Erend's breath trembled as he stood alone in the silent aftermath of the System's texts. The air around him felt still and sharp suddenly, as if the world was holding itself back from collapsing under the weight of what he had just learned.

A cold pressure crawled beneath his skin. He felt fear. A raw, primal kind that told him he should run and escape, find some corner of existence where the truth could not reach him. Even when he didn't know what had caused that.

Yet another emotion burned beneath it, and it was fierce anger. He was angry at the secrets forced on him, and the system was revealing only fragments that made everything incomplete.

He clenched his fists.

"I feel like I should flee from this. But…" He thought, the words whispering like a tremor across his mind.

But he couldn't.

Curiosity gnawed deeper than fear and rage. It wrapped claws around his chest and dragged his mind.

He realized at last that running would change nothing. Whatever the System was and what it had been hiding was now inside him. And in his desperation, with nowhere else to stand, Erend simply waited.

If the System wanted to show him something more then let it show him everything. He wanted to know.

The vision in front of him flickered again.

A sharp, cold chime echoed in his skull.

[New Directive Available.]

Erend flinched. "What… what do you mean?"

No answer came. Only the distorted chime again. Then another line appeared.

[Immediate Task Required.]

A chill slid down his spine.

"Required? Right now?" His voice in his mind filled with disbelief. With all the disasters that were happening right now he couldn't leave all that. He needed to be here.

A sense of dread tightened around him, thick as suffocating mist. "If it wants me somewhere else, I won't be there to stop anything."

But the System didn't care.

The interface inside his mind fractured like shattered glass. Light burst outward. The ground vanished under his feet. A violent force yanked him backward, dragging him through a spiraling vortex of distorted colors.

He wasn't walking through a portal like used to do. He was being dragged out of reality by something powerful.

His vision snapped into focus a moment later.

He realized that right now he was standing in a room.

The walls were made of shimmering panels displaying thousands of flowing symbols. None of them were stable, all shifting like living scripts from unknown languages.

The floor resembled glass. Floating platforms emerged and sank soundlessly, and above him hung a sphere of fractured light like a sun shattered into a thousand holographic blades.

The entire place radiated divinity but also mechanical. Like the core of a cosmic machine.

A flicker formed in front of him.

Something stepped out of the shifting symbols. It looks like a humanoid outline but its shape was impossible. Its faces overlapped and its limbs layered and folded into themselves.

It had no fixed features, only a silhouette woven from pure System data made of symbols that keep moving around.

The figure tilted its head, and a voice that sounded male, female, and mechanical at once spoke gently.

"Call me Veyrun."

Erend swallowed hard.

Veyrun continued, "I am a fragment, only a shard of what you call the System. I cannot show you all of what I am yet. It is not safe for you."

The figure's body glitched and reformed between syllables.

"But you must understand a little to understand enough for what comes next."

Erend forced breath into his lungs as the impossible presence stood before him.

Veyrun's outline rippled again.

Then it spoke again. "The System you carry is not a simple tool. It is a grand design, an architected mechanism woven by the one we call the Creator."

Erend's eyes widened. "The Creator… made this?"

"Yes. That's what you need to know for now," Veyrun replied, its head tilting as overlapping faces flickered in and out of existence. "But their true purpose… will not be revealed to you. Not yet. You are not ready, your brain is not stable enough for such knowledge."

Erend felt his heart hammer painfully. He almost stepped back. "Why? Where are they now?"

Veyrun's form dimmed, as if bowing under an invisible weight. "Gone. Vanished from the layers of reality. Not dead or just dormant… simply gone. Their absence is the reason the System operates alone, guided only by its last directives."

Fear trickled into Erend's veins again. The idea of something powerful enough to make all this—and then disappear—felt impossibly heavy.

"So all this time," he whispered, "the System was running itself?"

"Yes. But that is not the danger you should fear."

A sharp tremor went through the room as Veyrun raised a glitching hand. Symbols burst from its palm like scattering fireflies.

"There exists another being," it said quietly, "Called the Void Architect."

Erend stiffened at the name alone. He didn't know why.

"The Void Architect is a creator as well who is almost equal in power but has the opposite intent. The first Creator built the System to guide, refine, and grant growth… the Void Architect built its own version."

Veyrun paused, letting the words sink in.

"Another System?" Erend asked. "Different from mine?"

"Very different," Veyrun answered. "The Void Architect's design twists potential into hunger and growth into greed. Evolution into corruption. It is not inherently evil… but its nature invites ruin."

Images flickered on the floating panels. Shadows, monstrous shapes, and a world that collapsing inward.

"That second generation of systems," Veyrun continued, "is what touched Zerathul. What changed him into what you now see."

Erend's breath caught. "So… the System inside me isn't the same as his?"

"No." Veyrun's voice firmed. "What you carry is the Original. The First. The pure design crafted before the Void Architect ever rose."

Relief washed over Erend, shaky and thin but real. His shoulders loosened.

"Then… the Dungeon World?" he asked quietly. "The people inside. The ones I defeated. Were they—"

"Imprisoned?" Veyrun finished for him. "No. They are there voluntarily. They are souls who are seeking redemption. You did not punish them. You helped them progress."

A long breath escaped Erend, tension easing from his chest. "Good… good. I thought I might've been—"

"You have not wronged them. Don't worry about it," Veyrun said.

The light in the room dimmed, and Veyrun's tone grew heavier.

"But the Void Architect's creations… they are another story. Among its many failed experiments, three succeeded and raised into power beyond expectation."

Three silhouettes appeared behind Veyrun—one blazing like a star, one warped and monstrous, one blurred as if half-erased.

"One ascended and became a god of its own world. One fell and transformed into a boundless monster. And one vanished without a trace."

Erend swallowed, staring at the three shapes.

"And Zerathul?" he asked, voice tight.

Veyrun's form glitched violently.

"Zerathul became something else. He was one of the Void Architect's heralds, chosen to spread its system across worlds. But greed overtook him. He stole fragments of the Architect's designs."

The panels flickered with scenes of Zerathul tearing through realms, absorbing power that didn't belong to him.

"He twisted the system to feed only himself," Veyrun said slowly. "What he is now… is the result of consuming more than any being was meant to hold."

Erend felt a cold shiver crawl up his spine.

"So that's what I'm facing," he murmured, almost to himself. "A herald who stole a god's system and turned it into… that."

Veyrun nodded, its body flickering like a candle in a storm.

"You must stop him."

—