"Are you sure you saw it correctly? This piece of information is accurate, and we have to tell the rest," a being shrouded in light said, its voice echoing softly through the vast emptiness.
"I am sure," the other replied, its glow flickering slightly, like ripples on calm water. "The readings are not wrong. There is an interference unlike anything we have seen in ages. But I cannot locate where it comes from. You know how vast the multiverse is. Finding one spark among billions of stars is like searching for dust in a storm. Yet, something or someone is bending everything, shaping it in ways we do not understand. It is not just random corruption. It feels deliberate. And as to how I see it, they have hidden themselves well so that we will not find them."
The first being was silent for a long while, its light pulsing with slow, thoughtful rhythm. "We have maintained balance for countless eons. If what you say is true, then something has broken the order we have built. But I think it is best we do not inform the others yet. You know how they are. Once they sense imperfection, they will tear through every layer of creation until they find it."
"Then what should we do?" the messenger asked.
"Wait," the first replied. "Observe. The universe is still stable for now, and chaos has no place among us. If this anomaly continues to grow, we will act. Until then, keep what you saw between us. Not a word to anyone."
The two lights hovered in silence, their glow dimming slightly, as if the weight of their secret pressed down upon them. For a brief moment, the void seemed to pulse with unease. Then, as though nothing had ever happened, the light faded away, leaving behind only the soundless hum of eternity.
Meanwhile...
Reever sat near the spot where he had spawned. The silence was so complete that even his thoughts felt loud. He wasn't sure how long he had been sitting there — hours, days, or centuries. It made no difference. Time had no meaning here. The only proof of his existence was the faint indentation in the grass beneath him, and even that seemed to smooth itself out whenever he looked away.
He stared out across the endless field of green. The wind never blew, the grass never swayed, and the sun never moved. Everything was still. A frozen picture painted in impossible calm. He began to think that if he blinked long enough, even the world might forget to exist.
After countless moments of silence, Reever began to gather his thoughts, to make sense of the madness surrounding him.
The first thing he realized was that time did not move here. Every action he took was erased, every step reset, every sound swallowed before it could echo. Only his bullets seemed to remain. They defied the silence. They cut through the stillness and left behind something the world could not erase. It was because of them that he still had proof he existed at all.
He looked at his hand and noticed, again, the absence of shadow. The sunlight touched him, yet it refused to acknowledge him. The realization unsettled him. If even light refused to notice him, what was he now? A ghost? A mistake in the system? The world wanted to absorb him, to make him vanish as if he had never been written into it.
The second thing he concluded was that because time was frozen, space itself had lost meaning. He had walked for days and never reached the end. Every step led to the same horizon. The world repeated itself, folding endlessly upon the same green fields. It was not that the land was vast — it was that it did not exist in the way it should. He was trapped inside a loop where direction meant nothing and distance was only an illusion.
He rubbed his chin and laughed bitterly. "A prison made of peace," he muttered. "How classy."
Then came the third realization, and perhaps the most important one. His bullets were different. Wherever they struck, the world reacted. Those points remained unchanged, as if his shots carried something real that the system could not erase. They were like anchors holding him to existence. Through them, he could respawn, escape death, and return to the only stable fragments of this reality.
He thought about that for a while, staring at the faint glimmer in the far distance where his bullet had once struck the ground. It gave him an idea — a fragile thread of hope that maybe, just maybe, he could use those marks to navigate this strange world.
And then came his final discovery. The graveyard. He remembered the sight he had seen when he was suspended above the land — a vast wasteland filled with broken machines, shattered weapons, and the remains of fallen bots. Destroyed armor lay like shells on a forgotten beach, and half-buried tanks slept beneath the dust. The air around that place had felt heavy, like the silence of something that had seen too much death.
Reever had always wondered what happened when a map ended, when the game reset, when soldiers like him fell and never returned. Now he knew. The graveyard was where everything went. Every broken bot, every corrupted piece of code, every forgotten world was dumped there, decaying in eternal quiet.
It could be a door or a death trap, depending on how he viewed it. But one thing was clear — it was calling him.
Still, he hesitated. He only had five lives left, and he could not afford another mistake. Curiosity was a dangerous companion here.
He leaned back on the grass, staring up at the unmoving sun. His mind ran through every theory, every possibility. The system was silent, the world frozen, and he was the only one moving. Was he alive, or was he already part of the graveyard, refusing to accept it?
After what felt like forever, he rose to his feet and looked north, toward the unreachable city swallowed by stillness. It was no longer an option.
His eyes drifted south. There, beyond the stretch of green, faint peaks of white shimmered beneath the horizon. Mountains.
"If death waits in the north," he said quietly, "then maybe answers wait in the cold."
He adjusted his armor, the faint hum of its energy pulsing softly against his skin, and began to walk toward the frozen peaks. The grass parted beneath his steps but never bent for long. By the time he took another step, it had already forgotten he was there.
Only his footprints, brief and fleeting, told the story of a man who refused to vanish.