Chapter 13 – Kill the Dream Before It Lives
The mirror had stopped talking.
Cracks crawled across its surface like veins of broken code, pulsing softly with static light. Yuto stood before it, fists clenched, heart beating louder than the hum of this fake world.
> Stay here. Never feel pain again.
Or break everything and wake up.
Those were the system's final words. A twisted offer, dressed like mercy.
He stared into the mirror.
His reflection wasn't him anymore.
It had changed. Taller. Smiling. Wearing a version of his face that had never been bullied, never watched his sister vanish, never opened a capsule and lost track of reality. A perfect life carved from lie-code.
> "You're not real," Yuto muttered.
The reflection tilted its head.
> "Does it matter if it feels better than the truth?"
Yuto raised his hand. His knuckles grazed the glass.
> "Yes."
He punched.
Glass shattered.
The illusion screamed.
The world around him stuttered—buildings flickered, textures failed, and the sky blinked like it was struggling to reload its own stars.
> [You Have Rejected the Simulation]
[False Layer Collapse: 78% → 92%]
[Warning: Observer Units Mobilizing]
Yuto stumbled backward. The ground beneath him peeled away like torn paper, revealing flickers of raw code and—
A real city.
Not perfect. Not safe. Dirty. Chaotic. And alive.
His breath caught. "That's... my street. My real street."
He was almost there.
Until the Observers arrived.
From the folds of broken sky, they descended. Dozens of them. Masked. Silent. Gliding. They hovered in midair like judgment itself.
> [Observer Class: Absolute Witnesses]
[Directive: Repair the Lie]
> "You weren't supposed to see it," one said.
> "You weren't supposed to choose pain," said another.
> "You were the perfect candidate," whispered a third.
They raised their hands.
Reality trembled.
But so did Yuto.
Not from fear—but from clarity.
He whispered under his breath:
> "System... override. Open Nihilos core."
The world paused.
> [Accessing Nihilos Core…]
[Granted: Sync 22.1% → 25.0%]
[Subclass Upgrade: Echoform Initiated]
From his chest, a pale blue light surged.
The Observers flinched.
> [Threat Level Escalation: Nihilos State — Echoform Activated]
Yuto's eyes lit up with digital fire.
> "You wanted me to live in a lie…"
> "Now watch me kill it."
He charged.
Yuto moved like lightning wrapped in memory. He didn't run — he echoed.
Each step left behind a blurred afterimage of himself: older, younger, laughing, broken. Versions of him the system tried to overwrite. The moment he activated Echoform, time bent sideways — and the Observers hesitated.
Too late.
Yuto surged through the air, twisting mid-flight. His fist collided with the nearest Observer's mask.
> [Damage: Undefined]
[Result: Absolute Witness #014 — Deconstructed]
The mask shattered, revealing nothing inside. Just a floating socket of light that evaporated on impact.
The other Observers circled.
They didn't speak this time.
They sang.
A haunting hum — part machine, part lullaby — rang across the half-broken world. Buildings bent toward the melody. Street lamps folded into spirals. Yuto's HUD began to shake violently.
> [System Warning: Your Echoform is not stable]
[Memory Compression Detected – Overflow Risk Imminent]
Yuto dropped to one knee, blood (or code?) dripping from his nose.
A new voice, feminine and fragmented, echoed in his head:
> "You are burning through everything you are… Stop before it kills you."
He clenched his teeth. "Not until I see her again."
From behind him, an Observer lunged — blade of pure code arcing toward his back.
He didn't turn.
He remembered.
The fight. The room. The movement. His past self from a broken timeline — the version that trained alone for hours — flickered into place and parried the blow.
An echo of him from another life. Not an illusion.
A piece of him... still alive.
> [Echo Manifested: Version_YU-15_Survivor] [Effect: Shared Combat Response +40%]
Yuto stood, twin versions of himself beside each other — one real, one remembered.
Together, they struck.
Observers fell like black glass.
> [Entity Sync: 27.4%]
[Memory Link Unlocked: Ava_27 (Fragment 2/7 Located)]
[New Skill Unlocked: Echo Bind — Fuse with Stored Echo for 15 seconds]
The world cracked.
Literally.
The skies above didn't turn black. They simply tore open, revealing nothing. A void. Beyond-code. Beyond-death.
And from it, a whisper:
> "You are close, Nihilos."
> "But so are we."
Then silence.
Every Observer was gone. Every sound muted.
Yuto stood alone in the ruins of the lie.
His hands shook.
Not from fatigue.
From what he had just become.
A message blinked one last time before the HUD disappeared:
> [Echoform Deactivating…]
[Sync Holding at 27.4%]
[The World Will Rewrite in 6 Hours]
[You must reach the Core before then.]
Yuto stared up at the sky — torn open, but not yet collapsed.
> "Ava…"
> "I'm coming."