The corridor past the flooded control room led down, deeper into the dam's bowels. The air grew heavier, damp with decay and something older a rot that wasn't just physical.
Jaden's boots splashed through thin pools of stagnant water as they advanced. The flickering lights above buzzed erratically, each flash throwing the group's shadows across the concrete like something alive.
Silas walked beside him, unusually quiet, his golden feathers dimmed.
"You okay?" Jaden whispered.
Silas nodded, though his eyes were narrowed. "This place isn't just haunted. It's warded. And someone broke those wards from the inside."
"Someone?"
"Or something that learned how to fake being someone."
Ahead, Kael scanned with a battered handheld sensor, its screen filled with static and pulsing glyphs. "The generator room's less than fifty meters. But the energy's wrong. It's like the system's bleeding into the physical world here."
Niko let out a low breath. "What happens when a system bleeds?"
Rowan replied, "We get creatures that remember dying. We get space that loops. We get death without corpses."
Aya flinched. "You guys are great at motivational speeches, you know?"
"Hey," Silas said brightly, "at least there's no cursed mannequins this time. Yet."
Jaden sighed. "You just had to say it out loud."
They reached a massive steel door. Ancient, rusted, its locking mechanism dented from the inside, as if something had tried to escape or break through.
Rowan placed a palm against it. "No heat signatures. But I can hear… humming. Like code singing."
Jaden tilted his head. He could hear it too a faint droning sound, like whispers spoken in binary.
"I can override it," Niko said, stepping up with her toolkit.
She connected a cable, fingers moving swiftly. The screen on her pad flickered between red and green. "It's resisting."
"Try calling it names," Silas offered. "I find that helps. Hey, door, your circuits look like spaghetti and your fonts are Comic Sans."
The lock clicked. Everyone stared.
Silas shrugged. "Told you."
The door creaked open, revealing the dam's generator chamber or what remained of it.
Metal scaffolding twisted like melted plastic. Cables pulsed with unnatural light, as if veins fed by a living heart. In the center of the room floated a massive tear in the air a jagged crack of raw code, shimmering like shattered glass coded in pain.
And beneath it, a single humanoid figure knelt black cloaked, unmoving, hood pulled low. The system interface flickered wildly around him, but didn't touch.
"Is that… a human?" Aya asked.
"No," Silas said immediately. "Not anymore."
They stepped cautiously into the room. The system glyphs warped in response, twisting around Jaden's vision.
[WARNING: SYSTEM BREACH DETECTED]
[AUTHORITY OVERRIDE: CLASS ??? ENTITY]
[DATA CORRUPTION: 89%]
[DO YOU WISH TO INTERVENE? Y/N]
"Nope," Kael muttered. "That's a capital-N no from me."
"Jaden," Silas whispered, suddenly deadly serious. "Do not accept anything the system offers here. Don't even mentally 'click' on it."
"I wasn't planning on it."
Silas's wings spread slightly. "Whatever that thing is, it's not bound by normal rules. It's pretending to be dormant, but it's watching us."
The hooded figure's head twitched.
Then slowly, it looked up.
The face beneath was partially human pale, stitched where code had torn through skin, its eyes hollow sockets filled with flickering fragments of system text. Its mouth opened, and code spilled out like blood.
"Hello, traveler," it rasped. "You've made it to the gate."
Rowan drew a blade. "What gate?"
"The one between volumes."
The figure stood. Its presence rippled like gravity in reverse pulling inward instead of pushing out. The floor beneath it cracked with every step.
"Jaden of Earth-452," it said, voice glitching. "You have survived nine trials. You have refused temptation. You carry the Mark of a Fallen."
Jaden's heart thudded. "What do you mean, Mark of a Fallen?"
The figure tilted its head. "The Angel beside you is not from the Host. He bears the scent of rebellion. He whispers memes where hymns should be."
Silas took a step forward. "And yet I still have better taste than you, trenchcoat."
The figure extended a hand. "Come closer, Jaden. I can offer you safety. Power. The answers you crave."
The system message popped again:
[SYSTEM OFFER: ACCEPT NEW SPONSOR?]
[Y/N]
Jaden gritted his teeth. "No."
The entity smiled a rictus grin stitched too wide.
"I see. Then suffer."
Suddenly, the air snapped all light vanished. The chamber exploded in static and motion. Cables shot from the walls like vipers. The tear in space screamed.
Silas lunged in front of Jaden, wings flaring gold. "Everyone fall back!"
But the floor cracked.
And Jaden fell.
Through light.
Through shadow.
Through code.
Into the breach.
His last glimpse of Silas was the angel screaming his name golden eyes burning, feathers disintegrating into data before the world ripped apart.
—
Jaden landed hard on glass? On nothing? On everything?
He was alone.
A blue sky hung above but the sun blinked like a cursor. The trees were paper flat. The wind whispered in dialogue boxes. A glitching deer trotted by, head upside down.
And in the distance…
A single black tower rose pixelated, crumbling, humming with that same voice.
A new screen appeared before him.
[NEW ZONE: THE FORGOTTEN SERVER]
[ INITIATING...]
Jaden stared at it.
"…Well, shit."
Author's note:
That's its folks the volume 1