Erend stayed frozen in his chair long after the text dissolved, his eyes still fixed on the empty space above his monitor. His heartbeat remained steady sohow, but his mind did not.
"That didn’t co from ti power. It’s from the system."
The thought lingered, heavy and sharp. He replayed the sensation again and again, dissecting it from every angle.
The System had rules. Clear ones. It responded. It inford him about things that he should do. It never reached out like this in a conversational manner. Never hesitated. Never glitched.
"Corruption? Damage? Or sothing new trying to piggyback on it?" Erend thought.
Veyrun crossed his mind, but the feeling didn’t match. That interference from Veyrun had always been deliberate and precise. This had felt... strained. Like a voice forcing its way through a shattered interface.
Possibilities branched rapidly. Is this another broken sub-layer of the System? A remnant consciousness from another administration like Veyrun? An external entity hijacking the protocol? Or worse—sothing the System itself never ant to interact with. Like the Void Architect?
The silence stretched just long enough to beco noticeable.
"Drake?" Adrien’s voice cut through the hum of the office.
Erend realized his hands hadn’t moved in several seconds.
Billy was already half out of his chair, brows drawn tight.
"You alright?" His gaze flicked toward Erend’s monitor, then back to his face. "You look like you just phased out."
Erend exhaled slowly and stood.
"I got a strange contact," he said evenly. "It’s related to my power. I need to step out for now."
That was all it took.
Adrien was already nodding, reaching for his own console. "Go. I’ll cover."
Billy hesitated for half a second, worry flashing across his face, then forced himself to step aside.
"If it gets worse," he said quietly, "don’t brush it off. You must tell us imdiately."
Erend answers with a curt nod. He was already moving.
The corridors felt longer on the way back. Too quiet. Every step echoed a little too clearly in his ears. When he reached his living quarters, he sealed the door behind him.
Only then did he sit.
He closed his eyes and reached inward for the familiar frawork of the System itself.
At once, the cold sensation returned.
The darkness behind his eyelids fractured, breaking into jagged layers of translucent panels.
Text attempted to form, failed, collapsed into static. Images bled through. It was unfinished structures, corrupted symbols, half-rendered prompts looping endlessly.
The glitching grew worse.
Whatever had tried to speak before was still there. But it was trying harder to reach him through the system.
The static churned for several more seconds before the fragnts began to align.
Characters snapped into place one by one, uneven and unstable, as if forced into existence rather than generated.
[Hello. Erend.]
The text hovered before him, but it did not follow the System’s clean, practiced format. Capital and lowercase letters mixed erratically. So characters briefly flickered as numbers before settling into words. The spacing was inconsistent, the alignnt wrong.
Nothing about it felt natural.
"This isn’t the System."
"What are you?" Erend asked silently, his mind steadying as he focused on the presence behind the text.
The response ca slower this ti, each word assembling with visible resistance.
[Im the Void Architect.]
The words hit him like a sudden drop in altitude. His stomach churned heavily.
For a mont, the fractured panels froze. Erend’s breath caught despite himself. The na carried weight far beyond gods, beyond Veyrun the real system power administrators.
This is the counterpart of the real Creator. The one existence Erend had hoped would remain distant and theoretical for as long as possible.
"So you ca to first..."
"What do you want?" Erend asked, forcing his thoughts into order, suppressing the surge of instinctive hostility and worried feelings.
The text pulsed, then continued.
[Im here to tell you that one of my creation that before was disappear before now had erged]
Shock rippled through Erend’s heart.
The Void Architect had three creations. One was a monster. One was a god. One missing.
The missing one had returned, the Void Architect just declared.
Erend felt a cold knot form in his chest. That was not news he wanted right now. But he actually needed it.
"That thing coming back ans instability on a scale I don’t even want to imagine."
What unsettled him more was the contact itself. The Void Architect did not warn him first. Did not explain too much or give any signs. And certainly did not reach out unless sothing had gone wrong beyond their expectations that they need to contact him directly like this.
Before Erend could press further, the text continued, faster and less stable now.
[You battled with one of my heralds not long ago. It was a pretty good fight. I don’t think my herald could be that powerful after he stole my system]
Erend went still. The Void Architect was talking about Zerathul.
The implications settled heavily in his heart. The stolen system, the altered growth, that made him into a world-level threat, the unexpected ceiling of power.
He stayed silent, letting the Void Architect speak. Part of him wanted answers about the system, about the Creator, about the existence of that Void Architect themselves. But his instinct warned him that questions here ca with consequences. It’s better to not ask anything right now.
The panels flickered harder, cracks spreading across the interface.
[I don’t have ti for now. Lets get to business and later we can talk more casually if you want.]
There was a little pause. Then...
[I will give you the direction to a world of my creation that has disappeared. Find him]
The text spasd violently, letters tearing apart mid-line. The panels collapsed inward, folding into static as the presence withdrew.
The cold pressure vanished.
Erend opened his eyes sharply, the room snapping back into focus. The System interface was gone. No prompts or trace of what had just occurred.
Only silence remained.
Erend leaned back slowly, one hand lifting to his face.
"So it’s started again..."
This ti, even the Void Architects themselves were contacting him.
—
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