"Whatever is waiting at the Relay Point wasn't going to be as easy as a wolf."
I said it to keep myself alert, but honestly, I wished it was just a wolf. Wolves I could deal with. Wolves had health bars and predictable attack patterns.
The sky, however, was doing something that biology definitely couldn't explain.
"Ren," Cian whispered, tugging on my sleeve about twenty minutes into our trek north. "Don't look up, but... look up."
"I see it," I said, keeping my voice low.
Above the skeletal canopy of the Forest of Whispers, the grey clouds were moving in a steady drift from east to west. But every forty seconds, like a bad video edit, the exact same cloud—shaped vaguely like a crushed muffin—would snap back to the east and drift across again.
"It's a localized atmospheric phenomenon," Tybalt offered weakly, hiking his backpack up. He was sweating profusely, still coming down from the adrenaline of the ambush. "My grandma says weather in mana-zones gets stuck sometimes. Like a... like a clogged drain."
"A clogged drain doesn't reset the sun's position," Ria muttered, checking her compass. She shook it. "Needle's spinning. Magnetic north is having a seizure."
"Keep moving," Kaelen ordered from the front. He hadn't sheathed his sword. The holy fire had died down, leaving the blade scorched but clean. "If the mercenaries were guarding the perimeter, the Relay Point is close. We tag the flag, we win the race, we get out."
"And the dig site?" I asked, falling into step beside him. I held the magi-tech GPS device in my hand. The green dot was pulsing faster now.
"We assess," Kaelen said. "If it's dangerous, we seal it. If it's the Covenant... we bury them."
He sounded calm, but I could see the tension in his neck. He was expecting another fight.
We walked for another mile. The forest grew quieter. The usual sounds of mana-beasts—the chittering of spiders, the grunt of boars—faded away. It was replaced by a low, humming static that made my teeth ache.
Then, we passed the crooked tree.
It was a distinctive tree—a white oak split down the middle by lightning, looking like a tuning fork.
"Wait," Tybalt said, stopping dead. "We passed this."
"No, we didn't," Ria said, though she frowned. "We're heading straight North."
"We passed it," Tybalt insisted, pointing a shaking finger. "I tripped on that root. Look, there's the scuff mark from my boot."
We all looked. Sure enough, there was a fresh scrape on the mossy root.
"Maybe we circled back?" Cian suggested, pulling out his notebook. "If the magnetic field is distorted, we could be walking in a spiral."
"Let's test it," I said.
I picked up a large stone. I pulled a marker from my pocket—standard school supply—and drew a big 'X' on the tree trunk.
"Forward," I said.
We walked. Straight line. No turns. We marched for ten minutes.
The fog thinned ahead. A tree appeared.
A white oak. Split down the middle. With a big black 'X' drawn on the trunk.
We stopped.
"Okay," Ria said, her hand drifting to her dagger. "That's creepy. Are we in a genjutsu? Illusion magic?"
"No," Kaelen said. He reached out and touched the tree. "It's solid. It feels real."
I activated [Observer Vision].
The world turned into wireframes.
The trees ahead weren't just similar; they were identical copies. The rock formation to the left was the same asset as the one on the right, just rotated 90 degrees.
[Zone Alert: Infinite Narrative Loop.]
[Cause: Sector Boundary Failure.]
[The Story has failed to render the path to the Relay Point.]
The world hadn't loaded the next level. We were stuck in the loading screen.
"It's a loop," I said. "The path repeats itself because the forest doesn't know what comes next."
"The forest... doesn't know?" Cian looked at me, his genius brain trying to process that sentence. "Ren, you're talking like the world is a construct."
"For all intents and purposes, right now, it is," I said. "If we keep walking, we'll just keep hitting this tree until we starve."
"So how do we break it?" Kaelen asked. He didn't question the logic. He just wanted the solution.
I looked at the GPS device in my hand. The green dot was blinking furiously. It wasn't pointing North anymore. It was pointing... down.
"The device," I muttered. "The mercenaries used this to find the site. It doesn't track geography. It tracks the signal."
