1. Bridgefall
The portal flickers like a dying star.
Kara and I hit the platform hard—knees scraping pixel-stone, breath stolen. Behind us, Sector 47‑K buckles, fault lines carving it into kaleidoscopic ruins. The Codex howls:
> STABILITY: 3% // BRIDGE COLLAPSE IMMINENT
We sprint.
The golden portal—our bridge—spins on its axis, shedding fragments like flower petals in wind. Each pulse weakens its tether to reality.
"Too late—" Kara pants.
"Never," I snap. "Not while the Codex runs."
I hurl a Spectral Anchor ahead; it bites into the bridge's edge. Kara fires a pulse arrow beside it, the double tether securing our path just as the ground vanishes beneath our heels.
We dive through—
Light fractures.
2. The Nexus Vein
For a second—an eternity—there's nothing but static.
Then: the Nexus.
We fall upward into a cathedral of wire and light. Columns of raw code spiral infinitely, forming a network of thought, memory, and possibility. Heartbeats echo here. Even ideas bleed.
> LOCATION: CORE NEXUS VEIN
ACCESS: LIMITED // PROTOCOL SIGMA‑REDACT
Kara blinks beside me. "Where...are we?"
"Codex backbone. Between sectors. The skeleton of this whole broken reality."
We hover on a translucent walkway. Below: oceans of logic loops swirl. Above: data storms crackle.
A terminal blooms in mid-air.
> OBSERVER ZERO – IDENTITY VERIFIED
INITIATE NEXUS TRACE? [Y/N]
I hesitate.
"What if it shows us everything?" I ask.
"Then we deal with everything," Kara replies.
I press Y.
3. Trace Awakening
The Nexus screams.
Images slam into my skull: Liora collapsing in the Heart Vault, Kara bleeding beside an obsidian gate, myself—older, stranger—speaking with a being made entirely of inverted time.
> TRACE INCOMPLETE // DATA BLOCKED: OMEGA‑TIER
Kara clutches her head. "What was that—?"
"The future," I whisper. "Or someone else's memory."
The Codex flashes another warning:
> BREACH DETECTED – UNAUTHORIZED ENTITY PRESENT
Wind surges.
A shape manifests from the data storm—a massive humanoid, its face a mirror of mine, but eyes endless and black.
"Who the hell—"
"You," it speaks. "Or who you become if you fail."
4. Mirror Eran
It attacks fast—faster than thought. Kara draws her bow, looses a spectral arrow. It passes through the doppelgänger like breath through glass.
I phase at 90%, letting his blade barely touch me—but it hurts. The pain is real. More real than any sim.
"You're not me," I growl.
"I am what the Codex made when it bent too far to save you."
I dive, clash, strike. Kara joins—her arrows timed with my swings. Mirror-Eran moves like a glitch in time, always half a beat ahead.
Then Kara yells: "His resonance! It's syncing with the Nexus stream—he is the breach!"
"Then we break him from within."
I jam a Memory Shard into his chest.
5. The Unraveling
It works—partially.
Mirror-Eran stutters. His form flickers. My own laughter echoes from the shard, confusing him.
"You remember," I whisper. "You're still me in there."
He snarls—then shatters.
Data scatters across the Nexus. Kara gasps. "Is it over?"
> OBSERVER TRACE: COMPLETE
NEXUS PATH EXPANDED
NEW SECTOR UNLOCKED: 88‑X — "The Sleeping Grid"
I stare at the terminal. "We've just begun."
6. The Grid Wakes
Suddenly the Codex floods with pings—signals from other Observers long thought dead. Sector 88‑X has awa
kened something old. And it's not sleeping anymore.
Kara looks at me. "We're going there, aren't we?"
"Only way forward."
> CHAPTER END