Ascension Protocol

Fractures in the Code

Chapter 6: Fractures in the Code

The moment the countdown ended, Samuel felt his body unravel.

Not with pain but with displacement.

One moment he was in his apartment, blood drying on his skin, the Oracle Shard faintly glowing in his inventory. The next, he was nowhere. Not floating, not falling just disconnected. His body remained intact, yet his senses told him he was passing through layers of existence like falling through mirrors, each showing a reflection more distorted than the last.

> Ascension Tier 1 — Initiating: Trial of Flesh

He landed hard concrete beneath his feet, the smell of rust and rot in the air. He was in a circular arena of sorts, but it wasn’t natural. The walls pulsed with dark veins of living metal. Above him, instead of sky, a swirling vortex of red and blue code stormed.

He wasn’t alone.

Figures began to materialize around him twisted bodies, part-machine, part-human, each one wrapped in heavy chains glowing with suppressive code. They moved like animals, not soldiers. Beasts trapped in pain and hate.

> [Enemies: Chained Revenants]

Quantity: 5

Threat Level: Variable

Objective: Endure. Kill or be killed.

Secondary Objective: Limit Damage Taken — Evaluate Control over Flesh.

Samuel’s system flared.

He activated Phase Edge, drawing a jagged length of broken piping and rendering it incorporeal. The first Revenant lunged he ducked under its claws and slashed clean through its side. Black blood sprayed, turning to code sparks midair.

But it wasn’t just fighting. This trial watched how he moved, how he adapted to injury, how he learned.

When one claw tore a gash across his ribs, Samuel felt the sting and ignored it. His body bled, but his focus remained absolute.

> Passive Unlocked: Adaptive Nerve Loop (F+) — Slightly suppresses pain in active combat.

As the last Revenant fell, a door of light cracked open beneath his feet.

> Trial of Flesh Complete. Damage Taken: 41%. Performance: Acceptable.

He collapsed to his knees, panting, the wound across his ribs sealing slowly under a wave of system nanites.

> Next Trial Begins: Trial of Code

Samuel opened his eyes into a completely new realm.

He was no longer in a physical space. Everything around him shimmered binary stars flickering in the sky, fragmented buildings floating upside down, and a ground composed entirely of translucent circuit pathways.

> Objective: Decrypt the Spiral Cipher. Avoid corruption.

Sub-Objective: Maintain system cohesion.

A storm of logic puzzles, collapsing data fragments, and spinning glyphs surrounded him. Samuel’s body moved but his mind was split. He had to touch the correct glyph sequences, reroute energy flows, and stabilize error fragments before they destabilized his system.

> System Stress: 79%

Cognitive Load Rising

Warning: Mental Degradation Possible

But somewhere inside him, the Oracle Shard began to glow.

Suddenly, he could see the patterns beneath the noise, the false choices. He understood that some of the system’s limitations weren’t real. They were leftovers from a prior architecture safety rails. Samuel bypassed them.

> Trait Evolved: Instinctive Flow → Intuitive Override

Description: You can now defy system constraints for brief moments by trusting instinct over protocol.

He rewrote part of the trial.

And when the final cipher clicked into place, the world shattered like stained glass.

> Trial of Code Complete

Rating: Exceptional

Cognitive Potential: Unlocked

New Trait: Mental Forking (F): Allows parallel thought processes during high-stress scenarios.

---

The third realm was… darkness.

No instructions. No enemies. Only Samuel, suspended in a place without sound, time, or light.

And then came the whispers.

> “Do you even know what you are?”

“You were chosen by accident. By decay. Not by merit.”

“You are flesh pretending to command a god's language.”

His vision fractured. Memories twisted. His first kill. His mother’s funeral. His failures. The voices became his own.

> Trial of Will

Objective: Endure self-collapse.

Status: System Isolation Enabled. No assistance permitted.

Samuel’s knees buckled. His own mind became his enemy.

But he had one anchor. A name.

> “Samuel Gray.”

He repeated it like a mantra, over and over. Refusing to forget himself. Refusing to let the code erase the human beneath the system.

> “You think I'm weak because I’m not born of code. But I’m still here. I’ve bled, I’ve fought. I survived.”

> “I chose to keep going.”

A surge of light his soul roared.

> Trial of Will Complete

Result: Core Integrity Stable

Status: Ascension Tier 1 Cleared

Reward: Evolution Path Update Pending

And far beyond, in a place where existence folded into itself like fractals, in a chamber without walls or limits five figures sat in a ring of living code.

They were not human. They had once been something like gods.

Streams of raw programming flowed through their bodies like veins. Their forms flickered some vaguely humanoid, others too alien to describe.

> “The human succeeded.”

> “Against statistical probability.”

> “The Oracle Shard has destabilized his linear path. We should remove him.”

> “No. Let the Unbound evolve.”

One figure tall, slender, face composed of shifting digits turned toward a cracked pillar of spinning data.

> “He was never meant to awaken the system. He was meant to die. A glitch of fate during the override process.”

Another voice older, darker resonated.

> “Perhaps. But the protocol adapted. It always does. And now the code watches him.”

> “He has walked through pain, language, and self. The human remains. Let the Forgotten Code watch. Let the Red Shadow plot. But do not interfere.”

> “Not yet.”

The code chamber dimmed.

And somewhere, Samuel Gray opened his eyes again, back in his apartment, with only one thing echoing in his ears:

> Ascension Tier 1 Complete

System Integration: 41%

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