I held the device up. I turned slowly. When I faced a dense, thorny thicket to our left—a wall of briars that looked impassable—the device let out a high-pitched whine.
"There," I said, pointing at the thorns.
"Through the briars?" Tybalt asked. "Ren, those are Iron-Thorns. They'll shred our clothes and our skin."
"They aren't real," I said. "Or at least, they're the seam. The glitch."
I walked toward the wall of thorns.
"Ren, wait!" Ria shouted.
I didn't stop. I trusted the Observer text.
[Narrative Seam Detected.]
I stepped into the thorns.
I braced myself for the pain.
It never came.
My body passed through the sharp spikes like they were made of smoke. The texture flickered, and suddenly, I was on the other side.
"Whoa," I breathed.
The others gasped. To them, I had just walked into a meat grinder and vanished.
"Come on!" I yelled from the other side. "It's an illusion! Just close your eyes and walk!"
Kaelen came first. He stepped through, flinching slightly, then opened his eyes. He looked back at the wall of thorns, then at me.
"You have a lot of explaining to do when we get back to the dorms," he said quietly.
"Put it on the tab," I said.
One by one, the rest of the team stepped through. Tybalt came last, holding Cian's hand, eyes squeezed shut until Ria poked him.
"Open up, hero," she said. "You missed the magic trick."
We weren't in the forest anymore.
We were in a crater.
The fog was gone here. The sky was a bruised, dark violet, and the clouds were still. Dead still.
In the center of the crater stood the Relay Point—a tall stone pillar with the Academy flag flapping in a wind that didn't exist.
But nobody was looking at the flag.
We were looking at what was under it.
The ground around the pillar had been excavated. Massive piles of dirt and stone were pushed to the side. A hole, roughly twenty feet wide, had been blasted into the earth. It wasn't a natural cave. The edges were smooth, metallic, and glowing with faint blue runes.
Mechanical equipment—shovels, pickaxes, and mana-lanterns—lay scattered around the site.
"The Covenant," Kaelen whispered. "They were digging."
"And they found it," I said, staring at the hole.
We walked down into the crater. It was silent. No birds. No wind. Just the sound of our boots on the gravel.
We reached the edge of the pit and looked down.
It wasn't a deep mine. About thirty feet down, the excavation hit a floor. A smooth, black metal floor.
And in the center of that floor was a door.
It was circular, like a bank vault, etched with glowing lines of light that pulsed in a heartbeat rhythm.
[Objective Reached: Relay Point Alpha.]
[Hidden Objective Discovered: The Bunker of the First Author.]
"The First Author?" I whispered.
"What is that?" Cian asked, his voice trembling. "That metal... it's not steel. It's not mithril. It looks like... Obsidian Glass?"
"It's older than the Academy," Ria said. She knelt by the edge, picking up a discarded tool. "This pickaxe is stamped with the Covenant sigil. But look."
She pointed to a scorch mark on the ground.
"They tried to blast the door," she said. "And the door blasted back."
There were outlines of ash on the ground. Human-shaped outlines.
"That explains why Vance's mercenaries were patrolling the woods instead of digging," I said grimly. "The first shift died. They were waiting for reinforcements or instructions."
"And we just walked right into it," Tybalt said, stepping back from the edge. "Can we just tag the flag and leave? Please? I feel sick."
"We can," Kaelen said. He looked at the Academy flag on the pillar. "But if we leave this, Vance or his bosses will come back. They'll open it eventually. And if they do..."
He looked at the metal door. The dark mana inside him seemed to react to it, swirling around his hand.
"It feels familiar," Kaelen murmured. "Like the Abyss. But... colder."
I looked at the GPS device in my hand. It was vibrating so hard my hand was numb.
The screen changed. The map disappeared.
A text prompt appeared.
[Key Detected.]
[Insert Code?]
"Ren?" Ria asked, watching me. "That box is doing the thing again."
I looked at the door down in the pit. Then at the device.
"I think this isn't just a tracker," I said. "I think it's the key."
"Don't use it," Elara's voice would have said if she were here. But she wasn't.
"If we open it," I reasoned, mostly to myself, "we control what comes out. If we leave it, the Covenant gets it."
