The creature's body suddenly convulsed, as if something inside it had just woken up. Its torso rippled with waves of distorted pixels, lines of corrupted code racing across its surface like veins of flickering blue lightning. Riko felt the air tighten around him, the atmosphere weighing down with an eerie heaviness, as if the world itself was holding its breath. His Level Screen violently vibrated on his wrist, the display warping in and out of focus. Every glitching pulse of the creature made his arm ache harder, as though the drain wasn't just stealing stats but tugging on nerves he never knew he had.
He watched, paralyzed, as the creature's torso jerked about with quick, unnatural movements. It raised its head-if that half-formed shape could be called a head-and something inside began to click, almost as if gears lined up inside a machine that had forgotten how it was supposed to work. The clicks did not match; they overlay, skipped, multiplied into an unnerving rhythm that crawled under Riko's skin.
Then the skin around its head began shifting, as if strata of some mask were slipping one thin layer at a time into position.
The first "piece" snapped in with a sharp visual glitch, creating a defined angle along what might later become its jawline. Riko's stomach flipped. It wasn't fully visible yet, but the intent was undeniable: it was constructing a face. A face based on him. A face that should not-and could not-exist.
"No," Riko whispered. "No, no, no-stop that. Don't do that. Don't build me. I don't even like my own face most days!"
It ignored him. More fragments slid into place, thin lines of corrupted texture forming along the edge of the head. It wasn't smooth, wasn't symmetrical; pieces stuttered and flexed and pulsed in and out of view like a holo with a bad transmission. The shape was undeniably broken, incomplete, horrific in the way it could only almost be him.
Bile churned in Riko's throat. If it finished… if it completed the mask… would it actually resemble him? Would there be two versions of him within this warped world—one real and one corrupted?
Kaze stood in front of Riko, shoulders squared, his stance defensive but slightly lowered as he assessed the creature. He had fought so many things already, Assimilators and glitch beasts, the Rift Giant, monsters that didn't obey normal logic, but even he seemed to tense more at this. Something about seeing a creature attempt to construct a person was just different. More wrong.
The creature hissed-not with breath, but with a glitch of pure audio static. Its body jerked again. The pieces of its forming face began to move faster now, stitching together with fragile synchronization. Riko watched in paralyzed horror as a cheekbone-structure stabilized for one second before flickering into blocks again. A crude outline of a nose blipped into existence, disappeared, returned with missing portions like a corrupted texture file.
Instinctively, Riko stepped backward. "It's actually happening. It's actually—Kaze, it's actually trying to wear my face!"
Kaze didn't say a word for a moment. He kept his eyes on the creature; his jaw tightly clenched, his muscles taut, as if at any second he might spring forward. His silence said it all: he didn't know how to stop it, not yet, not fully.
"It's copying your data," Kaze finally said, voice low but steady. "And face structure is part of that. It was inevitable.
"Well, THAT WOULD'VE BEEN GREAT TO KNOW EARLIER!" Riko snapped; his voice cracked into an unintended higher pitch.
The creature angled its half-formed head at Riko, as if gauging the pitch shift. Its neck popped with disjointed frames, snapping between positions like the movement itself was being hand-scrubbed through a timeline. And then—not slowly, not gently, but with a dangerous, lurching suddenness—one of its eyes loaded.
An eye that is bright, rather perfect in rendering.
The rest of the face was yet chaos-flickering fragments and half-built shapes-but that one eye was complete, clear, sharp, human. Riko's breath stopped in his chest.
It was his eye.
Just his eye.
Same iris color. Same slight downward tilt at the outer edge. Same faint shadow of tiredness he knew he always had, even when he tried to look awake in the mornings. It wasn't exaggerated, wasn't stylized, monstrous.
It was the same.
And seeing it floating in that half-built mask froze every muscle in his body.
"What—" Riko choked, his voice shaking as he stumbled back another step. "What the hell—why does it—why is it so perfect?! That's MY eye! That's literally my—Kaze, THAT'S MY EYE!"
The creature blinked.
It blinked.
Not smoothly, no-but the eyelid snapped shut in a single corrupted frame, then reopened; the movement stiff and unnatural, yet unmistakably deliberate. The pupil narrowed, focusing directly on Riko.
There was no emotion behind it, no malice, no confusion, no personality.
Just recognition.
A cold system-level recognition.
The creature leaned forward, its mouth area glitching into something that might eventually resemble lips but for now were just jagged lines of unstable texture. From deep inside its chest echoed a low guttural sound, like a vocal file attempting to load but crashing halfway.
"Us…er…"
Riko's heart sank to his ankles.
"No no no no nope nope NOPE," he said, arms waving wildly as though he could shoo the monster away. "I am not going to let some half-loaded code-demon use 'User' for me while it's wearing my eyeball!"
Kaze shifted one foot back, shifting his stance.
But then, something happened that Riko hadn't expected.
Kaze… hesitated.
He didn't blur forward, didn't strike, didn't bark an order. He simply stood there, staring up at the creature with a tension in Riko that he never showed-not even during the Rift Giant fight. His veneer cracked, not fully, but enough to show something underneath it.
Apprehension.
The way Kaze's eyes narrowed was different. Not calculating. Not annoyed. Not aggressive.
He looked.rattled.
Really shaken.
"Why are you just standing there?!" Riko hissed. "Do something! Hit it! Kick it! I don't know—break its face before it finishes my face!"
Kaze ignored the panic in Riko's voice. He wasn't looking at Riko anymore. He wasn't looking at the platform. He wasn't looking at the surrounding void.
He was staring entirely—only—at the creature.
Riko followed his gaze, but he didn't see anything new besides the horror slowly assembling in front of them.
"What? What do you see?" Riko asked, his tone pitching between fear and frustration. "Why are you staring at it like that? Don't tell me you recognize it or something—"
Kaze said nothing.
The creature's one fully-loaded eye continued studying Riko, its half-mask glitching as more and more pieces drifted into place. Tiny fragments of texture tried to connect with one another, but distorted, unable to lock into a complete form. The more data it sucked down from Riko's leaking screen, the more its face pushed toward completion. Yet even with that, it was still horribly incomplete-like a sculpture missing half of its clay, yet somehow still trying to stand upright.
Riko's breath shook. "Kaze… seriously… what's wrong? You appear to have seen—"
He didn't complete it.
Because for the very first time since Riko had met him-through fights, chaos, monsters, and unexplainable dangers-
Kaze actually stepped backward.
But just one step.
But a step nonetheless.
Not a tactical shift.
The reposition is not.
Not an attack preparation.
A step of shock. A hesitation step. A step that said even he wasn't expecting the creature to do what it did. Riko's voice caught in his throat as he watched Kaze's composure crack. Kaze steps back, impressed for the first time.