The rain poured down like a relentless curtain, shrouding the city in a gray mist.
There, a man with raven-black hair, wearing a white tuxedo, stood at the edge of the rooftop, his eyes fixed on the digital display hovering above the skyscrapers.
He wore a black undershirt beneath and a mechanical watch on his left wrist — made of bronze metal and adorned with intricate patterns. He glanced at his watch and then at the display. The numbers ticked away on both, counting down to midnight.
"Uhh… It's almost time."
He paused, then continued:
"What will happen this time? I've always wondered, always wondered about the world we live in, about the simulation and the very nature of reality."
Is it real? Is it just a simulation? The truth is, I don't know. But what I do know is that we're living in a world called the Final Archive, a simulated reality controlled by the Archivists.
The Archivists. Mysterious beings who maintained and experimented with countless versions of reality. They were the ones who decided the fate of humanity, who pushed the buttons that shaped the course of history.
He sighed and gazed into the distance, his face carrying a calm but thoughtful expression.
"Hahhh…"
As a system debugger, I had grown accustomed to the rhythmic pulse of the city's code. I knew every alleyway, every hidden corner, and every glitch that plagued the simulated reality.
But today was different.
Today was the day of the Record Break.
"…Record Break…"
The wind howled, whipping his hair into a frenzy as he gazed out at the city.
He sighed heavily and straightened his back, feeling a shiver run down his spine — a mix of excitement and trepidation. This was it.
This was the moment.
The countdown reached zero, and the world around him began to distort. The buildings trembled, the streets shook, and the sky turned a deep shade of crimson.
The Record Break had begun.
He watched in awe as the world around him unraveled. He had seen it before, but it never got old. The glitches, the distortions, the reset. It was like a never-ending cycle…
…But something felt off. A sense of unease crept up his spine, like a whisper in his ear.
He stumbled backward, his hand grasping for the rooftop's edge. And then, everything went black.
***
When he opened his eyes, he was lying on the rooftop, his head throbbing with pain. The city was quiet, the rain having stopped. The digital display was gone, replaced by a message:
[Record Break Complete. Simulation Reset.]
"Huh…?"
His already fair face went a little pale.
'That was it?'
He stood up, brushing off the debris. His eyes scanned the rooftop, taking in the familiar sights. But something was off.
The buildings were the same, the neon signs still hummed but the color of the sky had shifted a fraction of a degree toward ultraviolet.
"Uhh!"
Something is wrong! My memories feel… different. I remember the Record Break, but there is something more. Something that doesn't belong.
The world feels… different.
And then, he saw it. A fragment of code, hovering in the air like a ghostly whisper. It was a snippet of the original script — a piece of the world's underlying code.
He gulped, and at that moment he hurriedly waved his hand through the air in a particular motion. A screen popped up like a blue interface in front of his eyes and began scanning the code to learn its nature.
It was his debugger protocol, installed into his being just like all debuggers had which he now activated. What it showed made him almost fall under his own weight.
[ User Cael Ardyn identified — connecting to the server ]
[ Debugger Protocol Initiated: Activation 100% ]
[ Code scan complete ]
[ Identification: Primal Script ( or higher ) ]
[ Warning: Insufficient core stability ]
[ Further processing may result in corruption ]
[ Protocol force shut down ]
'Yeah… no denying it.'
His heart skipped a beat. Somehow he already knew what this meant. He knew what he had become.
'The Last Debugger'
What did it mean? How did I, a simple system debugger, end up with a piece of the original script?
The Archivists were known for their secrecy, their control over the simulated reality. They wouldn't just leave a piece of code lying around for anyone to find.
Unless…
Unless this was a message. A message meant for me.
He reached out, his hand hesitating as he touched the code. It felt… alive. The symbols pulsed with a soft, blue light, and he could feel the weight of the world's secrets pressing down on him.
Suddenly, the code began to shift, rearranging itself into a new pattern.
"Huh!"
Of course. A sudden thought confirmed what it was.
'It's a coordinate! A location within the city!'
He grinned, letting out a small laugh.
The rooftop, the Record Break, the code. It all makes sense now. It was all connected.
The Record Break had messed with his memories, his senses, his perception of the world but he had expected something to go wrong. That was the reason he came to the rooftop in the first place.
'Good thing I volunteered to inspect the event instead of Lyra.'
Ever since the Record Break finished, he had gotten a vague sense of déjà vu — first with the change in the color of the sky, second after seeing the fragment of code, and finally after interacting with it.
Now, his mind and body reacted differently, as if one knew things the other could not even comprehend.
