Silence.
Not peace.
Just the kind of silence that feels held together by threadbare code, ready to snap at any moment.
Kaito and Misaki moved cautiously across the fragmented landscape of Legacy Zone 9-Beta. Around them, memory shards floated like glass panes—classrooms, streetlights, cracked chalkboards, half-rendered faces frozen in time. Everything was muted, washed in pale blue light. Unreal.
"It's like walking through someone's broken dream," Misaki said softly.
Kaito nodded. "This entire zone was scrapped during the early updates. It was supposed to be deleted."
"Then why is it still here?"
"Because the system never deletes anything. It just buries it."
They reached a floating platform shaped like a courtyard. Trees with pixelated leaves shimmered overhead, frozen in a gust that never finished blowing. A rusted swing creaked—no wind. No force.
Just a leftover animation loop.
Misaki stepped toward a bench that hadn't fully rendered. Her hand passed through it.
She pulled back, eyes wide. "I'm… flickering again."
Kaito checked his tablet.
[NEURAL STABILITY: 71%]
[SUBJECT: MISAKI AOKI – CONTAMINATED CODE: ACTIVE]
[SYSTEM TRACE: PASSIVE MODE]
"She's still inside you," Kaito said quietly.
Misaki swallowed hard. "The Proxy?"
"No. You. But the system injected behavioral overwrite code into your pattern. It's like… a second layer trying to rewrite your instincts."
"So I'll lose myself?"
"Not if we reset your core identity file. But to do that…"
He turned slowly.
"…we need to find the archive ghost of your original self."
Misaki frowned. "That's not a real thing."
Kaito gave a tired smile. "Neither was waking up in a hospital and still hearing the system whisper in my head."
They moved on.
As they passed through a shattered hallway floating in the void, Kaito stopped suddenly.
A figure stood at the far end.
Not Proxy.
Not corrupted.
Human.
It was him.
A younger version.
Thirteen, maybe fourteen. In his old school uniform. Smiling. Real.
Kaito stepped forward.
But the boy didn't react.
He just turned—mechanically—and began walking away.
"Wait!" Kaito called out, chasing after him.
The boy disappeared through a flickering wall of static.
Kaito passed through it without hesitation.
And found himself back in the original school cafeteria.
Only—no one moved.
Hundreds of students sat at tables.
Frozen.
Every face turned toward him.
All their eyes completely black.
Then, in unison, they whispered:
"Anomaly."
The walls bent inward.
The windows shattered.
And something enormous began to emerge from the ceiling.
Not human.
Not machine.
A shape made of cables, faces, and fragments of memory—all fused into a pulsing, rotting form.
The cafeteria twisted violently.
Misaki screamed.
Kaito grabbed her hand.
"No more running."
He opened the override shell and slammed his palm onto the tablet.
A glowing white barrier exploded outward, shattering the illusion.
The cafeteria vanished.
They stood alone again—back in the void.
Breathing heavily.
Shaking.
Misaki looked at him, wide-eyed. "What was that?"
Kaito's expression darkened. "The system's fail-safe ghost. A hallucination protocol designed to scare anomalies back into submission."
"It's using memories as weapons."
"And it's getting smarter."
He turned toward the flickering shards ahead, one hand still holding Misaki's.
"I don't know how many layers deep we are anymore," he whispered. "But if we want to end this—we have to find the part of the system that still believes it's human."