The words still echoed in Jae-Won's head as he stepped through the portal.
> "It's time to break the clock."
The ripple sealed behind him like a wound closing, and silence swept in—cold, humming, absolute.
He stood now in the ChronoCore.
This was no mere server room. It was a cathedral built out of code and circuitry, its ceiling stretching infinitely upward, walls etched with the glowing script of a thousand timelines. Every step forward lit the floor beneath him—hexagonal tiles pulsing like a heartbeat.
Mirae's voice buzzed again in his earpiece, distorted by static. "Jae-Won, you're… off the grid. I can't trace your coordinates anymore."
"Then I'm in the right place," he muttered, eyes scanning the shifting architecture.
Above him, ghostly images flickered—recorded data from player sessions, AI behavior trees, memories from dev consoles. The very blueprint of ChronoCorp lived here.
But what chilled him wasn't the grandeur. It was that the system didn't react. No sirens. No alerts. It knew he was here.
It was waiting.
He stepped deeper, and suddenly the floor beneath him collapsed—not into darkness, but into memory.
Jae-Won hit the ground hard, breath knocked from his lungs. The world reformed around him, familiar and wrong all at once.
A hospital corridor.
Fluorescent lights. The faint smell of antiseptic. The low beeping of heart monitors.
No…
He staggered to his feet.
> This isn't real.
This is a reconstruction.
But it felt real.
A child's voice echoed down the hall. His voice. "Mom?"
The younger version of himself darted past—a glitching projection, seven years old, barefoot, terrified. He watched the boy throw open a door at the far end.
And then, her scream.
The same scream from the orb. A woman's scream, sharp and full of something primal.
Jae-Won ran.
The room he burst into was frozen mid-scene: scientists in panic, monitors blinking red, and in the center—his mother strapped to a chair, bleeding from the nose, her hands clawing at invisible restraints. Her eyes locked onto his as the projection of young Jae-Won stood frozen in fear.
A voice called out from the side.
Male. Cold. Familiar.
"Subject 004's anomaly is destabilizing. Begin purge."
Jae-Won turned toward the voice—and saw Sang-Ho.
But younger.
Clean-cut, clinical. Wearing a white coat instead of combat gear.
Jae-Won's fists clenched. "You were there."
The real Sang-Ho. From the original experiment.
Suddenly the memory shattered like glass, and Jae-Won was yanked back into the ChronoCore. His heart pounded as his knees hit the floor. The lights above turned blood red.
> ALERT: CLASS-7 GLITCH DETECTED
SECURITY OVERRIDE NULLIFIED
INITIATING COUNTERMEASURES…
He stood just in time to see guardians manifest—coded sentries with glowing weapons, their forms warping like corrupted firewalls.
Ten of them.
One him.
Perfect.
Jae-Won raised his hands, and this time, the Glitch didn't spark or fizzle.
It roared.
A ring of distortion surged outward. One guardian froze mid-strike and crumbled into jagged static. Another's sword shattered before touching him.
He ducked, slid between two sentries, and tore a weapon from one's hands—rewriting its form mid-air. It transformed into a jagged glitch-blade, alive with pulse-code and raw memory.
His mother's scream. His first kill. Serin's betrayal. They pulsed through the blade like echoes in steel.
He fought like code unraveling itself—bending rules, skipping frames.
By the time the red lights dimmed, only one sentry remained.
Jae-Won stepped forward, blade at his side.
"Where is the Heart of the Core?"
The sentry tilted its head, then replied—not with a command prompt, but a whisper that chilled him deeper than code ever could.
> "She's already waiting for you."
Jae-Won froze.
"She?"
Before he could ask more, the sentry decompiled—its body folding in on itself like a vanishing line of logic.
Behind him, the wall split apart, revealing a glowing cor
ridor.
And at the end…
A figure stood waiting in the light.
Serin.
But not the Serin he knew.
To be continued…