The sky above was wrong.
That was the first thing the world noticed.
Two suns hovered where there should have been one. Not side by side, but orbiting each other—like broken code caught in a feedback loop. Their light flickered at irregular intervals, one red and pulsing like a slow heartbeat, the other pale and cold like a star long dead.
Beneath that fractured sky, in a quiet clearing deep within Zone 3-V, something stirred in the grass. A body. Barely human. Not entirely machine. Not entirely anything.
His name, was Ashen Vale.
His memory was fog. Bits of a previous life bled through in flashes—rain, glass, a phone call, a scream. Then blackness. And now... this.
He gasped awake like a man drowning in nothingness. Cold air rushed into lungs that had not breathed in days. His hands twitched. His eyes darted wildly, trying to make sense of the shimmering trees, the pixelated mist curling at the edges of the woods, the distant sounds of birds whose calls glitched and overlapped like rewinding audio.
And then came the first system prompt.
[SYSTEM ERROR: Entity Not Recognized]
[You are not part of this world's database.]
[Initiating rollback… failed.]
[Override sequence… failed.]
[New Directive Created: SURVIVE.]
The message floated in the air, projected by nothing, anchored to nothing. Just a presence. A cold, indifferent truth carved into reality.
Ashen blinked, squinting as the message dissolved into static and vanished.
"System?" he muttered. "What system—?"
He tried to stand. His limbs fought him like rusted machinery, moving with delay. When he finally rose to his feet, the world tilted sideways. Vertigo gripped him, sharp and sudden, but it wasn't from pain—it was as if gravity itself was struggling to agree on which direction was down.
Behind him, the grass bent unnaturally. A ripple passed through the earth like a skipped frame. Something had changed the moment he woke up.
Something was watching.
He wasn't alone.
From the treeline, shadows emerged—six figures clad in mirrored armor, their faces hidden behind helmets shaped like expressionless masks. Their weapons buzzed faintly with a digital undertone, and their movements were too perfect, too synchronized to be human.
Cleanup Units.
Designed by the system to handle glitched threats.
They raised their weapons. No words. No warnings. Just a directive.
[WARNING: You are outside the bounds of the world.]
[Hostile cleanup units detected. Termination probability: 97.4%.]
[Activating emergency combat protocol… failed.]
[Skill Assigned: GLITCH STEP (Lv.1)]
[Description: A broken movement technique that doesn't obey physics. Use at your own risk.]
Ashen didn't understand the message. He didn't even try to.
He just moved.
His lips parted in disbelief. "What the hell is happening?"
He ceased to exist where he stood.
One heartbeat, a spear flew through the air. The next, Ashen reappeared ten feet away, embedded halfway inside the trunk of a gnarled tree. His body phased in, tangled awkwardly with bark and moss, then snapped back to solidity with a sickening lurch.
He coughed violently and tore himself free, falling to his knees.
[GLITCH STEP Used.]
[You have moved in an undefined vector.]
[Warning: Continued use may result in existential collapse.]
Below him, the soldiers faltered. One examined the spot where Ashen had stood. Another turned slowly, tracking the air around the tree.
Their synchronization broke.
Then one of them began to convulse.
His weapon dropped, flickering in and out of existence. His armor cracked like old glass, and streams of pixel-light poured from the seams of his gauntlets. He screamed—not in pain, but as if his very code was being rewritten.
Ashen didn't lift a finger.
[Title Acquired: THE ANOMALY]
[Enemies within a 10-meter radius will experience system instability.]
The screaming stopped.
So did the soldier's existence.
He collapsed into digital ash—dissolving into data fragments that spiraled upward and were consumed by a hidden force above the sky.
The remaining units froze. They exchanged no words, but the hesitation was clear. The anomaly was no longer a theory. It was real.
Ashen stared at his hands.
There was no glow. No aura of power. No fire, no blade, no divine symbol. Just trembling fingers and ragged breaths. And yet—the world had already begun to reject him.
The soldiers moved again.
Ashen ran.
Through brush that glitched at the edges. Across terrain that flickered between stone and sand. Around trees that bent ever so slightly toward him, as if trying to whisper something forgotten.
---
ELSEWHERE
Far, far above—beyond clouds, beyond light...
Inside a crystalline spire suspended in the upper layers of existence, a tower shuddered. An obelisk etched with golden script flickered.
A red light pulsed for the first time in ten thousand cycles.
An emergency message echoed through the chamber of the Architects:
"ANOMALY DETECTED."
A pause.
"Impossible," replied one voice. "All reincarnations are processed through the Gatekeeper."
"This entity bypassed the gate. It does not belong. It was not born. It simply… arrived."
"Location?"
"Zone 3-V. Near a destabilized border."
Another pause.
"Send a God-tier cleanup unit."
Silence.
"…We did."
The lights dimmed.
"It collapsed."
The silence stretched longer this time. Then:
"Begin Protocol Zero."
"Erase him."
---
Back in Zone 3-V...
Ashen collapsed near a narrow ravine, lungs burning, vision flickering with static. The world wasn't just alien.
It was wrong.
Trees reset their branches. Streams ran backward for moments before correcting. His footsteps didn't leave prints, but the ground glitched instead—pixels of dirt tearing and repairing as he moved.
Whatever this place was… it wasn't real.
And maybe he wasn't, either.
Ashen leaned against a jagged stone, still pulsing with system energy. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know who he was. But something whispered from deep inside him—something raw and ancient and furious.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
But he was.
And for now, that was enough.
---
TO BE CONTINUED....