface as if in pain. Riko blinked through the static. "Screen…? Do something!" The symbols steadied just enough to render one message. Just one. And it flashed in a blinding emergency-red: "DON'T TOUCH THAT!"