2026-08-17 18:41:54The sky didn't just turn red; it hemorrhaged. A violent, pulsating crimson bled across the horizon, turning Rian’s window into a frame for a dying world. Then came the hum—a low-frequency vibration that rattled his teeth and made the air taste like ozone and copper.
"Hey, Rian! You seeing this?"
Marcus, his neighbor, was screaming through the thin apartment wall. Rian stumbled back from the glass, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"I’m looking at it, Marcus! Is the sun actually bleeding? What the hell is going on?"
"It’s not just the sky, man! Check your phone! My screen is literally glowing. It’s like a hologram is stuck to my eyeballs."
"My phone is dead. It’s been dead for hours."
"Forget the phone! Look at the air, Rian! Look at the text!"
Rian blinked, and finally, he saw it. Floating in the middle of his living room, translucent blue letters burned with a sickening neon intensity.
‘INTEGRATION COMMENCING. 0.01%... 0.05%...’
"You seeing the blue letters, Rian? I just got a prompt. It says I’m an ‘A-Rank Firestarter.’ I can feel the heat, dude! My hands are literally smoking!"
Rian reached out, his fingers trembling as they touched the glowing text. Instead of a status screen, his vision fractured.
"Marcus, I don't have a rank. My screen... it’s all just gibberish. Everything is scrolling in lines of red code."
"What do you mean, gibberish? Everyone gets a class. Try hitting the help button."
"There is no help button! It’s all flashing ‘ERROR: CORRUPTED DATA’ and ‘SYSTEM OVERFLOW.’ My head feels like it’s being carved out with a spoon."
"Maybe you’re just glitching? Refresh it or something! Close your eyes and reopen them."
"I’m closing them, Marcus, I’m reopening them, I’m screaming at the wall—nothing! It’s just showing me a black hole of broken symbols. I think the system missed me."
"Missed you? That’s impossible. Wait, hold on. There’s a scream coming from the hallway."
Rian pressed his ear to the door. Outside, the muffled sound of tearing fabric and wet, rhythmic thuds echoed through the corridor.
"Marcus, someone’s dying out there."
"I can’t help them! I’m still trying to figure out how to stop my curtains from catching fire. My hands won’t stop sparking!"
"Control it, Marcus! Try to focus on the fire, not the fear!"
"I’m trying! But the blue screen won’t go away! It says I have to 'Initiate Combat' to stabilize my core. What does that even mean?"
"It means we’re screwed. My screen just turned solid black. It’s not even showing error codes anymore."
"Rian, listen to me. Get out of there. My wall is shaking. Something big is moving in the hallway."
"I’m locked in, Marcus! The door handle won’t turn. It’s like the apartment became a cage."
CRACK.
The solid oak of Rian’s front door splintered inward. A heavy, clawed limb, slick with gore, punched through the wood, inches from Rian’s face.
"Marcus! There’s a thing! It’s inside the apartment!"
"Run, Rian! Use your skills! Do something!"
"I told you, I don't have any! I’m just a guy in his underwear with a broken interface!"
"Throw something! Improvise! The system rewards tactical initiative!"
The creature shoved harder, the door groaning under the pressure of its bulk. It was a mass of grey, twisted muscle and elongated, needle-like teeth. Rian scrambled backward, his heel catching on the heavy marble bust of his grandfather that sat on the entryway table.
"I’m not a tactical genius, Marcus! I’m a liability!"
"Then die fighting! Don't just sit there!"
Rian tripped, his body sprawling backward. The marble statue tumbled with him, but as he hit the floor, his foot clipped the heavy base. The statue didn't fall to the carpet; it went airborne, spinning end-over-end.
The monster lunged, teeth bared, eyes glowing with a feral, system-induced malice. It didn't expect a projectile.
THUD.
The heavy stone base connected perfectly with the creature’s temple. A spray of black, viscous fluid coated the wall. The beast crumpled, sliding to the floor with a wheeze that sounded like a deflating tire.
Silence reclaimed the room, thick and suffocating.
"Rian? Rian! Did you hit it? Tell me you hit it!"
Rian sat on the floor, chest heaving, staring at the motionless lump of meat. Suddenly, his black screen flickered back to life, but the text wasn't blue. It was a jagged, pulsing purple.
‘CRITICAL ERROR: EXTERNAL ENTITY ELIMINATED BY NON-USER. CALCULATING REWARDS...’
"Marcus," Rian whispered, his voice trembling. "It’s doing something. The screen… it’s changing."
"What? What does it say?"
Rian stood up, his eyes locked on the purple text that began to rewrite his entire existence.
‘USER STATUS: NULL. CLASS: GLITCH. ABILITY UNLOCKED: THIEF OF VOIDS.’
"It says I’m a thief, Marcus. And the door… the door just unlocked."
