The chapel bell rang at the wrong time.
It was a small thing. No one else noticed. Players passed through the square laughing, comparing damage numbers, arguing about skill builds. A merchant NPC shouted about fresh bread that didn't actually exist.
Normal sounds.
Normal routine.
But the bell rang twice in quick succession, then stopped halfway through the third chime like someone had cut the sound short.
I froze.
That bell had perfect timing across forty-eight loops. It rang every hour, without fail. The system loved patterns. Predictability.
Mistakes meant something had slipped.
"Ren?"
Lira stood beside the chapel steps, watching me instead of the sky.
"You heard it too?" she asked.
"Yes."
She looked relieved, which made my stomach tighten.
"I thought I was imagining it," she said. "The timing felt… off."
NPCs were not supposed to notice timing.
"Has anything else felt strange?" I asked carefully.
She hesitated. "Conversations. People repeat themselves less. The baker didn't drop his tray this morning. He always drops it."
My throat felt dry.
That event had happened in every reset. A scripted animation loop.
"You remember that?" I asked.
"I don't know if remember is the right word," she said softly. "It's more like… expecting something that didn't happen."
Expectation without memory.
Resistance to reset.
I looked around the village square. The world felt stable on the surface, but the air had a subtle pressure to it, like the moment before a storm.
Players didn't feel it.
They never did.
Kai jogged over from the north gate, breathless and excited.
"Hey, Ren! Lira!" he called. "The forest path opened early. There's an event marker further in than there's supposed to be."
Of course there was.
"When did it appear?" I asked.
"Right after we beat the tutorial boss," he said. "Some people think it's a hidden route."
Hidden routes didn't exist in the tutorial zone.
"Are you going?" Lira asked him.
"Yeah. A group's heading out soon. You guys coming?"
NPCs weren't meant to leave the village at this stage.
But then again, NPCs weren't meant to remember bells ringing wrong either.
Kai waved and ran off before we answered.
Lira watched him go, then turned to me.
"You want to follow, don't you?"
"Yes."
She nodded, like she'd already decided.
"I'll come too."
I stared at her. "This could be dangerous."
She smiled faintly. "It always is."
Not like this.
We started toward the north gate. The guards standing beside it didn't deliver their usual dialogue about staying safe and following the road.
They just stepped aside.
One of them blinked slowly, as if waking up from a long sleep.
Outside the village, the forest path felt different. The light filtering through the leaves was dimmer than it should have been at this time of day. Shadows stretched too far.
Birds were quiet.
A group of five players waited ahead. Kai waved us over.
"See? Event marker," he said, pointing.
A faint blue symbol flickered deeper between the trees. Not the bright, stable markers the system used. This one shimmered like heat distortion.
"Has anyone gone in yet?" I asked.
"Nope. Waiting to see if it despawns," one player said.
It didn't.
The air hummed faintly, too low to hear but heavy in the chest.
Lira shifted beside me. "This feels wrong."
"Yes."
The players started forward.
We followed.
The forest grew denser than the map layout allowed. Branches tangled overhead, blocking the sky. The path narrowed until it felt more like something carved by chance than design.
A message flickered at the edge of my vision.
Not system blue.
Faded.
Unstable.
Area outside designated tutorial boundaries.
I stopped walking.
This wasn't an expansion.
It was a breach.
"Ren?" Lira asked quietly.
"The system doesn't want this area to exist," I said.
Kai laughed nervously. "That sounds cool, actually."
He took another step forward.
The ground shifted under his foot.
Not collapsed.
Moved.
Like the earth had breathed.
Everyone froze.
Then we heard it.
Not a monster roar.
Not wind.
A sound like distant whispering layered over itself, too many voices speaking without words.
The players looked around, unsettled now.
"That's not ambient sound, right?" one asked.
"No," I said.
A tree ahead flickered.
For a split second, it wasn't a tree. Just a hollow shape made of blue grid lines, unfinished, like the world hadn't rendered it properly.
Then it snapped back.
Lira grabbed my sleeve.
"Ren… the world feels thin here."
Thin.
That was the word.
Like if you pushed hard enough, reality would tear.
Another message appeared in my vision, barely visible.
Persistence threshold exceeded.
Something cold settled in my chest.
"Everyone step back," I said.
Too late.
The blue marker ahead pulsed once, violently, and a crack split the air in front of it, jagged and vertical.
Through it, there was nothing.
Not darkness.
Absence.
The players stumbled back, swearing.
"What is that?" Kai breathed.
I had no memory of this.
None.
That terrified me.
The crack widened slightly, and the whispering grew louder, like pressure leaking through.
The system finally reacted.
Red text flashed across my vision.
Critical anomaly detected.
Correction in progress.
The forest trembled.
But the crack didn't close.
It stretched.
Lira's grip tightened on my arm. "Ren… what is happening?"
I didn't know.
And for the first time since waking in this world, not knowing felt worse than dying.
Because this wasn't a loop breaking.
This was something else getting in.
And the system… wasn't strong enough to stop it.