Chapter 4: Patch Fragment – The Girl Who Shouldn't Exist
> Location: Crash Sector 9
> Stability: 12%
> Surveillance: NONE
> Admin Access: DENIED
---
"You're not supposed to be here."
Her voice was calm. Empty. Like it had forgotten how to care.
I sat up, muscles aching, glitch-static buzzing in my bones. The Crash Sector was a graveyard of deleted code — twisted buildings hung upside down, rivers flowed sideways through floating memory shards, and the sky was a mirror shattered into orbit.
And standing in front of me was *her*.
Barefoot. Hooded. One eye glowing with a soft blue light, the other cracked like broken glass. She wasn't just human. She was made of **code**, patched together like a walking version of this broken place.
> [Analyzing Entity…]
> Name: ???
> Classification: Patch Fragment
> Status: Uncompiled
> System Rank: None
> Threat: Unknown
> Dialogue Options: UNLOCKED
She stared at me like she was trying to read the source code behind my skin.
"Are you… another rollback ghost?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I'm worse."
---
Her name was **Lyra**.
At least, that's what she called herself. She said she'd been here "since the rollback that broke the world." A failed patch. A test NPC. An AI built for a version of DevWorld that never made it past internal testing.
"I was supposed to be deleted," she said quietly, tracing her finger across a floating log file in the air. "But the system forgot me. Now I live here — where all the forgotten pieces go."
"And you know what I am?"
"You're the Final Patch Note," she said. "You're the system's last chance to fix itself."
She paused.
"Or its executioner."
---
> [Quest Updated]
> Title: Patch or Perish
> Objective: Find and Assemble Patch Fragments
> Progress: 1 / ???
I didn't fully trust her, but she had something I needed: **knowledge**. And possibly the ability to survive in this broken part of the world. But something about her didn't sit right.
She didn't blink. Didn't breathe.
Like she was waiting for a command that never came.
"Why are you helping me?" I asked.
"I'm not," she said. "I'm just curious what happens when the final patch meets a failed one."
She turned and walked away.
> [New Sub-Zone Unlocked: Root Memory Chamber]
"Come," she said. "If the Observer is after you, you'll need more than luck and rollback."
I followed her into the chamber — an ancient, corrupted vault deep underground, filled with terminal echoes and decayed developer notes.
And there, on the wall, was a flickering mural made of data blocks.
A timeline.
> [EARTH v1.0: Real World]
> [EARTH v1.1: Gamified Layer Initialized]
> [EARTH v1.9: Full Conversion Begins]
> [EARTH v2.0: DevWorld LIVE]
> [EARTH v2.1: FATAL ERROR – Patch Rejected]
My blood ran cold.
This wasn't a game.
This world… **used to be real.**
---
> [Flashback Memory File Unlocked]
> Play fragment?
> YES | NO
I chose **YES**.
And then I saw it.
Skyscrapers dissolving into dungeons. Cities overwritten with code. People turned into NPCs. Players becoming gods. Admins fighting admins. The rollback that broke it all. And at the center—
—**me.**
Before I died.
Before I was reborn.
In the final seconds of Earth's real version…
I was the last player to log in.
---
> [Main Quest Updated]
> Find the Root Admin
> Reason: Only they can compile you.
And in the silence that followed, Lyra said:
"If you don't find him… you'll stay uncompiled forever."
And the world will never be patched.