Feedbreak

There it was.

Rising like a needle through clouds of artificial fog—the Broadcast Spire.

Made of black crystal and pulsing light, it sat in the heart of the city's rewrite zone, a living monolith where scenes were edited, streamed, and force-fed into the minds of millions.

"This is where the plot gets printed," Leta said.

"And where we're going to flip the whole thing on its head," I added.

She handed me the override token—a shimmering shard that glitched subtly between forms, as if it hadn't decided what kind of key it wanted to be yet.

Maren's last gift.

One last line she forced into existence.

We approached from the east perimeter, where the world grew quiet—not in a peaceful way, but like a studio set before the cameras roll. No wind. No birds. Just the hum of the System.

Every step closer made the air feel denser. Like walking through wet glass.

The buildings around the spire looked copied and pasted—perfect replicas of old architecture, clean and fake. Too symmetrical. Too... well-behaved.

"They've overwritten this zone multiple times," Leta muttered, checking her compass. "Trying to scrub every trace of original design."

"Trying to sanitize reality," I said. "Like bleaching a crime scene."

We reached the outer wall.

And it didn't open.

It recognized us.

Just not in the friendly way.

ACCESS DENIED. UNSCRIPTED PRESENCE DETECTED.SECURITY ENACTED. PLEASE REMAIN STILL FOR ELIMINATION.

"Charming," I muttered. "No welcome mat?"

From the corners of the courtyard, shapes began to unspool.

Not guards.

Reviewers.

I'd seen them before—System agents in hooded cloaks, each holding a red pen in one hand and a deletion brand in the other. They didn't speak. Just moved like they were already editing us out.

We backed up.

"Tell me you've got a backdoor," I said.

"I've got a maybe," Leta replied, pulling me toward the side of the spire where a glowing seam cut through the wall.

She pressed the override shard to it.

The wall twitched.

Then cracked.

The seam widened—and inside, a maintenance corridor lit up in dull red light.

"Move!" she snapped.

We dove in just as the Reviewers lunged.

The door slammed shut behind us.

Silence.

Then—

Override accepted. Entry granted.

I leaned back against the wall, panting.

"Well, that was subtle."

Leta smirked. "What's next?"

"We climb," I said.

She looked up the winding corridor of the spire.

"Through the belly of the lie itself."

"And hopefully," I added, "out the other side with the world watching."

We climbed.

Spiral corridors wound upward like the spine of a dying god—twisting, creaking, alive with flickering feeds and humming machinery. Every wall we passed whispered dialogue.

Not voices.

Scripts.

"Insert motivational line here.""Scene incomplete. Awaiting emotional anchor.""Conflict resolution template engaged."

"I thought this place would be a studio," Leta muttered. "Not a horror show of half-finished thoughts."

"Welcome to the belly of the beast," I said.

We passed a window—a narrow sliver of glass shaped like a page margin. Beyond it, I saw scenes being constructed in real-time. Floating platforms filled with light and code, forming characters from thin air, scripting them on the fly.

A man proposed to a woman.She rejected him.Then accepted.Then rejected again.Each time her dialogue tweaked—emotion dialed up, then down, then removed entirely.

"They're focus-testing life," Leta whispered.

"They're rehearsing people," I replied.

We kept going.

Midway up the corridor, we passed a room that glowed a different shade of blue. Not System blue. Something older. Flickering.

We stopped.

Inside, rows of terminals displayed names—protagonists, side characters, mentors, villains.

Every one had a status bar beside it:

LIVESCRIPTEDINACTIVEDELETED

But one of them flashed something new:

NAWAR – UNTRACKEDLETA – ERROR: MULTIPLE SOURCE CONFLICTS

I blinked. "They're monitoring us."

"They're failing to monitor us," Leta said.

Suddenly, one of the terminals changed.

The status beside Nawar's name glitched.

And new text appeared.

LOOK UP.

I froze.

Leta noticed too. "What the hell?"

We looked at the ceiling.

There, scratched faintly into the metal above:

YOU'RE NOT ALONE. KEEP GOING.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Then I exhaled. "Someone's inside. Watching the system from behind the curtain."

"Helping us," Leta said. "Or guiding us. Or… manipulating."

"But they know who I am," I whispered. "And they want me to keep going."

