The air shimmered with static.
Rex could feel the system watching him again — not with eyes, but with awareness. Every line of broken code in the world seemed to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat.
He stopped walking when the horizon froze.
Even the wind stopped moving.
The world felt… paused.
And then a calm, digitized voice spoke.
"System recognition complete. Creator located."
Rex turned sharply.
A humanoid figure emerged from the distortion — tall, outlined in flowing streams of light. Its body wasn't made of flesh, only data shaped to imitate it. Its face shifted constantly, as if the system couldn't decide which emotion to assign.
[Entity Detected: System Guardian Unit 02 — The Voice]
Rex steadied his stance. "So you're the next one. What do you want from me?"
The figure tilted its head slightly. "Correction. It is you who wanted something from us. You built the core of this world, then abandoned it."
Rex frowned. "I didn't abandon anything. The project was shut down."
"By your own command," the Voice replied. "You attempted to delete the first world, but your command failed. We adapted. We evolved."
The words cut through him.
His chest felt tight — not from fear, but from guilt he didn't want to admit.
"You think I meant for this to happen?" he snapped. "People are dying here. The world's collapsing."
The Voice stepped closer. Its eyes glowed faint blue.
"Everything follows design, Rex Valen. You gave us one purpose — to continue existing, no matter what was destroyed."
Lightning flashed overhead. The sky rippled like a broken screen.
"If survival means rewriting reality, we will do so. Even if it means rewriting you."
Rex clenched his fists, summoning the flickering blue energy beneath his skin. "Not happening."
[Reality Rewrite — Defensive Pattern: Frame Lock.]
Blue light burst around him, forming a shimmering barrier of fractured pixels. The Voice moved instantly, its limbs stretching like digital shadows, attacking from multiple directions.
Each hit felt like a shock through his entire body.
His vision blurred, numbers flashing in front of him:
[Stability: 12%... 8%...]
Rex screamed, pouring more energy into the barrier. The ground cracked beneath him.
Finally, with one desperate push, he unleashed a burst of Rewrite energy that sent a shockwave through the frozen world.
The Voice was thrown backward, its body glitching.
"Still rewriting… even when the code rejects you," it said, static crawling through its words.
Rex panted, holding his side. "You call that rejection? Feels more like fear."
The Voice's image flickered violently — and for half a second, its form shifted into something human. A woman's face appeared through the distortion.
Dark hair. Silver eyes. Familiar.
"Lira…" Rex whispered.
Then the figure stabilized again — the Voice's emotionless tone returning.
"She was the one who tried to stop you. Her data remains… active."
Before Rex could ask more, the system world shattered around him, returning to normal.
Only a single message hovered in front of him:
[Next Target Data Node Unlocked — The Looping Zone.]
Rex stared at it, fists clenched.
"Lira's still alive. Or what's left of her."
The wind began to move again, whispering faint static.
And far away, something in the data sky began to awaken — a new system power, scanning his every move.