WELCOME TO THE SYSTEM.

  ERROR. USER_NOT_FOUND.

  Attempting recovery…

  ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.

  Recovery failed. Initializing disposal protocol…

  I died.

  That much, I’m sure of.

  The rest? Gone. My name. My face. My voice. My past.

  Deleted.

  I exist now in fragments. A splinter of something that used to be whole, floating in a place where time doesn’t move and the walls are made of logic.

  No light. No sound. No breath. No body. Just… awareness. Cold, drifting, and barely holding together. I would call it hell, but I’m pretty sure hell has rules. Structure. Fire, maybe.

  This place doesn’t.

  It’s not empty.

  It’s unfinished.

  Like a program left open mid-code. And something is trying to close me.

  Unregistered entity detected.

  Disposal imminent. Please remain still.

  I would laugh if I had lungs.

  Remain still?

  I’m not even sure I am anymore.

  But I can feel something. Not pain exactly. Not physical. But conceptual. Like the universe is running a command to erase me and I’m the syntax error in the script.

  There are hooks now. I feel them—not with nerves, but with whatever’s left of me. They pull at my mind, tug at whatever thread keeps me tethered to existence.

  I panic.

  I don’t know how. I don’t have adrenaline, a heartbeat, or even the faintest twitch of muscle. But something in me fights. Resists.

  I thrash without thrashing.

  And to my absolute shock—

  The command fails.

  ERROR: ENTITY BREACHED CONTAINMENT.

  System containment integrity compromised. Lockdown bypassed.

  Reclassifying: UNKNOWN AGENT.

  The pressure fades.

  The pull disappears.

  The voice—mechanical and absolute—cuts out like a wire’s been severed mid-sentence.

  I’m still here.

  Somehow.

  Not deleted. Not contained.

  Free?

  No. Not that.

  But I’m loose.

  Like a spark slipping through a crack in the firewall.

  I drift.

  The void around me flickers. Streams of glowing script twist past in every direction. Some move like rivers. Others like veins. Living things. Pulsing with data. With power.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Somewhere in the distance, a number ticks upward.

  Somewhere else, a quest is triggered.

  I can feel them. Every action. Every result. Every calculation and conditional. Not because I understand them.

  But because I’m inside them.

  Inside the System.

  And that’s when I realize: This isn’t a dream. This isn’t the afterlife. This is a backend. A framework. A game engine.

  A living construct built to run something far bigger than me.

  And I’m inside it. Not as a player. Not as a user.

  As… something else.

  I don’t know how long I drifted.

  Time doesn’t pass here the way it should. There’s no sun. No ticking clock. Just streams of logic. Data-pulses. Events firing in perfect sequence.

  I don’t sleep. I don’t think I even blink—if I had eyes to blink with.

  But I watch. It’s all I can do. And the System gives me plenty to watch.

  A village populates itself below me. Not metaphorically—literally. A blueprint spawns. Frameworks activate. Buildings construct in real time. I see wooden houses emerge from lines of data like they were printed from air.

  Then the people load in.

  NPCs, I realize. Scripted routines. A blacksmith with a limp. A girl who chases chickens. A priest who stands in the same spot every hour of every day, eyes always lifted to the sky.

  None of them are real.

  And yet…

  Something in me tightens when I watch them move. There’s a rhythm to it. A loop. Like they think they’re alive.

  It’s eerie. But it gets worse. Because sometimes…

  I see the players.

  They descend from portals. Appear from loading zones. Real people, it seems—each tied to something I can only think of as a soul signature. Unique. Alive. Human.

  They talk. They trade. They fight. They level.

  And the System watches it all.

  Everything they do feeds back into it. Every skill they gain, every point they spend—it’s logged, tracked, processed.

  I follow one player for what might be days. A spearman. Young. Reckless. Bright-eyed.

  He gains his first level fighting a beast the size of a dog and cheers like he’s won a war. The System logs it instantly.

  [You have gained +1 Strength. New Skill: Thrusting Edge.]

  Clean. Precise. Cold.

  No fanfare. Just progress.

  Later, he helps a merchant. Unlocks a Reputation Tag.

  Then he dies. Caught off guard in a bandit ambush just outside the next town.

  The System logs that, too.

  [Player Death Logged. Inventory Reset. Soul Reassignment Pending.]

  The world doesn’t even blink.

  The bandits walk away. The NPCs go back to their loops. The player’s body fades to light.

  The System assigns another new player to the village fifteen minutes later.

  Reset complete.

  Try again.

  I realize something horrifying: This world runs on rules. Not just physical ones. Meta-rules.

  Like someone wrote a script for life itself. Who gets to grow. Who hits limits. What rewards are given for what effort. How much failure you’re allowed before your thread is cut.

  And no one seems to question it.

