The Heart of the Core was nothing like Jae-Won expected.
Not a mechanical throne, not a server bank humming with digital authority—but a living cathedral of data. Pulsing threads of light arced between floating memory orbs, like neurons in a vast, thinking brain. The air shimmered with half-heard whispers—echoes from timelines long erased.
Jae-Won stepped cautiously onto a suspended bridge of raw code, each step generating ripples of reactive input beneath his boots. The Glitch in his chest beat like a second heart, pulsing faster with every breath he took.
He'd bypassed the system. Forced a paradox.
Now he stood at the source.
> "Impressive," came a new voice—one he hadn't heard since the beginning.
From the far end of the bridge, a figure stepped forward, dressed in a ChronoCorp founder's garb. Cloak of admin-thread, gloves of meta-script. His face was sharp, untouched by age, and his eyes burned with the cold fire of someone who had never once doubted the righteousness of his purpose.
Sang-Ho.
The real Sang-Ho.
"You've come far, Subject 003," he said with a smile devoid of warmth. "Further than the simulations predicted. I should thank the Architect for that… anomaly."
Jae-Won's stance shifted. "No simulations predicted me. That's the point."
Sang-Ho chuckled. "Ah, but that's where you're wrong. You are a simulation. The most advanced one we've ever built. We just didn't expect you to self-edit."
He waved a hand, and from the ceiling, a web of holograms descended—countless Jae-Wons in various forms. Some dead. Some corrupted. One on his knees, covered in Serin's blood.
"This is your legacy. Versions of you that failed. Broke. Glitched and were purged."
Jae-Won looked past them. "And yet here I am. Not dead. Not purged."
"No," Sang-Ho admitted. "You're something else. Something dangerous."
The bridge shuddered as the Heart Engine reacted—tendrils of glowing root-code extending toward Jae-Won, brushing against his skin like curious static.
> "The system recognizes you as a contaminant."
"I'm not here to be recognized," Jae-Won said, stepping forward. "I'm here to rewrite the story."
Sang-Ho's smile faltered. "You don't even know what you're holding. That Glitch—do you truly believe it's power? It's pain, Jae-Won. Pure, condensed trauma repurposed into data."
"I know," Jae-Won said. "And I've survived every second of it."
His eyes burned now—not from rage, but clarity. The Architect's memories. His mother's scream. Serin's trembling hand.
> "You created me as a failsafe. I became your failure."
A pulse of Glitch-energy spiraled around him—warping code, disrupting time anchors embedded in the floor. Sang-Ho raised a hand, summoning a temporal blade etched with admin privilege.
"Then let's end this simulation," he said coldly.
They collided in the center of the bridge. Blade against blade, code versus Glitch.
Sang-Ho fought with elegance—every motion backed by centuries of predictive combat modeling. But Jae-Won adapted. He let the fight fracture around him—let the Glitch break patterns, shatter expectations.
One strike—then another—rewrote the terrain beneath them.
A memory shattered midair: Serin begging for forgiveness in one timeline. Mirae dying in another. The fragments collapsed into ash.
Jae-Won roared, slicing through Sang-Ho's attack. The older man faltered, surprised as his admin blade destabilized.
"This isn't supposed to happen!" he hissed.
"That's the thing about pain," Jae-Won said. "It teaches you to improvise."
With a final burst of Glitch, Jae-Won drove his blade through the core of Sang-Ho's avatar. The founder's form convulsed—his code flickering, destabilizing.
But even in collapse, Sang-Ho laughed.
"You think this is over?" he whispered. "You haven't seen the true timeline. The one hidden even from the Architect."
"What timeline?" Jae-Won demanded.
But Sang-Ho's form crumbled into dust, scattering into the swirling Heart Engine.
Suddenly, the chamber darkened. The lights dimmed, pulsing in slow, dreadful rhythm. From the depths of the Heart, something ancient stirred.
A presence—older than the system, predating ChronoCorp's inception.
A voice echoed:
> "Subject 003… Access granted. Releasing Origin Layer."
The floor beneath Jae-Won split open, revealing a descending spiral of light and shadow—a staircase into the foundation of time itself.
His Glitch flickered wildly.
Even the system didn't know what lay below.
Jae-Won clenched his fists, stepped forward…
And descended.
To be continued…