We didn't plan on entering the Hollow.
It started with a map. A warped, low-resolution asset buried inside the back corner of the Elderfall cartographer's tent. I only noticed it because the vendor's display glitched when I walked past.
The terrain data didn't match the current world map.
An old zone. Deprecated.
Forgotten.
Naturally, I asked for it.
[Map Fragment Acquired: Hollowroot Trail (Version 1.02)]Zone Classification: Deprecated Sub-Dungeon | Danger Tier: Medium-LowSuggested Party Level: 8–10
I was Level 7.
Lyra was 7.
We went anyway.
"So, let me get this straight," she said as we approached the crumbling trailhead. "You found an old broken map, and your first thought was 'this is definitely safe'?"
"No," I replied. "My first thought was, 'this is probably broken and exploitable.'"
She laughed, shaking her head. "You're worse than the forum clowns."
"I'm broke and trying not to die in either world. That makes me efficient."
The dungeon opened at the base of a moss-covered canyon—half-erased by time, partly rebuilt by procedural logic that had clearly been left to rot. Cracked stone arches jutted out of shallow earth, and the surrounding flora flickered at the edges like it didn't know whether to render or fade.
[Dungeon Entered: The Hollow – Instanced Zone: 2 Players][Warning: Unstable Architecture Detected. Proceed with Caution.]
There was no quest popup. No opening narration. Just a long staircase leading into darkness and the faint shimmer of UI threads at the edges of our vision.
Lyra adjusted her grip on her daggers. "This zone feels off."
"It's broken," I said, activating the Lexicon. "That's the point."
The Hollow was originally a forgotten side zone buried in patch notes three years after launch. It had no boss rewards, no glory, no leaderboard relevance.
But I remembered what most didn't: beneath the Hollow was a glyph vault, a scripted experimental fragment once tied to the developers' original rune system before they scrapped it in favor of streamlined tags.
In my last life, I never got in.
Now?
Now I had the keys.
We pushed through the first level quickly—mobs were corrupted variants of forest types: Hollow Wolves, Fractured Dryads, even a glitched Flame Elk that exploded when aggroed. The experience was decent, but I wasn't here for XP.
I was watching the dungeon itself.
Every few meters, something shifted. Like the terrain was trying to remember what it used to be.
[SYSTEM NOTE: Architecture Rebuild Attempt: FAILED]Render thread degraded. Memory Node Out of Bounds.
"Your map data's still flickering," Lyra muttered. "It's like it doesn't know what exists."
"Neither do we," I said. "We're seeing code without context."
The first real test came in the central chamber—a circular room with a collapsed ceiling and three stone platforms raised at different angles. Each bore a faded glyph.
I recognized the pattern.
A memory gate.
They only opened if a player could replicate the rune sequence using the proper delay-and-response method with active tags.
It wasn't brute force. It was precision.
Lyra cleared her throat. "So… is this where your weird Lexicon thing shows off?"
"Yup."
I flipped to a prepared tag combo: Delay > Bind > Echo Pulse—a chain I'd started building after the caravan quest. I'd used it on mobs before.
Never on architecture.
I cast.
The Lexicon glowed. Glyph threads leapt from the page and wrapped around the first platform's rune. It pulsed.
The second platform activated half a second later—delayed properly.
The third platform… stayed dead.
I frowned, then reversed the sequence: Echo Pulse first, Bind second, Delay last.
It worked.
The door opened.
[Vault Path Accessed – Glyph Archive Active]
As I stepped toward the vault entrance, a flicker of corrupted light appeared to my left.
A Flame Elk—glitched, half-rendered—burst through the broken wall and slammed into me mid-cast.
I was thrown back against the stone wall, hard.
[HP: -43 | Status: Minor Fracture – Staggered (2s)]
My vision blurred.
Pain prickled across my ribs. Real pain—dull but deep, pressing behind my temples. Neural feedback hadn't even peaked, and I already felt the beginnings of a VR migraine.
Lyra blink-stepped across the room and buried her blades in the creature's neck before it could turn.
She offered a hand. "You good?"
I took it, jaw clenched. "Learning experience."
Beyond the doorway lay a vault unlike anything I'd seen in a starter dungeon—scrolls, broken scripts, and a single pedestal bearing a page that shimmered with living light.
[Glyph Fragment Acquired: Mirrorthread – Passive Concept Tag]You may now imprint tag behavior patterns and copy them mid-cast. Limited to Tier F–E tags. One use per cooldown.
Cooldown: 5 minutes | Range: 15m
Lyra whistled low. "That's not standard loot."
"No," I said, staring at the Lexicon as the page burned itself into my book. "It's developer-side junk code."
"Useful junk."
"Dangerous junk."
We left the vault and began ascending out of the Hollow. The terrain glitched twice—once rendering a path above our heads before deleting it mid-step. Lyra had to shadow-step across a gap that shouldn't have existed.
As we reached the upper hall, a ripple passed through the dungeon like the whole space hiccuped.
[SYSTEM ALERT: Deprecated Zone Accessed – Users Not Whitelisted][Rollback Queued: 3.2 Minutes]
We sprinted.
The zone collapsed behind us as we emerged back into the light. Elderfall's towers blinked on the horizon. The map fragment in my inventory evaporated into static.
[You have survived a SYSTEM rollback attempt.]
Lyra bent over, hands on knees. "Tell me you didn't plan for that."
"I hoped," I said. "Didn't expect."
"You're the worst good influence I've ever met."
I smiled. "I'm growing on you."
"Like fungus."
That night, as I drifted off in the pod, I could still feel the Mirrorthread tag humming faintly at the edges of my mind—and the phantom ache of ribs that were never truly broken.
And somewhere in the SYSTEM's core, a warning flag blinked red.
[Observation Level: Escalated. Mirrorthread Usage Logged.][Player: Aiden Chase] – Marked for Secondary Echo Analysis]
Something had seen me take the glyph.
And now, it remembered