The message from the truth-seeker had come through a dead-drop, a layered series of encrypted data packets hidden within the city’s public weather-monitoring network. It was a method Zane recognized from his past life—a signature of the man known only as “Glitch.” The meeting point was a defunct mag-train maintenance tunnel deep in the Rustways, the industrial underbelly of Argentis. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and recycled air, a metallic tang that clung to the back of the throat.

  Liam, a silent mountain in his new gear, stood sentinel at the tunnel’s entrance, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Evie had already vanished, a ghost melting into the labyrinth of pipes and conduits that lined the cavernous space. Zane stood further back, cloaked in a simple, dark-gray utility coat, his features lost in the gloom. He’d left the [Codex of the First Glitch] back at their base; bringing it would be like carrying a lighthouse beacon in the dark.

  A scuttling sound echoed from the far end of the tunnel, followed by a series of frantic, metallic clicks. A figure emerged from the darkness, a man so thin and wiry he looked like a bundle of cables held together by a stained jumpsuit. He moved with a nervous, twitching energy, his head darting from side to side. Thick, multi-lensed goggles were perched on his forehead, and his eyes, magnified and wild, scanned the darkness with an intensity that bordered on paranoia. This was Jax “Glitch” Hawker.

  “You the client?” Jax’s voice was a high-pitched, rapid-fire burst of words. “The one who knows things? The ghost in the machine who tipped me off about the Sunken Temple’s architectural flaw? That was a beautiful piece of work, by the way. A recursive logic error in the pressure plate sequencing. Chef’s kiss. Magnificent!”

  He came to a stop twenty feet away, his datapad already in hand, fingers flying across its surface. “My network says you’re new. Guild tag ‘Phantasm.’ Three members. No public record. No digital footprint. You’re either very good or you don’t exist. Which is it?”

  From the shadows, a voice answered, low and synthesized, stripped of all human inflection by a modulator Zane had built. “We exist where it matters.”

  Jax’s head snapped toward the sound, his eyes narrowing as he tried to pinpoint the source. He couldn't. The voice seemed to come from the shadows themselves. “A voice modulator. Cute. And your two friends there,” he gestured vaguely toward Liam and the spot where Evie wasn’t, “are running some high-end stealth-field gear. Military grade, but the energy signature is… weird. Smoother. More efficient.”

  He’s good, Zane thought, a flicker of professional respect cutting through his cold focus. He saw through the basic enchantments and identified the underlying structure. He doesn’t just see the surface; he sees the code beneath it.

  “You wanted to meet,” the modulated voice continued. “You said you found a place where the System is breaking.”

  Jax’s manic energy spiked. He practically vibrated with excitement. “Breaking? Oh, it’s so much more than that! It’s hemorrhaging! I’ve been tracking micro-glitches in this sector for weeks—rendering errors, NPC pathing loops, the usual stuff. But this… this is a full-blown catastrophic failure. A dungeon where the data is corrupted at the source. A place the locals are calling the ‘Echo Chamber.’”

  He projected a holographic map into the air between them. It showed a cave system a few miles outside the city. “Players go in, but they don’t all come out. The ones who do come back talking about ghosts. Not System-generated specters, but… copies. Data-echoes of players who died in there, trapped in their final moments. The System isn’t just killing them; it’s copying their data and leaving the corrupted files running on a loop.”

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  Zane remained silent, letting Jax’s enthusiasm fill the space. He already knew about the dungeon. In his first life, it had been discovered two years later, and the [Soul-Tether Locket] found within had become an artifact of legend. But he needed to see how much Jax truly understood.

  “You’ve analyzed the data stream?” Zane’s voice modulator asked.

  “Of course I have!” Jax scoffed, insulted by the question. “The ambient data is a mess, a total garbage fire of corrupted packets. But the echoes themselves… their code is almost perfect. Too perfect. They’re running on a subroutine that’s completely isolated from the main world server. It’s a rogue process, a cancer in the System’s code.”

  Zane processed this. Jax’s analysis was flawless. This man was more than a hacker; he was a digital pathologist, and the Oracle System was his patient. It was time to set the hook.

  “Your analysis is correct,” the modulated voice said. “But you missed something.”

  Jax froze, his fingers hovering over his datapad. “Missed something? Impossible. I’ve run every diagnostic I have. My gear is top of the line.”

  “Your gear has a flaw,” Zane stated flatly.

  A flicker of anger crossed Jax’s face. “My gear is custom-built. There are no flaws.”

  “There is a recursive error in the firmware of your scanner’s primary energy lens,” Zane’s voice echoed, cold and precise. “It creates a harmonic distortion when scanning high-frequency data streams, like the ones emanating from that dungeon. The distortion is minute—a 0.02% data loss—but it’s enough to mask the true nature of the entity causing the echoes. You see a rogue process. You’re missing the processor.”

  Jax’s face went pale. He stared at Zane’s shadowy form, then frantically began typing on his datapad. The air hummed as he ran a deep-level diagnostic on his own equipment. His jaw slowly dropped open. On the screen, a single line of code flashed red: ERROR: Recursive Harmonic Resonance Detected.

  It was a ghost in his own machine, a flaw so deep and subtle that no one, not even he, could have ever found it. But this mysterious figure had identified it just by being near him.

  “How…” Jax whispered, his manic energy replaced by a profound, reverent awe. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “We are Phantasm,” the voice modulator replied, the name now carrying an immense weight. “We don’t just see the game. We see the source code. And we know you’re one of the few others who can see it, too.”

  Zane let the statement hang in the air, a perfect lure for a mind like Jax’s.

  “I’m offering you a position, Jax,” Zane continued. “Access to our resources. Funding that will let you build any piece of equipment you can dream of. And in return, you give us your loyalty. Your network. Your eyes and ears. We are going to dismantle the System from the inside out, and you will have a front-row seat to watch the code bleed.”

  Jax’s eyes, wide and shining behind his goggles, were locked on the shadow. For a man who chased glitches, who hunted for the cracks in reality, this was not a job offer. It was a holy scripture. It was the ultimate truth he had been searching for his entire life.

  He didn’t hesitate. “I’m in,” he breathed, his voice filled with the fervor of a true believer. “Gods, yes, I’m in. What do you need? Where do we start?”

  The deal was done. The most valuable intelligence asset in the world was now his.

  Progress, Zane thought, the cold satisfaction a familiar comfort. Tangible, measurable progress.

  “You can start,” Zane’s modulated voice commanded, “by giving us everything you have on that haunted dungeon. We’re going inside.”

  Jax’s grin was wide and manic. “Excellent! Because there’s one more thing I found, even with my flawed scanner.” He pulled up a grainy image on his datapad. It showed a spectral, ghostly locket hovering in the deepest part of the dungeon, radiating a unique energy signature.

  “The echoes seem to be drawn to this. Protecting it, almost. I think the entity at the core, the ‘processor’ as you called it, is using this as an anchor.”

  Zane’s mind raced. It was just as he remembered. The [Soul-Tether Locket]. An artifact that could store a backup of a person’s soul, preventing permanent death. A piece of equipment so powerful it could change the entire calculus of his war. In the first timeline, its discovery had started a world war between the top guilds. This time, it would belong to Phantasm.

  “This ‘processor’ you mentioned,” Zane’s voice cut in, a new layer of cold purpose in the synthesized tone. “It’s a Soul-Eater Specter. And that locket is its phylactery. Get us the entry schematics. We’re going hunting.”