"Ren," Cian said, pointing at the door. "Look at the runes. They aren't magical runes. They're... numbers."
I squinted. He was right. The glowing lines formed sequences. 010101. Binary.
This was a sci-fi bunker in a fantasy novel. This was the "Source Code" fragment the Editor warned me about.
"We're going down," I said.
"Ren!" Tybalt protested.
"Just to look," I promised. "Kaelen, you tag the flag. That secures our win. Then we investigate."
Kaelen nodded. He walked to the stone pillar and slapped his hand on the magical sensor. The flag glowed green.
[Squad 7: Checkpoint Reached.]
[Time: 26 Hours.]
[Rank: 1st.]
"We won," Kaelen said flatly. "Now the real work starts."
We used the ropes left by the Covenant to rappel down into the pit. The metal floor hummed under our boots.
I approached the vault door. It was massive.
I held up the device.
The door let out a mechanical hiss. A beam of blue light scanned the device, then me.
[User: Unrecognized.]
[Observer Status: Detected.]
[Override Authorized.]
The heavy bolts retracted with a sound like thunder. The door groaned and began to slide open.
"Weapons up," Kaelen ordered.
The door opened fully.
We peered inside.
It wasn't a treasure room. It wasn't a dungeon full of monsters.
It was a small, sterile white room. In the center, sitting on a pedestal, was a single object.
A typewriter.
An old-fashioned, mechanical typewriter.
And sitting in the chair in front of it was a skeleton. It was wearing clothes that looked suspiciously like... jeans and a hoodie.
"What... is that?" Ria whispered, lowering her dagger. "Is that a torture device?"
"No," I said, stepping into the room. The air was dry and smelled of dust. "It's a writing tool."
I walked up to the skeleton. There was a piece of paper in the typewriter.
I looked at the text.
Draft 14:
The Hero fails. The world loops. I can't fix the Kaelen variable. He always turns. I'm locking this sector. Maybe the next guy can figure it out.
- The Architect.
My blood ran cold.
"The Architect," I whispered. The First Author. The guy who built this place before the novel was even written.
"Ren," Cian called out from the doorway. "Don't touch anything!"
I looked at the skeleton. In its bony hand, it clutched a glowing crystal shard. It pulsed with the same light as the "Edit" text in my vision.
[Source Code Fragment Detected.]
[Integrate?]
This was it. The power to fix the glitch.
But as I reached for it, the shadows in the corner of the room lengthened.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a voice said.
We all spun around.
Stepping out of the shadows—literally stepping out of the wall—was a figure. He wore a mask that looked like a blank page, and his body seemed to be made of flowing ink.
The Editor's quill from the bell tower floated beside him.
"You," I said.
"Me," the Editor said. His voice sounded like paper tearing. "You found the Architect's tomb. Good job. Now step away before you corrupt your save file."
Kaelen stepped in front of me, sword raised. "Who are you?"
"I'm the guy who keeps you from dissolving into pixels, Hero," the Editor said dismissively. He pointed a finger at me. "Ren. We have a problem. You opened the door. Now the Covenant knows exactly where we are. The beacon is lit."
I looked at the GPS device. It was flashing red.
[Signal: Broadcasting.]
[Incoming Hostiles: High Threat.]
"How long do we have?" I asked.
"Minutes," the Editor said. "But that's not the worst part."
He pointed to the typewriter.
"The Architect didn't just leave a note. He left a fail-safe. If that page isn't finished... the forest deletes itself."
I looked at the paper. The Hero fails.
"I have to finish the sentence?" I asked.
"You have to rewrite it," the Editor said. "And you have to do it while an army of anti-magic fanatics tries to kill you."
He tossed me the glowing quill.
"Welcome to the Writer's Room, kid. Start typing."
I caught the quill.
Outside the bunker, a horn blew. A deep, war-horn sound.
"They're here," Kaelen said.
"Tybalt, Cian, help Kaelen hold the door!" I shouted, sitting in the skeleton's chair. "Ria, guard my back!"
I looked at the blank space on the paper.
"Okay," I muttered, my fingers hovering over the keys. "Let's write a better ending."