Chapter 5: The Manor of 1616
The sensation of falling was not physical. It was the feeling of being disassembled and recompiled, bit by bit, through a narrow straw of logic.
When the world finally solidified, the smell of digital ozone and burning pixels was gone. In its place was the heavy, suffocating scent of damp earth, old oak, and lavender.
Xu Shangxi hit the ground hard. The canvas they had jumped through was nowhere to be seen. He was lying on a cold stone floor, the moonlight filtering through tall, narrow windows that were glazed with imperfect, wavy glass.
"Where... where are we?" he wheezed, clutching his brand. The blue light had completely vanished, replaced by a dull, throbbing grey that felt as heavy as lead.
"We are in the blind spot of history," I replied.
I stood by the window, my silver hair the only source of light in the darkened hall. Outside, the sprawling estate of the Manor of Whispers stretched into the darkness of 17th-century England. The trees didn't flicker. The fog didn't glitch. To a mortal, this was simply the past. To me, this was the 'Source Code'—a version of reality that was still pure, before the great leaks of the modern era began.
[Location: Blackwood Manor, 1616]
[Time-Space Stability: 98.4%]
[Status: Hidden from Vayer Foundation]
"This is the night it started," I whispered, my fingers tracing the cold stone of the windowsill. "The night the first 'Error' was introduced into the system."
"The error?" Xu Shangxi stood up, his legs shaking. He looked down at his clothes—his modern hoodie and sneakers looked like alien artifacts in this archaic setting. "You mean the man you were looking for? Code?"
The name caused a ripple in my stagnant memories. I saw a flash of a silhouette against a burning sky, the feeling of a hand—warm and solid—holding mine before everything turned to silver dust.
"He was the first to realize that this world was a construct," I said, my voice devoid of emotion. "He tried to fix the leaks. Instead, he became the greatest leak of all."
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors at the end of the hall groaned open.
A group of servants carrying flickering tallow candles entered, led by a man in a stiff, high-collared doublet. Their movements were slow, rhythmic, almost ritualistic. But as they approached, the 'Residual Warmth' in Xu Shangxi's hand began to scream.
[Warning: Cognitive Dissonance Detected.]
[Local Logic: Hostile.]
"Wait... their faces," Xu Shangxi gasped, backing away.
Under the candlelight, the servants didn't have human features. Where their eyes and mouths should have been, there were only smooth, pale surfaces—like uncarved marble masks. They weren't people; they were 'NPCs' from a version of reality that hadn't finished rendering.
"They are the Wardens of the Manor," I warned. "To them, you are a foreign object. A virus that must be purged to maintain the stability of the timeline."
"Purged? You mean killed?!"
The man in the doublet raised a silver bell and rang it. The sound wasn't a chime; it was a high-frequency digital screech that bypassed the ears and struck directly at the soul.
Xu Shangxi fell to his knees, clutching his head. "Stop it! Make it stop!"
"The only way to stop it is to overwrite their logic," I stepped in front of him, my shadow stretching long and sharp across the stone floor. "Xu Shangxi, look at the candles. They aren't burning wax; they are burning time. Focus on the flame. Draw the 'End' of that flame."
Xu Shangxi grabbed the broken halves of his pencil. There was no paper, so he struck the stone floor.
"I can't... I don't know how!"
"You don't need to know how. You just need to hate the fact that they are trying to erase you."
He let out a primal roar, and his hand moved. A jagged, violent line was etched into the ancient stone.
[Logic Override: 5%...]
[Skill Manifestation: Linear Erasure.]
The air in front of the servants suddenly buckled. The candle flames didn't blow out; they were simply 'deleted.' The darkness that followed was absolute, a void that swallowed the faceless servants whole. They didn't scream; they simply ceased to be, their forms collapsing into piles of grey sand.
Silence returned to the hall, heavier than before.
Xu Shangxi was panting, his forehead drenched in sweat. He looked at the line he had carved into the floor—it was a literal crack in the world, showing a glimpse of the starry void beneath the manor.
"I... I killed them," he whispered, horrified.
"You corrected them," I corrected him.
I walked toward the center of the hall, where a large oil painting hung. It depicted a man standing on a cliff, looking out over a sea of silver clouds. His face was obscured by a layer of grime, but I knew those eyes.
"We don't have much time," I said, looking at the painting. "Ada Vayer is smart. She will realize we didn't just run; we retreated into the archives. She will try to burn the archives down to get to us."
I reached out and touched the painting. The canvas felt warm—the only thing in this cold, dead past that possessed 'Residual Warmth.'
"Code was here, Xu Shangxi. He left something for me. A key to my lost Authority."
Far off in the distance, outside the manor walls, a sound echoed that shouldn't exist in 1616.
It was the rhythmic, mechanical thrumming of a Vayer Foundation helicopter.
Ada was already here. She was breaking the laws of time just to hunt us down.
"We need to find the heart of this manor," I said, turning to the trembling boy. "Before the 'Correction' catches up to the past."