We moved faster now.

Every floor climbed felt like diving deeper into someone's dream—a dream trying to wake up and remember it was never real.

We passed a chamber where memories were being cut apart—editor bots slicing footage of people's lives into marketable emotions.

We passed a room filled with laughter. No people. Just laughter on loop.

I shivered.

"How close are we?" I asked.

Leta pointed.

A massive door rose at the top of the next landing—framed in gold and glass.

Above it: MAIN FEED ROOM

My heart beat faster.

This was it.

The mouthpiece of the System.

If we could get inside—if we could plug a single unscripted moment into that broadcast—we might just shatter the illusion.

Might.

Maybe.

Assuming we didn't die trying.

The doors hissed open.

And I froze.

The room was a cathedral of illusion—circular, vast, glowing with a hundred projection panels. Each screen showed a different region of the world: cities, villages, castles, even dark woods. All tuned in to the same broadcast.

And on every screen…

Me.

Or rather, him.

The rewritten version.

Clean-cut. Posture perfect. Voice sharp enough to slice tension. He stood on a glowing podium, surrounded by a crowd of scripted citizens. Their eyes shimmered with system light, utterly enraptured.

"I was lost," he declared. "But the System gave me purpose. It gave us order."

"We are not chaos. We are not unfiltered potential. We are stories with meaning—defined, refined, perfected."

I swallowed hard. "He's hijacked the Feed."

Leta's eyes narrowed. "No. We hijacked it first. He's just trying to overwrite us again."

But the broadcast was working.

The crowds on every screen were cheering.

Whole nations, enthralled by the performance of a protagonist crafted in a lab.

And worse?

He was good.

Too good.

Because he wasn't acting.

He believed the lines.

"This is damage control," I muttered. "He's giving them a new climax. A new version of me to love."

"A safe version," Leta said bitterly. "Predictable. Loyal."

We stepped into the room.

The lights dimmed.

And the real-time feed adjusted.

Now the screens split—half still showing him.

Half showing us.

Live.

Unscripted.

Raw.

And then, just to make things worse, the voice returned.

His voice.

But not from the speakers.

From the center of the room.

Where a holographic version of Rewritten Me turned toward us, smiling with that damnable protagonist warmth.

"You made it," he said.

Leta raised her dagger. "We're ending this."

"I doubt that," he said, calmly.

The Feed shimmered—and the hologram stepped off its platform.

Now he wasn't just a projection.

He was solidifying.

Constructing a temporary physical form using narrative glue and feed energy.

I blinked. "Are you kidding me? You spawned yourself inside the feed?"

He shrugged. "Why not? The people want a hero. I am that hero."

"No," I growled. "You're the lie they chose because the truth scared them."

His smile faltered.

For just a moment.

Then he stepped closer.

"You're unstable, Nawar. You bring doubt. Disruption. Death."

"Yeah," I said. "But at least I'm real."

The screens pulsed.

The world was watching.

And the system was now split—one truth trying to overwrite the other.

Leta whispered, "We can still do this. Inject one unscripted burst into the feed. Just one. Something the System can't control."

I nodded slowly.

"Then let's give them something they've never seen."

I turned toward the camera.

And smiled.

I stepped in front of the main console.

Hundreds of feed lines pulsed around me—threads of story, emotion, and perception. Everything was still streaming him, the polished fraud in protagonist skin. But now, the feed shimmered... uncertain.

The system didn't know who to follow.

Good.

I cleared my throat and looked straight into the camera lens—a giant, blinking eye embedded in a crystal node.

My voice shook at first.

Not from fear.

From weight.

"I don't have a script," I said. "No monologue. No rehearsed arc. No redemption plan written by committee."

The system twitched.

On the screens, I could see cities pausing—people leaning in.

"Once," I continued, "I was told who I should be. What I should say. How I should feel."

"And for a while... I played along."

The holographic version of me folded his arms, frowning. "You're manipulating them."

I ignored him.

"I played the hero. I wore the smile. I hit the beats. But something kept scratching at me—underneath the words."

I reached into my coat.

Pulled out the only real thing I had left.

A torn page.

From the original script I never read.

And I held it up.

"This is the lie I was given."

Then I tore it in half.

The camera caught every movement.

