Everything was black—until it wasn't.

Then it was fire.

Kael's scream caught in his throat as he slammed face-first into the muddy ground. His body wasn't in his gaming chair. It was heavier, meatier. Real. He scrambled to his knees, coughing, blinking away static that kept flickering across his vision like broken pixels.

> [ERROR: Connection Lost.]

[WARNING: Unauthorised Entry Detected.]

[Glitch Class Assigned.]

[System Integrity: 19%]

“What the hell…” Kael muttered, shaking his head. “This isn’t the game menu. Where’s the fucking UI?”

A burning village stretched out in front of him, half in ruins, lit by an orange sky that rippled like a living flame. Screams echoed in the distance—guttural, human. Monsters roared back. Charred corpses lined the cracked stone path ahead, and the smell hit him next—burnt flesh and wet dirt.

This was Eden Break, sure. The architecture, the textures, even the weather effects—it was all too real. But it wasn’t the beta. It was wrong.

So wrong.

And so fucking real.

Kael stood slowly, testing his body. No controller. No HUD. But… movement felt natural. Like muscle memory that didn’t belong to him.

He glanced down. Leather armor—tattered, soot-stained. A knife strapped to his thigh. His heart thumped hard against his ribs. Every breath hurt.

> [STATUS: Player "Kael" Detected.]

[Class: UNKNOWN ENTITY / "GLITCH"]

[Health: 76/100]

[Mana: N/A]

[Skills: UNSTABLE]

[Perk Unlocked: System Rejection (Passive)]

[Note: You were not meant to be here.]

He blinked. “I wasn’t what?”

Then something exploded to his left. A fucking building—gone in a flash of crimson light and screaming code.

Out of the fire came a knight, armor boiling off his body in chunks, his sword dripping liquid flame. His eyes glowed neon blue.

> [TARGET: PURGE KNIGHT v1.01]

[Objective: Eliminate Glitch]

“Player anomaly detected,” the knight intoned, voice deep and robotic. “You do not belong.”

Kael turned and ran.

He tore through what used to be a cobblestone plaza, now a war zone. Arrows flew past his head, some glitching mid-air, freezing and then shattering like glass. The world was breaking. He saw NPCs fighting in strange loops—repeating animations as if stuck in script.

“Shit, shit, shit!”

He dodged into a burning alleyway as the Purge Knight’s sword crashed down behind him, turning stone into molten slag. The heat singed his back. Kael didn't look back. He couldn't.

His head was screaming for answers. This was supposed to be a game, not a death simulator. No logout button. No pause menu.

Just the pain. The fire. The fear.

This isn’t a game anymore.

> [SYSTEM TIP: Use your Glitch.]

[New Skill Detected: “Code Dive (Unstable)”]

[Activate? Y/N]

Kael skidded to a stop inside what looked like an abandoned chapel. Pillars cracked around him, and the stained glass above was glitching—flickering between scenes of gods, error messages, and static.

“Fuck it. Y.”

> [Activating: CODE DIVE…]

Reality tore open.

His vision turned inside out.

It was like falling into source code, like peeling skin off the world and seeing the wires underneath. Names floated above people’s heads—some gibberish, some tagged “ADMIN,” “NPC,” or just “???”

He reached out instinctively and grabbed one.

The name: PurgeKnight_Protocol117.exe.

The code behind it: swirling, broken.

> [Skill Copy Successful: Flamewave v3.2 (Corrupted)]

[Warning: Glitched Skill May Malfunction]

[Mana Cost: Unknown]

The world snapped back and Kael fell to his knees, nose bleeding.

“Okay… okay, I hacked reality. Jesus Christ.”

Heavy footsteps.

The Purge Knight was here.

Kael raised his hand, channeling the code he'd just stolen. His fingers burned. The spell lit up like a Roman candle.

“Let’s see if this works, you bastard.”

> FLAMEWAVE.

The chapel erupted. Fire, static, shards of light. The knight screamed—his system corrupted by his own skill, turned against him.

The roof caved in. Kael flew backward and smashed into the altar, vision fading to red.

When he opened his eyes, it was quiet.

The knight’s armor sizzled in a heap, twitching. A system prompt hovered above it like a dying star.

> [Purge Knight Terminated.]

[Exp Gained: 0 (Invalid Class)]

[Loot Unavailable: Code Conflict]

“Of course,” Kael croaked. “Even the loot’s fucking broken.”

Then:

> [New Objective Added: Survive.]

[Quest: Unknown Territory - A world broken beyond its code]

[Companion Nearby: Scanning…]

[Name: Zari]

[Status: Hostile → Unknown]

A shadow moved in the rubble.

A girl, wrapped in blood-soaked robes, stepped into the ruined chapel with a sword dragging behind her. Her eyes glowed faint purple, and her voice was flat.

“You don’t belong here.”

Kael grinned weakly. “Yeah, I get that a lot today.”