[System Error: Unrecognized Entity Detected]
[Accessing Emergency Vein Anchor Protocol…]
[Failed.]
[Attempting Reality Stabilization…]
[FAILED.]
[Warning: Anomaly Exists Outside the System.]
The world was screaming when he opened his eyes.
Not with sound—but with cracks.
The sky above him flickered like a broken screen, bleeding faint traces of violet through the twilight clouds. The trees were upside down. The air itself seemed unsure whether to be solid or mist. Everything glitched—softly, silently—like a dream refusing to load correctly.
Cael Vox gasped for breath.
Then paused.
He didn't know his name.
He didn't know how he got here.
All he had was the taste of iron in his mouth, a pounding in his skull… and a sensation—like a wire buried deep behind his eyes, pulling, humming, alive.
[System Accessing Core ID…]
[Error: No Class Detected]
[Error: No Soul Path Linked]
[Error: No Questline Assigned]
[Critical Alert: Subject Cael Vox should not exist.]
His name. Cael Vox.
The system remembered it, even if he didn't.
Cael sat up slowly, every limb aching like he'd been torn apart and stitched back together by someone who wasn't sure where the parts went. He was in a clearing. Trees loomed around him like skeletal guardians, their bark etched with faint glowing lines—Vein sigils.
He touched his chest.
No heartbeat.
No warmth.
Just… a low hum. Something fractured, rotating within him like a slow, ticking clock—wrong in every way.
[Paradox Core: ONLINE]
[Stability: 4%]
[You are currently outside the accepted bounds of fate.]
A voice echoed from the trees.
"Hey—hey! Someone's alive over here!"
Footsteps crunched through the dirt. A girl in cracked leather armor appeared between the branches, spear at the ready. Her hair was braided, her eyes wary.
She stopped when she saw his face.
"…No Echo signature," she whispered.
Another man appeared beside her. A rough brute with a jagged scar across his jaw. He held a scanning orb that immediately sparked, hissed, and exploded in his hand.
"Impossible. No one can survive without the System. He's not even registered!"
The girl raised her spear again.
"What are you?"
Cael stood.
He didn't know.
But behind the girl, the forest twisted again.
For one flicker of a second—he saw it:
Her body crumpled, blood soaking the soil.
The brute choking on shadows.
The realm fractured, purple veins splitting through the trees.
Then it was gone. A glimpse. A crack in time.
He blinked.
His eye was glowing.
[Echo Sight: Passive Activated]
[Future Deviation Detected]
[User is 9 seconds from being killed.]
"...I wouldn't," Cael said softly.
The girl froze.
He stepped forward.
"I don't know who I am. I don't know what happened to me. But I know this much—"
His shadow rippled unnaturally beneath him.
"I wasn't supposed to wake up."
The wind howled. The Vein sigils behind him lit up, reacting to his presence.
[Warning: Nexus Vein activity spiking]
[The Broken System has acknowledged the Anomaly.]
[Quest Created: Survive Being Forgotten]
[Reward: ???]
[Penalty: Absolute Erasure]
Good luck, Cael Vox.
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