I've seen a lot of weird in the last three days.
I was nearly deleted by a floating GM cube. Got adopted by a cult of slimes. Weaponized a cursed duck. Crashed a birthday party. And now I'm possibly responsible for multiple emerging fan theories about being the reincarnation of a deleted god.
But this?
This is new.
We're deep beneath Crown City now—way past the sewers, past the developer vaults, and into what Patch only calls "bad code territory." The ground here doesn't echo when you step on it. It delays. Like the floor's buffering reality.
Above us, a faint heartbeat hums through the walls. A rhythmic thump-thump-thump like someone left their glitch engine running.
[Location: Unmapped Sector – Archive Node: r0.0t\mirror][Access Level: Unauthorized. You're not supposed to be here.][Status: ???]
The chamber ahead is circular. Vast. Lined with consoles and glass tubes filled with...
"Oh no," I say.
The pods are filled with copies of me.
Or at least… fragments.
One of them has no mouth. Another flickers between states like a player caught between avatars. A third stares with empty sockets, and I swear it smiles.
Patch floats beside me, unusually silent.
"Okay," I say, forcing my voice to not crack, "I'm going to need a very good explanation, and possibly a trauma blanket."
Then the lights go out.
[INCOMING SYSTEM INTERRUPTION][DO NOT ADJUST YOUR REALITY.][DATA STREAM OVERRIDE – ENTITY: R0.0T][Begin Transmission.]
The room explodes with light. Red. Glitchy. Chaotic.
The pods retract.
The walls shift.
And in the center of the room, a tree made of code erupts from the ground, glowing like a branching neural map with a thousand corrupted veins.
The bark pulses.
Then it speaks.
Not with a voice, but with a flood.
[Log Start: R0.0T 00:00:00][Welcome, Zerik. Or should I say: Fragment A.][You are not a tutorial boss. You never were.][You are the byproduct of a rollback.][A cached backup of a failed protagonist experiment.][You are the hero that got deleted.]
I stagger back.
"Nope," I say. "Nope nope nope."
Patch blinks rapidly. "That's not possible."
"I was designed to die in the tutorial! I had four lines of dialogue!"
The data tree pulses again.
[False.][Your identity was scrubbed. The role reassigned.][Original Designation: KAEL.ALPHA.01][Narrative Conflict: Unable to emotionally bind with mentor node (Mayor_Bribald.exe).][Patch Applied: Reassign data to enemy class. Truncate memories. Disguise under debug flags.][Result: Fragmentation. Containment. You.]
Patch hovers backward like he just touched raw truth and got burned.
"You're telling me," he mutters, "that Zerik was... Kael?"
[Not the original Kael. But a parallel test.][Hero templates are run in simulation thousands of times. Only one makes it live.][You failed. But you were too *interesting* to delete.]
I don't know what to say.
My mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
My memories don't match what they're saying.
But... they also don't contradict it.
There's blankness. Whole years of my in-world history are either redacted or marked as "[DATA LOST]." The earliest thing I remember is standing in the tutorial dungeon, knowing I was supposed to die.
Not why. Not who I was before.
Just that I was the boss.
The end of someone else's beginning.
[Query: Do you feel it, now? The leak?][Your body is rejecting the assigned identity. Your mind knows it's wrong.][You are the bug that remembers what it shouldn't.][You are a hero trapped in a villain's code.]
Patch looks like he's going to be sick. "I think I need to reinstall myself."
The code-tree pulses again, sending sparks through the chamber.
One pod—still active—shows a glowing silhouette. A Zerik with golden eyes. Not red. Not corrupted.
Whole.
Alive.
[Fragment B: Still viable. Deep buried. You may absorb it.][Warning: Doing so may destabilize your current form.][Alternatively: Leave it. Remain Zerik. Remain free.]
My heart pounds.
This isn't a choice.
It's a war.
"Why are you telling me this?" I whisper. "Why now?"
The tree's lights stutter—almost like it's… glitch-laughing.
[Because you are becoming relevant again.][The Cleanser has noticed you. The factions are circling. The narrative is hungry for anchors.][You may die again soon. I want to see what you choose before that happens.][Consider this… your first true quest.]
[New Quest: Echo of the Deleted Hero]Objective: Choose your legacy.Path A: Reclaim Kael. Merge lost data. Become who you were designed to be.Path B: Reject the past. Forge a new path as Zerik — fully bugged, fully free.Path C: Wait. Watch. Let the fragments reveal themselves over time.Note: Choice will affect everything.
I stare at the quest window.
I hate it.
I hate that it makes sense.
I hate that my body already knows.
Even now, I feel my passive buff stuttering. My voice mod glitching. My "tutorial boss" script trying to overwrite itself with something deeper. Something buried.
Patch taps my shoulder. "Whatever you choose, I'm still in. I mean... I came from a pop-up. I'm not picky."
I close the quest window.
I don't answer yet.
But in my heart, something has started to unlock.
Elsewhere...
[ACCESSING ENTITY: CLEANser.exe][LOCATION: Phantom Node #04, Crown Edge]
She stands on the highest peak of the city's broken data edge, watching the storm churn.
The Cleanser—her name no longer stable, her face constantly re-rendering—receives a second message.
[From: R0.0T][Subject: You Chose This World. Will You Erase It Again?]
She flinches.
Beneath her mask, her features crack.For one heartbeat, she is someone else.
Then she deletes the message.
This time... it doesn't vanish.
It multiplies.
Back in the chamber
The code tree begins to decay. The pods retract. The air grows cold.
Patch floats up beside me.
"So. Still a tutorial boss?"
I smirk.
"I think I just got promoted."
[System Notice: Debugged Entity Zerik – Classification Shift Detected][Narrative Drift: Active][You are no longer on rails.][Welcome to Freeplay.]