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Chapter 130
"The wire's snapped!" Vance roared over the deafening whine of the approaching armored carrier's turbine engines. He dropped to his knees on the freezing iron webbing of the trestle bridge, his gloved fingers frantically clawing at the frayed ends of the severed copper cable. "A round must have clipped it right when that last turret opened up! The remote detonator's dead, Kael! It's completely dead!"Kael threw himself down beside Vance, ignoring the violent, white-hot agony screaming through his injured leg. He grabbed the severed wire, staring at the raw, frayed copper ends where a corporate bullet had cleanly sheared the connection just seconds ago. Below them, the massive treads of the lead personnel carrier thundered onto the absolute edge of the iron bridge, sending a harmonic vibration straight up through the rusted girders that rattled their teeth."We don't have time to splice it!" Kael shouted, his voice cracking against the wind.
Chapter 129
"I’ll cover the ridge, you two get under the deck," Sera said, her voice dropping into that cold, absolute tone she used whenever the shooting started and the world narrowed down to the next heartbeat. She jammed her shoulder against the frozen shale, resting the barrel of her rifle across a jagged shelf of granite. "If a single one of those scouts looks down into the ravine, I’ll take out their optics before they can blink.""Just save enough rounds to keep your own head down," Vance muttered, hoisting the heavy canvas crate of homemade blasting powder back onto his shoulder with a sharp grunt. He spared a single, grim look toward Kael, whose face was beaded with cold sweat despite the sub-zero air. "You're moving too slow, boss. If we get caught out in the open on that iron webbing, we're just targets on a platter.""I'm moving fast enough," Kael snapped back, his teeth gritted as he dragged his stiff, half-frozen leg forward.
Chapter 128
"They're not just early, they're moving like they know the bridge is the only way across," Kael said, his voice a low, raspy grind as he dragged himself closer to the edge of the snowy embankment. Below them, the massive treads of the lead corporate personnel carrier churned the fresh powder into a blinding spray of white and black exhaust. "Vance, grab that detonator harness. We have to move right under the primary girder span before the headlights sweep this side of the pillar.""Move?" Vance let out a short, harsh laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping over ice. "With a leg that looks like it's about to fall off and a crate of unstable powder that's currently shaking like a wet dog? We're going to slide right down into their laps.""Do you want to slide down or do you want to stay up here and get turned into red mist by a heavy machine gun turret?" Sera snapped, unhlinging her rifle with a practiced, fluid motion. She pulled the bolt
Chapter 127
"The wind's dying down," Sera whispered, her boots sinking two inches into the crust of the scree slope as she dropped flat against the frozen shale. "Which means the fog is clearing out faster than we planned. Look at the lower rail spur."Kael didn't need the warning. He pulled himself up beside her, biting back a sharp curse as his bad leg took an awkward angle on the ice. Below them, stretching across the yawning, grey-white maw of the eastern gorge, the high-trestle rail bridge stood like a skeleton of rusted iron. And crawling along the upper ridge, breaking through the thinning squall like iron-jawed beasts, came the unmistakable, high-intensity headlights of corporate armored personnel carriers."They're early," Vance muttered, sliding down the shale behind them with the canvas-wrapped crate balanced precariously against his chest. He dumped the heavy explosive package onto the frozen dirt with a dull, muffled thud. "By at least twen
Chapter 126
"So, a normal Tuesday in the valley," Sera said, emerging from the dim recesses of the upper corridor with her rifle slung over her shoulder, her breath pluming white in the freezing draft. "If we're going down the scree before the wind shifts, we move now. The corporate scouts on the outer perimeter cycle their patrols every forty minutes. We have a three-minute window between the western ridge sweep and the lower rail-line patrol."Vance hoisted one of the heavy, canvas-wrapped crates onto his shoulder, testing its balance with a scowl. "If that wind picks up any faster, it won't matter what the patrols are doing. We'll be sliding down the mountain inside an avalanche of our own making.""Then don't drop it," Kael said, pulling his heavy wool coat tighter across his chest to mask the tremor in his hands. He checked the slide of his sidearm, ensuring the mechanism wasn't jammed with frost. "Vance takes the lead with the primary charge. Sera
Chapter 125
"And if a stray snowflake hits it the wrong way while we're carrying it down the scree, we won't even need the bridge to blow ourselves to pieces," Vance muttered, his gaze shifting from Rian's fever-bright eyes to the heavy, canvas-wrapped crates resting on the rusted floorboards."Nobody's blowing up here," Kael said, his voice hard as he stepped forward, testing his weight on his bad leg with a sharp wince he hid behind a flat, emotionless stare. "We pack it carefully, we move in the blind of the storm, and we plant every ounce right into the primary load-bearing joints of the trestle. Rian, are the detonators stable?""As stable as homemade black powder wired into corporate remote triggers can be," Rian replied, his left hand deftly securing the housing panel of the radio. "Which is to say, don't drop them, don't shake them too hard, and for God's sake, don't let the damp get inside the wiring harness.""So, a normal
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