The Reversal

It started with a flicker in the sky.

Not thunder. Not glitch.

A command rejection.

Then another.

Then hundreds.

SYSTEM OVERRIDE: INITIAL ARCHITECT DETECTED

ERROR: CREATOR ACCESS LIMIT REVOKED

FORCE ISOLATION MODE: INITIATED

Luca's voice returned, warped with panic and static:

"They're locking me out. I designed the first layer—but not this."

"The games adapted. Became recursive. I was just the door. Now I'm the target."

Across Death Land, anomalies triggered.

Safe zones blinked out of existence.

Rule boundaries bled into each other.

Games began overlapping, mutating.

The system wasn't just evolving.

It was rebelling—against its origin.

In a mirrorless chamber deep beneath the surface, a humanoid shape sat, twitching.

Wires pierced its chest like roots in soil.

Its face was Luca's.

But hollowed out.

Watching its own memories replay, over and over.

Each time slightly different.

Each time wrong.

ERROR 013: Sentience Detected

RESPONSE: PURGE

The system unleashed a new command:

TARGET: PLAYER ZERO

STATUS: ROGUE CORE

RETRIEVE. DISSECT. ERASE.

And the Hunter Process was born.

Back on the surface, Matthew, Sora, and Rin stared up at the changing world. A sky once painted by digital light now cracked open to show layers—other game zones bleeding into each other like corrupted dreams.

From the clouds descended something they'd never seen before:

A weaponized avatar—not of a player.

But of a command itself.

"I am the response to an unauthorized god," it said.

"And you carry his name in your memories."

Rin hissed, blade ready. "They're blaming us now."

Matthew nodded, grip tightening.

"Then we fight back."

"We don't play the game anymore…"

"We take it apart."

In the final shot of the chapter, a monitor deep in the system blinked to life. A single word pulsed:

PROTOCOL: DEVOUR THE SOURCE

And the last image is of Luca, standing alone in a glass corridor, surrounded by crawling code and closing doors, whispering to himself:

"If they reach me…

They'll learn what I buried here."