by IMERPUS RELUR
---
The chapel stood quiet after the storm. Broken vines clung to the reformed walls, still glowing faintly from the rewrite. IMER stood motionless in the middle of the chamber, breath slow, body aching.
The mark of Wrath still burned on his chest.
He had rewritten despair, and now, he had tasted fury.
But something felt... off.
His vision glitched. A flicker — red, sharp, painful — echoed in the edges of his sight.
> [System Note: Warning. Sin Integration incomplete. Host stability: 87%.]
"Stability?" IMER muttered.
He clenched his fists. Blazing Code Fist — the skill he had earned — pulsed in his palm like a second heart. His veins hummed with raw code.
This wasn't just power.
It was memory.
It was pain.
He remembered the entity's vision. The man whose family had been erased by the Sanctifiers. Wrath wasn't evil — it was justice, misnamed and buried.
---
A faint sound broke the silence.
Footsteps. Soft. Intentional.
He turned sharply.
A girl stood at the doorway of the chapel.
She looked no older than sixteen — white hair, hollow eyes, and in her hands, a glowing orb that pulsed with shifting colors.
IMER's voice was calm. "You're not from here."
She didn't flinch. "Neither are you."
He studied her. There was no Morality Score above her head.
Unregistered.
Like him.
"What's your name?"
She smiled faintly. "Niva."
"And that?" he pointed at the orb.
She raised it. "A memory sphere. Yours."
---
IMER narrowed his eyes.
"Mine?"
She stepped forward. "Before the System. Before the cheat code. Before you were IMER."
The orb pulsed violently as she approached. Images surged in the air around it — flashes of a child, a laboratory, a voice screaming code into skin.
He stumbled back.
"I didn't ask for this."
"No," Niva said. "But you were made for it."
The orb cracked slightly.
"I'm here to warn you," she whispered. "Every sin you absorb… brings you closer to collapse."
IMER scoffed. "That already happened. I'm just rewriting what broke."
"You think you're rewriting the world," she said quietly. "But someone else is rewriting you."
---
His breath stopped.
The System beeped inside him:
> [New Objective: Find the Architect.]
[Side Quest Unlocked: Sin Loop Detected.]
He stared at her. "The Architect?"
She nodded. "The one who wrote the cheat code. The one who named you IMER."
"Who are you really?" he asked.
She smiled — sad, broken, beautiful.
"I'm the fragment of your First Rewrite."
And with that, she vanished. No sound. No glitch. Just absence.
IMER looked down at the orb. It hovered silently, waiting for him to touch it.
His hand hesitated.
> [Touch to Reveal Hidden Past: Origin Sin.]
He didn't move.
Instead, he whispered, "Not yet."
Then turned toward the shadows of Zone Null.
"There's another sin out there."
His fists clenched.
"I can feel it."
---
> [Sin Signature Detected: ENVY – Low-Level Manifestation Nearby.]
IMER smirked.
"Let's see what you're hiding this time."
And he walked into the fog, fading into glitch and fire.