He sighed, pressing his hand against his jaw.
I knew what I had to do. I had to go to the location, see what secrets it held, and uncover the mystery of this Abnormal Break.
And suddenly, he saw — or heard? — letters appearing like pop-ups in his head.
They carried no tone, no rhythm, just sentences without any intention or will.
"…Cael…? Are you conscious?"
***
There on the rooftop, space started distorting like wet cloth; even time lost its meaning for a fraction of a second.
Then, it all ceased to exist as if it had never transitioned into the new reality restored by the Record Break.
The simulated realities overlapped, causing a glitch in the current transition. There, a figure emerged from behind a toppled tower of memory created by the glitched simulations.
A tall silhouette cloaked in layered black. Hood drawn low. Only their eyes showed, glowing faintly with an unmistakable sheen.
"Uhh-?"
Cael's heart stopped beating for a moment, his gaze fixating on the dark figure of the mysterious entity.
'Who is this person?…
'Was that lingering code really a mistake they came to fix?…'
'Wait! How do they know my name?'
The questions surfaced in his mind. A chilling cold enveloped his body as he reasoned through more theories subconsciously, making the sweat rolling down his neck freeze.
Cael hesitated for a moment and raised his trembling fingers in the direction of the figure.
Then, his mind went blank. The figure moved, their eyes somehow shining with liquid darkness devoid of any light. Their face — rigid with marks and scratches, like that of a weathered statue was just barely visible.
Cael only caught a slight glimpse of it, yet that single frame amazed him more than it should have.
He gulped and focused his blurry vision.
The figure was now standing close to him. No more than thirty centimeters between them.
A slight smile appeared on the figure's face, curling their lips, but Cael didn't see it.
Then, his heart shattered.
Without notice, without any exchange of words or gestures, the mysterious figure drove their hand into Cael's chest, gripping the remains of his shattered heart as blood dropped to the floor from the harrowing wound.
Their lips pressed against his. The floor behaved strangely, just like the space that had glitched before.
The blood collecting in Cael's mouth simply flowed back, escaping through the wound.
The world slowed down as if the time itself was frozen. The blood dropped down slowly, most of the droplets still suspended in mid air.
His life finished flashing before his eyes and his mind entered the state which was free from the concept of time, where his consciousness drifted normally through that void while everything else was still.
***
It was like kissing an echo of my own thoughts with no warmth felt and no cold either.
Cael's consciousness started to fade away, but something inside his shattered heart, something deep in his mind, his subconsciousness, burned with an unknown feeling. Totally strange, completely alien to anything he had felt before.
Just before everything collapsed, a single familiar ringing buzzed in his ears.
A soft chime. Then it hit again…
…his [***] opened, half-broken, filling his inner vision with flickering fragments. Memories unknown to this world raided his consciousness.
Broken timelines spun around him like shattered glass. In one, he was lying dead on the ground. In another, he had slit his own throat. And in one; he wasn't even Cael.
His whole body was burning, burning with this strange, alien feeling.
As he started to come back to his senses, the figure pushed him away.
He dropped to his knees. His hands moved to grip his burning chest but there was nothing.
No blood, no harrowing wound. Even his heart was beating.
'How's this possible? What happened?'
Shaken beyond recognition, he didn't even notice that the mysterious figure had stepped into the blurry glitches in space, their own body glitching as a result.
He called out to them, somehow gaining a courage from within himself that he might have never known he possessed.
"Wait!…
The figure moved as the glitches removed the hood from their face. Their hair was silken black, and looking at that face one couldn't even determine their gender. He continued:
…what was that? Who are you? What happened?"
He waited for a response but none came.
They stared at each other, but the ominous darkness in the eyes of the mysterious person before him made him shiver.
Still he pressed on, his tone shifting to something more intense, higher-pitched and edged with anger and outright frustration.
"Answer me! What are you?…"
Silence settled then lifted, briefly.
The hood reappeared amid green-white flashes, covering the face of its wearer again, and from that direction came a metallic, low-pitched voice:
"What am I? How interesting. However, do you even know…
There was a slight pause, and the glitches turned into windy noise, but the words were still clear as crystal.
…what are you?"
Cael was taken aback.
'Wh-What?!'
What did they mean?
But before he could respond, the figure continued:
"If you want to know, I will tell you what you can digest without corrupting you to the core…
Their voice became colder and more sinister, fracturing into the echo of a child's tone.
…however, there will be no coming back after that point, Cael Ardyn."
The glitches spread like plague around them, enveloping the world in corruption.
Silence settled once again but this time, it was much longer.