Leta whispered behind me, "It's working…"

The feed shimmered harder.

Across the screens, the rewrite began glitching.

Scenes shifted. Faces blurred. Lines repeated then erased. Dialogue mismatched.

Citizens blinked like they'd been yanked from a dream mid-sentence.

"I'm not your perfect lead," I said. "I forget lines. I fall. I screw up and say the wrong thing at the worst time. But at least—at least—it's me."

The system shuddered.

The walls around us flickered.

The screens showing the rewritten version cracked. Pixelated.

And the real-time feed?

Now it was all me.

Unsure. Unfiltered. Alive.

The rewrite wasn't collapsing...

It was failing to overwrite.

That's when he snapped.

The rewritten me surged forward, glitching as he moved. "You think truth wins? Truth doesn't sell. Truth doesn't hold an audience."

"You're not truth," I said. "You're a fanfiction with good lighting."

He lunged.

I caught his arm mid-swing, surprised by how solid he felt.

The broadcast flared around us—fighting to stabilize its hero.

Leta darted to the console, jamming the override shard into the core port.

The feed screamed.

The room went white.

Then—

UNSCRIPTED SIGNAL INTEGRATEDSTORYLINE DIVERGENCE DETECTEDBROADCAST PURITY CORRUPTED

We collapsed as the entire tower pulsed—once, twice—

And fell silent.

The screens froze.

My image remained on them.

Still.

Unposed.

Unedited.

Staring at the audience with blood on my lip and defiance in my eyes.

The silence didn't last.

It cracked.

Then screamed.

Alarms blared in tones I didn't recognize—not the usual System sounds. These were deeper, older. Buried beneath code and caution.

UNSCRIPTED PRESENCE CONFIRMED.PRIMARY BROADCAST BREACHED.PURGE INITIATED.

The Broadcast Spire began to shake.

Panels ruptured. Screens exploded in bursts of white static. The rewritten version of me, still glitching mid-lunge, vanished in a final flicker—erased not by me, but by the System itself.

"Self-cleaning mode," Leta coughed, hauling me to my feet. "It's trying to scrub the whole tower."

We ran.

Down a corridor now spewing lines of corrupted code across the floor like broken film. Sparks flew. Words bled from the walls. Every syllable felt angry.

This was no longer a narrative structure.

It was a dying beast.

We burst out of the emergency exit hatch just as the tower's top imploded, raining glass and rewritten dialogue into the sky.

We didn't stop running until we reached the edge of the narrative zone, the border where rewritten streets became uneven, imperfect. Real.

There, finally, we stopped.

Collapsed.

Breathed.

The city skyline behind us warped like a dream trying to forget itself.

I looked up.

Still no dome.

Still no broadcast overlay.

And no sound.

No cheering crowds.

Just… quiet.

"Did it work?" I asked.

Leta nodded slowly. "It did."

I exhaled, then laughed weakly. "So that's what winning feels like. Less like triumph, more like getting hit by a truck."

She didn't laugh.

Her eyes weren't on me.

They were on a small terminal just outside the spire ruins. One that hadn't been destroyed.

A private console.

Still active.

Its screen blinked once—like an eye opening.

Then printed a single line:

USER DETECTED. ACCESS: ROOT LEVEL

A pause.

Then a new message:

The story has cracked. Well done.

Leta stepped back. "That's not us."

I moved closer.

Typed a single question:

Who are you?

A pause.

Then:

I built this world. Before they stole it. Before they tamed it.

You've reminded it what truth sounds like.

Now... let's see what it does when it hears the truth again. And again. And again.

The terminal blinked.

One final line appeared:

– The Architect

Then it shut down.

Gone.

We stood in silence, watching the console power off.

A shadow behind the curtain had just revealed itself.

Not as an enemy.

Not yet.

But not exactly a friend, either.

I turned to Leta.

"So, uh… thoughts?"

She smirked. "We just hacked the narrative system live in front of the whole world, exposed a fake protagonist, broke the feed, and got contacted by a myth."

"Good summary."

"And we're probably fugitives now."

"Add that to the résumé."

We started walking—away from the smoke, toward whatever came next.

The story had changed.

But we hadn't just survived it.

We'd started rewriting it.

End of Chapter 18.