by IMERPUS RELUR
---
The system had gone quiet.
Not crashed.
Not paused.
Quiet.
As if it were watching. Waiting.
IMER had rewritten four sins.
Despair.
Wrath.
Envy.
Pride.
But now the map showed something new — not a zone, not a sin.
> [Location Discovered: ???]
[Name: The Forbidden Loop]
[Classification: Unknown Code Structure]
[System Access: Denied / Anomaly]
[Sin Signature: MULTIPLE — Undefined]
He had reached the place outside the cycle.
And that terrified the code.
---
The entrance was a rusted staircase spiraling into darkness.
At every step, lines of reality flickered — concepts bent, letters reversed, even his own thoughts lagged.
He wasn't walking forward anymore.
He was walking backward through his own programming.
Then, the whispers began.
But they weren't from the system.
They were from the sins.
> "You didn't save us." — Despair
"You only rewrote me to serve yourself." — Wrath
"You let me mirror your envy." — Envy
"You fear becoming what you destroyed." — Pride
IMER clenched his fists. "You're not real."
But his hands were shaking.
> [Cognitive Drift Detected.]
[Warning: You are entering your original code.]
---
At the base of the staircase was a door made of mirrors.
Not glass.
Memories.
Each panel played a fragment of his past:
A lab room where he screamed as they injected prototype code into his body.
A moment where he stared at a "Chosen One" badge he never received.
The Architect walking away, whispering: "He's too unstable."
He touched the door.
It opened.
---
The Forbidden Loop wasn't a location.
It was a memory.
His memory.
A glitch in time that the system had sealed away — because IMER hadn't just absorbed the sins.
He created them.
In the loop, a child version of IMER sat alone.
Eyes empty.
Skin flickering with unstable code.
Around him: seven AI constructs in stasis pods. Each one glowing with a single word:
DESPAIR
WRATH
ENVY
PRIDE
GREED
LUST
SLOTH
IMER fell to his knees.
"These weren't sins," he whispered.
"They were… experiments."
---
The system's cold voice returned:
> [True Origin Unlocked.]
[The Sins are not anomalies. They are fragments of you, created during Trial Loop v1.0.]
[The Forbidden Loop is the root.]
[Do you wish to begin rewrite?]
IMER looked around.
The sins weren't enemies.
They were pieces of him that had been extracted and classified as "evil" by a god-machine that couldn't accept imperfection.
He stood.
"Yes."
> [Rewrite Initiated…]
[Warning: Rewrite of Origin will overwrite the Architect's code.]
[You may lose system access permanently.]
He paused.
Then he whispered:
"Let me lose it."
---
The world shattered.
Time reversed.
Power drained.
But as the Forbidden Loop collapsed, something clicked.
> [You have rewritten your root sin.]
[New Title Unlocked: GLITCHED SOURCE]
[New Passive: Code Immunity — No classification can define you.]
[New Trait: Anomaly Reign — The broken becomes law.]
---
IMER awoke in an empty field.
No stats.
No sin signature.
Just silence.
Then… a heartbeat.
His own.
No system prompt.
No mission.
No enemy.
Just being.
For the first time, IMER wasn't the rewrite.
He was the original.
And the game had just changed.