Chapter 1: Corrupted Awakening

> INITIATING BOOT SEQUENCE...> ERROR: MEMORY BLOCK 7A—INACCESSIBLE.> ERROR: SYSTEM CONTAINER "CAIN" IS NOT COMPATIBLE.> FALLBACK INSTANCE LOADED.> Welcome, User... ERROR: Username Not Found.

Darkness flickered.

Cain wasn't falling. He wasn't standing. He wasn't anything.

Then, light returned—in pixels.

He found himself kneeling on a flat plane of mirrored code. Empty panels hovered in the air like broken HUD elements, twitching and sliding away whenever he reached out. He wasn't dreaming. He wasn't playing.

He was inside a half-rendered world.

And something was... wrong.

[SYSTEM INTERFACE: DAMAGED][TUTORIAL: CORRUPTED][MEMORY RECOVERY: INCOMPLETE (2%)]

A screen blinked open in front of him—bleeding static like a corrupted dev console.

INITIATE DEBUG MODE?

[Y]

[N]

His hand moved before he thought. Y.

The world glitched.

Code flowed over his skin like digital ink. His arm became translucent—glitching between forms: human, wireframe, error box. He gasped as something surged through his body.

Not power.

Data.

[GLITCH-CLASS ERROR: USER NOT AUTHORIZED TO ACCESS ROOT LAYER.][ACCESS OVERRIDE: GRANTED — BY UNKNOWN FORCE.][WELCOME, CAIN.EXE]

Cain froze.

"Cain... exe?"

That wasn't his name. Was it?

He couldn't remember.

A Voice Spoke.

Not aloud, but directly into his neural interface.

"You weren't meant to wake up here. You weren't meant to wake up at all."

Cain turned. Nothing but a black wall of uncompiled terrain.

The voice continued:

"This world was abandoned. You glitched into the space between save files. And now… you're the bug that rewrites everything."

A flash of memory stabbed his brain.

VR pod. Game launch countdown. A stolen build. The promise of playing a forbidden pre-release version of the first "reality-synced MMO." Something went wrong. Static. Heat. Then—

This.

[GLITCH SYSTEM INTERFACE LOADED]

Terminal Type: Cain.exeStatus: Unbound GlitchNarrative Access: IncompatibleCombat Protocols: ???Memory Shards Recovered: 2/1000

New Objective: ESCAPE CORRUPTION ZONE.Warning: Time Remaining Until Collapse – 00:03:19

Cain snapped into motion.

The zone around him was unstable. Terrain flickered. Error cubes exploded into light. From the fog, a figure emerged—tall, spindly, and shaking like a corrupted animation rig.

Its name appeared overhead:

[ENEMY: WARDEN.BUILD_3-3B][Role: Tutorial Overseer][Status: HATES YOU]

The Warden's eyes were glowing lines of red script. It pointed.

"You shouldn't exist."

Cain raised a hand. "Yeah, join the club."

The Warden attacked.

Code slashed like razors, bending space. Cain barely dodged. Every move overloaded his glitchcore. He wasn't a fighter yet—just a fragment, a system accident with a debug shell.

[Combat Hint: Use Admin Override?]

He selected yes.

Everything froze for 0.1 seconds. Then time exploded.

Cain moved.

He wasn't sure how, but he moved behind the Warden, reached out—and ripped a Command Line from its back.

[Command: KILL - OVERRIDE][Executing...]

The Warden crashed.

Its scream was not human. It sounded like a corrupted audio file looped in reverse.

Cain panted, falling to his knees. The system blinked again.

[ENEMY DEFEATED: +1 Memory Shard Retrieved][System Shop Unlocked (Safe Mode)][NEW PATH: TUTORIAL SECTOR BETA—GLITCHED ROUTE]

He didn't smile.

He didn't even feel powerful.

Because in the distance, he could see hundreds of other tutorial zones.

All empty. All abandoned. All with names scratched out.

He wasn't the only one who tried to cheat the system.But he might be the only one who survived it.