The portal rippled like a membrane of frozen static, flickering with half-remembered images—his mother's lullaby, the first day of the VR boot camp, the moment Serin kissed his cheek before betrayal set in.
Jae-Won inhaled, then stepped through.
He emerged in a vast hall of mirrored code. Every surface reflected fragmented versions of himself—versions that failed, bled, died, or betrayed. The silence was thick, suffocating, until a voice—neither mechanical nor human—spoke from all directions at once.
> "Welcome, Subject 003. You've finally earned the right to meet your maker."
Jae-Won narrowed his eyes. "Show yourself."
A figure began to form, piece by piece, code knitting itself into the silhouette of a human. But as the glow faded, it wasn't some faceless technician or high-tech overlord.
It was him.
Jae-Won stared at the figure—identical down to the scar on the brow. But this version was older, sharper-eyed, and radiated the calm of someone who had seen too many timelines burn.
"Is this a joke?" Jae-Won asked.
"No joke," the Architect said, his voice calm. "I'm you. Or rather, what you become in one of the failed futures."
"…Failed?"
"Yes. The one where you chose revenge above evolution. Where you unlocked your glitch too late. I was terminated after crashing the Temporal Cradle."
The room began shifting, revealing dozens of floating files—alternate timelines, alternate endings. In some, Jae-Won died young. In others, he became a pawn of Serin, or a weapon of Sang-Ho. In one, he was never born at all.
"You're the reason I was coded into the system," Jae-Won muttered. "You embedded yourself into ChronoCorp."
The Architect nodded. "Not just into the system. Into the very blueprint of the game. I failed, but I buried a seed—you—deep in the code. You're the last deviation I could spark before deletion."
Jae-Won stepped forward. "Then tell me why. Why the Glitch? Why the betrayal? Why let me go through that hell?"
The Architect's face darkened. "Because you needed to fracture. The Glitch only activates under immense emotional pressure. Love, betrayal, death… it's not just data. It's the soul's error-handling protocol."
The walls around them pulsed—scenes from earlier chapters playing in flickers: Serin's tearful lie, Sang-Ho's smirk during the final trial, the look in Mirae's eyes when she first called him more than a player.
"I forged this paradox," the Architect continued. "A self that could out-code the game by not knowing it was a game. But now… you've come too far."
Jae-Won felt the tension shift. "What do you mean?"
"I mean the Glitch is waking. And once it's fully awake, you will no longer be human. You'll rewrite timelines with a thought. And the system… the Cradle… it will see you as a virus."
Jae-Won's jaw clenched. "Then I'll rewrite the system before it rewrites me."
The Architect didn't smile. He only lifted a hand, revealing a pulsating orb—half memory, half code.
"This is your final key. A memory I locked away."
Jae-Won reached out. As his fingers brushed the orb, a scream tore through his mind—a scream he hadn't heard since childhood. A woman's scream. A name. Jae-Won… Run!
He fell to his knees, gasping.
"That's the night you first Glitched," the Architect whispered. "You've always had it. But they erased it. I restored it."
Jae-Won rose shakily. "Who was that woman?"
"Your mother," said the Architect. "And her death was no accident. It was ChronoCorp's first experiment."
Silence.
Jae-Won's heartbeat turned cold.
"I'm done asking questions," he said. "Now I hunt answers."
The Architect faded. "Then remember—every glitch is a story the system couldn't control."
The portal reformed behind him, this time leading to the outer corridor of the ChronoCore—a server cathedral known only to founders and devs.
Mirae's voice crackled in: "You're heading to the source, aren't you?"
"Yeah," Jae-Won said. "It's time to break the clock."
To be continued…