CHAPTER 78: WHAT THE FRACTURES REMEMBER

The corridor flickered.

A thin sliver of starlight poured through the cracks in the dream warped world, bending time and silence as the Observer’s fragmented will scanned the changes. But it was not just the Observer watching now.

From a small ripple in the temporal distortion, Alicia Renvale stood alone— separated from Jay and Rei for the briefest of moments. Her hand hovered over a terminal made of floating runes and translucent petals. Her heartbeat thudded— not out of fear, but purpose.

"This... is part of him," she whispered, brushing her fingers against a glowing name tag: J. Arkwell. Data streamed from it like faded memories, silent but heavy.

Behind her, a glint of blue static shimmered, forming the outline of Rei Kazuma’s previous self —silent, incomplete, but present. Alicia did not flinch. She turned her head just slightly, enough to acknowledge the echo.

"You’re trying to save him too, aren’t you?" she asked. No reply came but her intuition had already answered.

Far beyond the veil, a piece of the Observer fragment stirred in agreement.

Three paths. Three hearts. And now, one uns

table future.

_______

The new world was stitched together with memories, glitches, and remnants of truths too heavy to bear.

Jay opened his eyes— not in the corridor, nor the warping reality of before— but in a sunlit classroom. Familiar desks. Chalk-stained boards. The hum of a soft breeze brushing curtains like it was a lazy afternoon again.

He blinked.

"No way... this isn’t—"

"Homeroom’s starting, Arkwell," said a voice. Ms. Liara, the teacher he barely remembered, strolled past his desk like this was any other day. Her face was unpixelated. Her voice carried warmth. Not simulated. Not scripted.

Real.

Jay slowly stood. Students around him —some familiar, others from long-buried memories— chatted, joked, passed notes. No System window hovered above his head. No combat stats. No mission logs.

Just... normal.

His fingers curled into his palm. "What kind of trap is this?"

But something else tugged at the edge of his consciousness— something deep and pulsing like a half-forgotten melody.

Across the classroom, Alicia Renvale sat at the window seat, scribbling absentmindedly in her notebook. She looked up, her expression faltering just a second as her eyes locked onto Jay’s.

She remembered.

Rei sat two seats away, the edges of his form occasionally flickering. No one noticed. Except Jay. Except Alicia. Except those who had touched the ruins of the System and come out changed.

Jay stepped toward the window, ignoring the murmurs and giggles around him. This world was too perfect. Too clean. And when he touched the glass, the illusion cracked.

For just a second, behind the glass, he saw it—a hallway of broken code and frayed threads, leading into a pulsing white door marked: Root Fragment 3: Genesis Core.

Jay backed away.

Alicia stood up. Rei didn’t.

Instead, Rei’s voice echoed without his lips moving. "They’re watching again. Not the Observer. Something deeper. Something older. We’re the echoes now."

Jay gritted his teeth. He hated this. These loops. These false starts. But this time...

He remembered how to cheat.

____

The classroom shimmered.

Sunlight filtered in golden streams through windows too clean, too precise. It smelled like old chalk, fresh ink, and nostalgia.

Jay Arkwell sat alone in the back row.

To any outsider, it was a peaceful afternoon at Vija Academy—but something was off. The light didn’t cast shadows quite right. The clock ticked, but each sound had an extra beat. The students around him spoke, but their mouths didn’t quite move.

Jay didn’t need to check his system window to confirm what his instincts already screamed: This wasn’t real.

He leaned back, watching the perfect scene unfold like a stage play. No glitches. No storms. No fights. Just... peace. But not the kind he trusted.

Then came the whisper—not from outside, but from within.

"You wanted to rest... didn’t you? This is what rest looks like."

Jay turned toward the source, but there was no one there. Only a flicker of code trailing off his own shadow.

So then why do I feel like I’m still running?

A flicker. The chalkboard glitched.

Jay’s fingers curled into fists. He didn’t stand up. Not yet. But the weight returned to his eyes— the sleepy boy, waking once again.

_____

Jay walked.

Not in the sense of movement. The world wrapped itself around his feet, shifting, correcting, looping with every step. The simulated academy now unraveled behind him like paper caught in the wind.

The walls pulsed with faint static.

The once-familiar halls of Vija Academy had become sterile. Empty. The echo of a thousand phantom footsteps followed him—a memory of life that never was.

His system window blinked.

[Genesis Protocol – Residual Layer Detected]

[Core Authority Access: Suspended]

Jay narrowed his eyes. "Still locked out, huh?"

A voice laughed from nowhere. Maybe from everywhere.

"You’re not supposed to be awake yet."

Jay turned. No one. Just endless hallway.

But the voice returned, distorted.

"They always choose the dream. You’re the anomaly. Always have been."

Jay didn’t bother responding. He walked forward again. Until...

He saw Rei.

Or the ghost of him. Standing beneath a broken light, eyes hollow, robes torn. A fragment.

Rei looked up.

"You should have stayed asleep."

"You first," Jay muttered.

They stared at one another, the silence stretching like taut thread. But this wasn’t truly Rei—just a piece. A memory. Maybe a test.

Jay reached forward.

Rei’s eyes flashed.

The corridor split.

A path veered left, paved in flame. The other, right, spiraled into a tunnel of glass and ink.

[System Message: Divergence Point Selected]

Jay chose neither.

Instead, he turned around—and began walking back.

The simulation screamed.

The world didn’t understand rejection.

Classrooms blinked into negative. Lockers exploded into streams of binary. An invisible siren wailed.

And yet, Jay walked.

The Observer stirred.

Above all of it, watching through fractal lenses, the Observer leaned forward in curiosity.

"He shouldn’t be able to do that."

The fragments of the Genesis Core pulsed faintly.

But something else stirred deeper— a will older than the System.

---

Meanwhile: Alicia Renvale

Somewhere outside of Jay’s fractured simulation, Alicia floated in a suspension chamber of light and soundless water.

[System Sync: 97%]

Her body trembled, strands of hair swirling like threads of gold.

In her dreamscape, she stood on a battlefield of books and memories. The sword at her hip felt real.

Her eyes blinked open.

"Jay... you’re rewriting the map again. Aren’t you?"

The light around her pulsed in agreement. Then flickered.

A rift tore open above her, an

d a voice echoed:

"—Requiem of the Unwritten."

She reached forward.

And everything—

—flashed.

_____

Meanwhile, in the back of the world—

The Observer fragment drifted through the walls of unreality, trailing sparks of corrupted memory and rewritten time. Its thoughts flickered in and out of form, twisting with emotion that shouldn’t exist.

"Subject 03: Rei Kazuma. Unstable. Subject 02: Alicia Renvale. Deviant potential rising. Subject 01: Jay Arkwell. Control parameters breached."

The fragment didn’t act. Not yet. It watched.

Because something or someone was rewriting the very script.

A faint chime sounded in the echo chamber of the Observer’s network.

[ERROR: UNAUTHORIZED COMMAND. PATHWAY UNLOCKED.]

The Observer paused.

Someone was entering the Genesis Core.