Chapter 34: When the World Glitched Awake

The air was colder when Yun Xi stepped out of the Echo Library. Not physically, but emotionally—like the world itself had exhaled and paused.

Yue Lan followed close behind, glancing over her shoulder as the Library's gate shimmered and sealed itself once more behind them.

"Something's changed," she murmured.

And it had.

The city above, once dimmed by static-filled skies and flickering lights, now buzzed unnaturally. Yun Xi's eyes scanned the skyline—each building stuttered, like badly rendered frames of a video game. The neon lights didn't blink; they glitched, freezing mid-flicker before rapidly playing catch-up.

Even the air was different. Too still. Too perfect.

As if reality had been edited.

> [System Alert: Level Shift – Reality Layer 2.5 Activated]

New Threats Incoming. Cognitive Hazards Increased.

User Emotion Sync: 83% — Stable.

"What is Level 2.5?" Yun Xi asked aloud.

The system responded with nothing but silence.

Yue Lan turned toward him, brows furrowed. "Look."

A group of people walked by on the distant street below. But none of them spoke. None blinked. Their footsteps were in perfect sync—five, ten, twenty people moving in robotic unison, as though they were acting out a scene from a poorly-coded simulation.

Then they stopped.

And all twenty heads turned.

Staring straight at Yun Xi.

He took a step back instinctively.

Yue Lan cursed softly. "They see you."

The ground quivered as the synchronized figures began marching—one step, two steps, moving like puppets controlled by invisible threads.

From the sky, a loud shatter echoed. Clouds cracked like glass.

And then he saw it—descending from the broken sky.

A glitch beast.

Not a Harvester, not Echo-born.

Something else.

Something worse.

It had no form, only pixels—flickering, corrupted data twisted into a shape that couldn't decide what it wanted to be. Hands formed, then legs, then wings, all melting into each other like a living error message.

It landed on the nearest rooftop.

Its mouth, a jagged void, opened.

> "Y̴͖̠͒͌ò̷͔͎͋u̵̪͇̓̐ ̴̲͎̓͐s̶̮̘͐͝h̸̙͗͑o̵͈̔̓ư̷̢̏l̴̺̾̿d̷͕̀̐ ̴̼̔͘n̶̘̔́o̵͉̓̈́t̵͔͇́͆ ̸̢͆͠b̴̤̒̾e̴̫̾̍.̵͔͒̈́"

It screamed, and the sound wasn't sound—it was a feeling.

Yun Xi dropped to his knees, clutching his skull as memory fragments—not his own—invaded his mind. Entire lives played across his vision. A mother weeping over a lost child. A soldier who vanished mid-battle. A scientist burning her notes before the glitch consumed her lab.

They were errors. Deleted lives. Unwritten stories.

And the beast was their gravekeeper.

"Echo corruption," Yue Lan said, helping him stand. "These things exist between regret and deletion. When timelines fragment too much, they get through."

"But why now?" Yun Xi asked, pushing the visions aside. "Why me?"

Before Yue Lan could answer, the glitch beast leapt from the roof—straight at them.

Yun Xi's instincts kicked in. He summoned the Echo Blade.

But it glitched.

The weapon flickered, disappearing from his grasp for a split second.

In that moment of delay, the beast struck.

Yue Lan pushed him aside and raised her own echo shard, unleashing a burst of light.

The glitch screamed again, retreating.

> [System Recalibrating Weapon Integrity… 64%… 72%… Complete.]

Warning: Glitch Realities reduce effectiveness of physical constructs. You must learn to fight within unstable layers.

Yun Xi clenched his fists.

"So I'll learn."

He surged forward, diving under the beast's malformed limbs. As it swiped at him with claws that turned into spears mid-swing, Yun Xi focused—not on its form, but on its pattern.

He'd seen this before.

During a programming class in his old life, when corrupted data repeated itself.

The beast wasn't attacking randomly.

It was following loops.

He timed his dodge—roll, slide, slash.

The Echo Blade reappeared in his grip—this time stable.

With a roar, he drove it into the beast's core.

It screamed—this time in silence, crumbling like shattered code.

The air shimmered.

The sky patched itself.

And the glitch puppets on the street below stopped moving.

Then, one by one, collapsed.

Yue Lan helped him up again, breath ragged. "That… wasn't normal."

"No," Yun Xi said. "It wasn't."

And yet, as they stood in the aftershock, something else fell from the sky—a single white feather, glowing with fragments of gold code.

It landed in Yun Xi's palm.

> [Glitched Memory Fragment Acquired: "The World Before The Echo."]

Yue Lan touched it, eyes wide. "That… that's impossible."

"What is it?"

She looked at him, and for the first time since they met, she looked afraid.

"That memory… doesn't belong in any timeline we've accessed. It's from before all of this. Before the Echos. Before the Keepers. Before the fall."

Yun Xi stared at the feather, heartbeat hammering.

Something was waking up.

Something old.

And now it knew his name.