The world around Jae-Won slowed as he shifted out of the corridor, emerging from a fractured pocket of time into the crumbling remains of Sub-Level 7.
His breath came shallow.
Using the glitch like this—too frequently, too recklessly—was already taking a toll. Every time he blinked, the present stuttered. Voices in the back of his mind replayed distorted fragments of memories, some his, some maybe never real.
But this wasn't the time to break down.
Not when Jin-Hwan was close.
Not after facing Serin and walking away.
He clenched his fist. You almost gave her a chance to explain everything. And part of him—still broken and naive—wanted to believe she meant some of what she said. That she didn't just keep his data core as leverage.
He pushed that thought away.
As he descended deeper, Sub-Level 7 revealed its scars—walls caved in from collapsed experiments, collapsed corridors blinking with corrupted surveillance footage. Monitors crackled with half-replayed warnings from two years ago:
—Subject unstable. Disengage sync chamber—
—Unauthorized glitch activation detected—
He passed a chamber sealed behind reinforced glass. The room pulsed with faint violet residue—raw glitch energy seeping from torn machinery. That room... that was where the prototype first synced with him.
He paused.
A memory stabbed forward—painfully clear.
Strapped to the sync pod, Serin standing at the console. Jin-Hwan's voice crackling over intercoms. Fear. Convulsions. Time shattering in his chest. And Serin, watching him break apart, data bleeding from his skin.
Then, silence.
The sync chamber lights shut off. They left him in the dark.
He had died there.
But something pulled him back—glitch and vengeance fused into a single purpose.
"Jae-Won."
He spun around.
Serin.
Again.
She had followed.
Her eyes flicked to the sync chamber. "You remember this place?"
"Hard to forget the room where I died."
"I tried to stop it—"
"Don't."
He walked past her, but Serin reached out, grabbing his arm. "There's more you need to know."
"Now you care about telling me?" His voice cracked—glitch energy flickering at the corners of his body like electric shadows. "Where was this energy back then?"
"I didn't know Jin-Hwan was planning to overwrite your identity," she said, her voice lower. "I thought we were just stabilizing your power. But he fed you into the glitch loop, Jae-Won. He was trying to overwrite time itself."
Jae-Won froze.
"You're saying he used my body as a sync point."
"He didn't just use you," she replied. "He cloned the glitch signature—he's been collecting data fragments from every failed loop. He's building something. Something monstrous."
That explained the distortions, the flickering echoes of other timelines Jae-Won occasionally heard when he used the glitch. Not just side effects—residue of failed loops. Alternate selves sacrificed to stabilize the perfect version of a god.
"Why tell me now?" Jae-Won asked.
"Because I'm next."
She handed him a security chip—a decrypted access shard. "This leads to the buried sync logs from the last run. You'll need them if you want to stop him."
Jae-Won stared at her. "What's your angle now?"
"I don't have one," she said. "But Jin-Hwan's already initiated Phase Zero. If you don't move soon, there won't be a world left to rewrite."
Before he could reply, the building shook violently. Dust fell from the ceiling. Lights snapped off.
Alarms wailed.
—Intrusion detected. Sync Vault breach—
Jin-Hwan had made his move.
Jae-Won gritted his teeth. "Then let's end this."
And this time, Serin didn't hesitate.