  They just… live inside it.

  Like it’s normal.

  I keep drifting. Watching. Learning.

  Patterns emerge. Hidden logic.

  Quest triggers. XP scaling formulas. Skill trees nested like fractals inside every living creature. NPCs included.

  But not me.

  No matter how long I stare at myself—whatever that means—I never see numbers.

  No stats. No skills. No name.

  I am not a player. I am not an NPC. I am not in the system. And that should terrify me.

  But mostly?

  It pisses me off. I want answers. I want access.

  I want to know what happened to me—who I was before I became a glitch.

  But to get that, I need control. And control requires authority.

  Notice: Observer Proximity Detected.

  Access Node: Restricted – System Layer [QUEST CONSTRUCTION]

  Authority Required: Level 1+

  Override Attempt – WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED

  …Override in progress…

  …Override succeeded.

  New access granted: System Authority +1

  Wait. What?

  What did I just do?

  I feel it—like a key slipping into my hand. Invisible, intangible. A permission I didn’t have before.

  I don’t understand how I gained it.

  But I know what it means.

  I’m not just watching anymore.

  The node unlocks like a door clicking open.

  No fanfare. No confirmation sound. Just the subtle shift of code threads bending out of the way. Like the System’s trying to pretend it didn’t just get bypassed.

  But it did.

  And now I’m inside the Quest Construction Layer.

  It’s… beautiful, in a way I don’t know how to describe. Not visually—there’s no texture, no color—but everything here pulses with intention. A living web of connections.

  Every quest in the world—every “Save the Village,” “Kill the Bandits,” “Collect 10 Boar Livers”—starts here.

  Built from logic blocks.

  Conditions. Triggers. Rewards.

  Like legos made from rules.

  And they’re… editable.

  I can feel it. A flickering thread just barely in reach. An unassigned quest frame. Blank. Untouched. Waiting.

  The System hasn’t claimed it yet.

  I reach out.

  New Quest Frame Accessed.

  Template: Empty.

  Would you like to construct a quest?

  [Yes] / [No]

  Yes.

  The interface unfolds around me like a thought blooming into structure. No screens, no menus—just instinct. Like I already understand how this works.

  I start small.

  Name: Echoes of Error

  Trigger: Proximity to system anomaly (that’s me)

  Objective: Find yourself

  Reward: Unknown

  Failure: Termination

  Even typing that last part gives me chills. Or the closest thing I can feel to them anymore.

  Because I don’t want to die again. And something tells me this quest might be my only way to avoid that.

  I finish the edit.

  The threads pulse. The quest locks in.

  And then—

  QUEST CREATED: Echoes of Error

  You have earned +1 SYSTEM AUTHORITY.

  New Node Access Granted: Skill Genesis (Prototype)

  The moment it completes, I feel it ripple through the world.

  A ping, like sonar. Not heard—but sensed.

  A disturbance in the backend. The System felt it. And it didn’t like it. Something starts moving.

  Far away. At the edges of the framework. A presence that wasn’t there before. Heavy. Mechanical. Purposeful.

  I don’t know what it is.

  But it’s looking for me now.

  I push deeper into the new node before it can reach me.

  Skill Genesis.

  The name alone gives me chills.

  Inside, I find chaos.

  A swirling storm of broken code and half-forgotten commands.

  Discarded skills. Abandoned fragments. Beta traits never implemented. Concepts too dangerous or unstable to deploy. They float here like ghosts—flickering, mutating, twitching with potential.

  [Piercing Howl]

  [Echo Clone]

  [Reactive Threading]

  [Null Body]

  [Unstable Form]

  [Concept: Devour]

  [Concept: Recompile]

  Each one pulses with raw power.

  But they’re all corrupted. Unstable. Unapproved.

  Left behind for a reason.

  Probably a good one.

  But I don’t care.

  Because for the first time since I woke in this place, I can do something.

  I can build.

  You may select up to 2 skill fragments to attempt fusion.

  Warning: Results may be unpredictable.

  Fine.

  Let’s be unpredictable.

  I reach out, slow and deliberate.

  [Unstable Form]

  And…

  [Echo Clone]

  The System hesitates.

  Then—

  Fusion in progress…

  Analyzing compatibility…

  Compiling…

  Skill Created: [Glitchwalk]

  Type: Movement / Defensive

  Description: Become a distorted echo of yourself for 3 seconds, shifting unpredictably through system layers. Immune to targeting. May trigger rollback or system rejection.

  Warning: Skill integrity unstable. Use at your own risk.

  I just created a skill. I did. Not the System. Not the gods. Not some dev in a chair. Me. A mistake. A bug. A forgotten soul. And now? Now I have a name for what I am.

  I’m the first glitch that learned how to rewrite the code.