The Technoscribe enclave had fallen silent after the battle with Nyssan. Most members fled or went into lockdown. Eron limped back into the Archive with bruised ribs and a shredded coat, his body still pulsing with residual echo energy.
Arin was waiting.
"That wasn't a fight," she said. "That was a warning."
"She read my moves like she'd lived them," Eron muttered. "She knew my timing before I did."
"That's what it means to be a true Reclaimer," Arin replied. "But you've got something they never had. Something older than the system."
She led him deeper into the Archive, past sealed doors and radiation locks, into a chamber shrouded in mist. In its center sat a figure draped in fractured light—robes of flickering data. It looked human, but only barely.
"Who is that?" Eron asked.
"Not who—what," Arin said. "That's a Glitch Monk. A failed Echo host. One of the first."
The figure twitched. Its eyes opened, flickering between digital red and empty void.
"I... remember... war," the monk whispered. "Endless echoes. Unfiltered pain. You... bear the same flame."
Eron knelt. "I need to surpass a Reclaimer. I need to control the system."
The monk raised a finger. "Then step into the glitch."
Suddenly the floor dropped away. The room vanished. Eron was suspended in code, caught in a collapsing spiral of memories—his and others'.
He saw a temple being atomized. A child awakening in orbit. A blade splitting a black hole in two.
Initiating Deep Echo Dive...Warning: System Integrity Threatened...
Pain flared. The system fractured. But Eron didn't stop. He fought through the vision—against phantoms wielding forgotten weapons, illusions of his past failures. Over and over.
And then—he stood.
In his mind's eye, the Glitch Monk smiled.
"You've walked the spiral and emerged whole. You are no longer bound by linear echoes."
New Protocol: Chrono Fracture acquired.Synchronization Rate: 16.2%
Eron opened his eyes.
The chamber returned. The monk vanished in a shimmer of light.
Arin grinned. "You just survived a glitch core. Most people go insane."
"I'm not most people," Eron said, and stood.
For the first time, he felt like he could rewrite his fate.