Fracture Depth

The countdown hit zero.

Kai's HUD surged with light, flaring like an emergency beacon as the system launched a forced sync directly into his neural interface. He barely had time to brace himself before the world around him dissolved into a cyclone of static and light—pixels breaking down and reforming in midair, code strings unraveling like spider silk before knitting themselves into something new. The rush of data screamed silently through his thoughts, trying to overwrite muscle memory and inject new reflexes all at once. His body felt stretched, like it belonged in two places at once.

Then, without warning, the reconstruction snapped into place.

He stood in a massive chamber of ancient stone, lit only by the flickering of torches embedded in cracked, moss-covered walls. The walls rose high into an unseen ceiling, shadow pressing in on every side. The room stank of rot and old water. The drip-drip of moisture echoed off the stone. Above, a distant echo of something mechanical clicked through the darkness, like gears grinding in a forgotten machine.

Dungeon Simulation: INITIATED

Environment Type: Ruins - Submerged Variant

Party Members Assigned: [Randomized]

Save Point Anchor: NULL (Shadow Protocol Active)

The air was thick with moisture, cool against his skin. Water pooled ankle-deep across the chamber floor, slick and silent. When Kai stepped forward, his reflection didn't follow him—it remained frozen, unmoving, eyes glowing faintly red beneath the water. The sensation chilled him more than the water ever could.

He shuddered.

Four other students stood in the room. Strangers. None acknowledged him.

One girl cradled a massive greatsword like it was a child. Her armor bore deep gashes, but the metal moved with her like it was alive. Her eyes twitched with each breath. A robed figure mumbled incantations under his breath, flickering between translucent and solid like the system couldn't decide if he existed. Another player, lanky and pale, moved with jittery, unpredictable steps, fingers twitching like he was controlling puppets that weren't there. The fourth leaned against a stone pillar, skin gray as ash, mouth slightly open as if he was waiting for orders from somewhere far away.

Dungeon Objective: Retrieve Relic Core from Sub-Level 3

Anomaly Level: UNSTABLE

The room itself shimmered, unreliably rendered. Walls flexed slightly, surfaces trembling as if unsure of their collision meshes. Doors drifted a few inches above the ground. Stone steps curled subtly like the geometry was tired of holding form. Occasionally, whole segments of wall blinked out for a fraction of a second before returning.

Kai checked his Save Point panel.

Anchor: UNRECOGNIZED

Corruption: 42%

Status: Displaced

There was no Lira. No Ren. Just this broken dream of a dungeon and the creeping sense that none of this was being run by the Academy anymore. Whatever was behind this simulation now wasn't interested in rules.

They moved without command.

No one spoke. No one took point. But somehow, they advanced through the cracked halls and sunken corridors like they were following a script they'd been forced to memorize. A script none of them wanted to question.

Kai stayed close, observing, hyper-aware of everything around him. Sounds repeated—dripping water on loop. A distant grinding noise, identical in cadence, every thirty seconds. The same torch flicker animation on every wall. In one hallway, the floor texture reset mid-step, erasing footprints only to redraw them incorrectly.

The hallways twisted.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

Corners bent beyond ninety degrees. Archways melted into vertical shafts. At one point, they passed through a corridor lined with mirrored panels that reflected only Kai—but distorted, lagging a half-second behind, and flickering like VHS footage. His reflection reached for him before he moved.

Then they entered the chamber of statues.

Hundreds of them.

Each one lifelike, carved in mid-motion. Faces frozen in horror. Eyes wide, mouths open in screams they would never finish. They lined the room in perfectly spaced rows, all turned slightly inward, as if watching the center of the chamber. A low whisper echoed through the space—not from the statues, but from the air around them.

Memory Echo Detected

Anomaly Signature: MATCHED

Kai staggered.

The glyph appeared again—drawn faintly across the base of one statue's pedestal. It pulsed, red and gold.

None of the other students stopped.

"You don't see this?" he said, louder now.

They didn't even blink.

He reached out to touch the statue.

Its chest was warm.

And then it breathed.

The statue's mouth opened slightly, exhaling a soft vapor that smelled like ozone and old memory.

Kai stumbled back, heart pounding.

By the second sub-level, the simulation began breaking more visibly.

The water was now waist-deep in places. Lighting transitioned randomly—flickering between torchlight and sterile LED strips like two textures competing for dominance. Occasionally, time itself seemed to hiccup—a player's footstep repeating twice before continuing.

The floor cracked beneath them.

One of the students vanished.

Not fell. Not drowned.

He simply disappeared, mid-step.

Party Member Lost: [ID NOT FOUND]

Backup Retrieval: UNAVAILABLE

The others didn't react.

Kai backed away, heart racing. "This isn't a test," he said aloud. "This is a purge."

Then the walls twisted. Literally. The entire dungeon rotated ninety degrees. Kai hit the floor—which became a wall—and slid until he hit stone. The others simply continued walking along the vertical surface as if gravity had never changed.

The geometry folded.

And the Echo was there.

Not the girl. Not the instructor-version of himself. Not even the data-thread simulation.

This was a shadow. Towering. Featureless. Except for its eyes—two disks of mirrored light that reflected everything and nothing at once.

It made no sound.

But Kai felt it speak, deep inside his spine.

Echo Thread Contact Established

Save Point Conflict Detected

Shadow Save Option: ENABLED

The world shook. Kai's HUD melted at the edges. Symbols scrolled too fast to read.

The other players screamed. Or rather, their avatars screamed—a static-laced audio burst that repeated twice, then fell silent. Their bodies broke down into floating cubes of code.

Kai lifted his hand.

The glyph blazed to life on his palm.

The Echo inclined its head.

And disappeared.

The final chamber appeared like an afterimage. He blinked, and it existed.

A wide cathedral-like room with a collapsed dome above. Water poured in through cracks in the ceiling. Broken statues lay scattered across the floor. The air smelled like salt and static.

In the center: a relic. Floating above a cracked altar.

It pulsed gently. Heartbeat rhythm. Around it hovered dozens of Save Point panels. All active. All broken. They buzzed quietly, as if whispering.

Every single one bore the same label:

USER: KAI-LIRA.01

Kai stepped forward.

He reached out and touched it.

Save Point Acquired

Anchor Reset

Shadow Save Point ACTIVATED

Countdown Reinitialized: 13 Days

The moment his hand made contact, the world shattered.

He woke in his dorm.

Everything looked normal.

The sheets. The light filtering through the window. The hum of the console screen nearby.

But his Save Point pulsed red.

Not corrupted.

Alive.

And on its surface, a single line of new text glowed faintly.

You made it. But they know now. And they're coming.

Kai stared.

For the first time in days, he wasn't sure if waking up was the real escape.