The chapel's silence clung to me even after logout.
I lay in the dark, eyes open, breathing shallow. No dreams, just echoes. Whispers. Words I didn't fully remember but couldn't forget either.
You were not meant to return.
The SYSTEM hadn't just watched me.
It had spoken to me.
Back in Elderfall, the world was awake.
Players gathered at the mission board. NPC vendors reset their rotations. A low-tier raid callout scrolled across the local chat like a threadbare banner.
I didn't join.
Instead, I made my way toward the far eastern quarter of town—past the tailoring district, where buildings overlapped into the hill like worn teeth. This part of the map didn't get used much. Most players skipped it after level 5.
But the Forgotten Heirloom was pulsing.
It hadn't done that since the moment I picked it up behind the blacksmith's shop on Day One.
Now, it thrummed faintly in my inventory—like a heartbeat out of sync with the world.
[Item Alert: Forgotten Heirloom]Status: Resonating | Response Source: ??? | Proximity: 14.2m
I paused beside an old stone arch near the tailor's guild. Nothing special visually. Just a wall.
But when I held the Heirloom in my hand, the interface flickered.
For a split second, the stone peeled back, revealing a narrow, spiral staircase descending into darkness—and then snapped shut.
No popup.
No trigger.
Just a flash of something beneath the rendered world.
I backed away slowly and closed my inventory.
Not yet.
I met Lyra near the central fountain.
She didn't smile this time.
"You're glitching," she said.
"That's dramatic."
She raised a brow. "You're moving like your animation's out of sync. You phased through a bench when you sat down earlier. I saw it."
I blinked. "You sure it wasn't lag?"
"I checked your ping."
That gave me pause.
She leaned in, eyes sharp now. "Something's off, Aiden. Your Lexicon floats differently. You step like the ground doesn't know where you are."
She sees too much.
"Maybe I'm just getting better."
"No," she said. "This isn't skill. It's something else. And if you're not going to tell me the truth, I'll find out myself."
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
We queued for a short tag sync event—a public instance meant for players to test chain-casting and glyph reaction timing. Low stakes, mostly for mid-level support classes.
It started normal.
Then my HUD stuttered.
[SYSTEM EVENT: Tag Sync Initiated]Participants: 12Environment Load: Forest of Ashes | Difficulty: AdaptiveNote: Listener Tag Detected – Dynamic Scaling Engaged
Lyra glanced over.
"You see that note?"
I nodded.
And the event began.
The tag test spiraled fast. Enemies scaled harder than expected. Patterns broke their loops. Cast timings failed even with perfect glyph alignment.
I knew this wasn't random.
The SYSTEM was testing me—not my stats, but my responses.
One mob—a malformed spirit with no name—ignored the party and lunged for me directly, bypassing taunts and aggro tables.
I responded instinctively, layering Bind > Echo Pulse > Mirrorthread Return.
The spell landed.
The mob screamed. Not coded audio. Raw static.
Everyone stopped.
The spirit dissolved… into data strings.
And left behind a fragment.
[Acquired: Null Code Fragment]This shouldn't exist. The SYSTEM tries to forget it. You remember it now.Item Type: Unknown | Function: Unknown | Tradable: No
Lyra stared at me.
So did the rest of the team.
I blinked—and the event force-closed.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: Sync Terminated. Reporting Inconsistency.]Player 'Aiden Chase' – Divergence Increased to 0.063%ECHO Oversight Active. Manual Observers Assigned.
Later that night, I woke up in the real world.
My neck ached. My hand was clenched around nothing.
And when I looked in the mirror across the dorm...
My reflection blinked.
But I didn't.