The laboratory didn't just explode; it imploded, collapsing inward as if the space it occupied had decided to stop existing. As the Execution Squad members floated helplessly toward the ceiling, their golden spears pixelating into harmless digital dust, Ren felt the agonizing strain of the rewrite. His vision blurred, white noise screaming in his ears, and a notification flickered in the corner of his mind. This wasn't a message from the System, but an internal diagnostic from his own newly formatted consciousness.
[REWRITE THRESHOLD REACHED]
[CRITICAL SYSTEM STRAIN: 88%]
[COGNITIVE OVERHEAT IMMINENT]
"Ren! We have to go! Now!" Maki's voice cut through the high-pitched hum of the disintegrating servers. She was standing at the base of the stairs, her dragon-bone blade sheathed, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. The heavy wooden beams were groaning under the weight of the Sendai soil above, ready to reclaim the space that had been hidden for a decade.
Ren took one last look at the terminal. The recording of his father had finished, the hologram dissolving into a single, glowing data-shard that floated above the keyboard. He lunged forward and grabbed it—the physical manifestation of the Source Code. It felt cold, vibrating with a frequency that made his teeth ache. He shoved it into his pocket and sprinted for the exit. Just as his boots hit the dew-slicked grass of the surface, the ground behind them settled with a dull, heavy thud. The house of the Logic-Smith was gone, buried as if it had never existed, leaving only a rectangular scar in the earth.
The Sight of the Void
The group didn't stop running until they reached the ridge overlooking the Sendai valley. They were covered in soot, sweat, and the fine white powder of deleted data. Their breathing was heavy, clouding in the cool morning air. But as they turned back to look at the landscape they had just fled, all conversation died in their throats.
"What... in the hell is that?" Nobara whispered. Her hammer slipped from her hand, thudding into the dirt, but she didn't seem to notice.
In the distance, toward the heart of Sendai, a section of the forest and three entire residential blocks were simply... missing. It wasn't a crater. There was no fire, no rubble, no smell of smoke or broken gas lines. It was a perfect, jagged hole in reality. Inside the boundary of the hole, there was nothing—no light, no shadow, no depth. It was a flat, grey void that looked like an unrendered texture in a corrupted video game. It was a visual "Null," a piece of the world that had been uninstalled.
"That's a Zone-Zero," Ren said, his voice sounding hollow even to his own ears. He could feel the data-shard in his pocket vibrating in sympathy with the hole. "My father called it Entropy. The firewall the Architect built is failing, and the 'outside' is starting to leak in. The world is losing its logic."
The Hunger of the Grey
As they watched, a stray crow flew over the jagged edge of the Zone-Zero. The moment its beak crossed the invisible boundary, the bird didn't die in the traditional sense. It didn't fall to the ground. It simply ceased to be. There was no blood, no feathers; the concept of "bird" was deleted from that specific coordinate in space. The bird was gone from the world's memory, leaving no trace that it had ever flown.
"The Architect's System was a cage, but it was also a shield," Yuta said, his expression darker and more somber than Ren had ever seen it. He gripped the hilt of his katana until his knuckles turned white. "The Culling Game was a horror, but it was harvesting energy to patch these holes. We stopped the tyrant, but we left the door to the void wide open. We traded a prison for a vacuum."
"We need a plan, and we need it before that hole gets bigger," Megumi stated. His shadows were twitching at his feet, retracting toward him as if even the darkness was afraid of the Grey. "If these zones spread, there won't be a Japan left to protect. Ren, that data-shard... does it tell you how to fix this? Does it give us a way to patch the sky?"
Ren looked down at his trembling hand. He focused his vision, seeing the "lines" of reality around his friends—bright, vibrant strings of intent and cursed energy that bound them to the world. But when he looked at the Zone-Zero, there were no lines. It was a true zero, a mathematical impossibility.
"I have the Source Code, but it's incomplete," Ren admitted, his voice tight. "I can 'Edit' small things—I can turn a spear into flower petals—but I can't rewrite a whole province. To fix the firewall, we need the other three shards. My father's logs mentioned three other Logic-Smiths who went into hiding when the System went live. They each held a fragment of the Master Key."
The Rogue Protocol
Before they could discuss their next move, the air above them rippled with a familiar, distorted chime. It was the sound of the Ghost Station's payphone, but the sound was localized, coming from a small, levitating drone that had just de-cloaked ten feet away. It was a sleek, black piece of tech that looked far more advanced than anything the Jujutsu world typically used.
The drone projected a holographic screen into the air: [MESSAGE FROM: THE PATCH].
"The elders are moving faster than anticipated," the modulated, gravelly voice spoke from the drone's hidden speakers. "They have declared martial law in the 'glitched' sectors, but they aren't trying to fix the Zones. They're trying to harvest them. Their research teams have discovered that 'Entropy' can be distilled into weapons—ammunition that doesn't just kill, but deletes. It bypasses all Cursed Techniques because it removes the target's ability to exist."
"Of course they have," Maki spat, her voice dripping with venom. "Why save the world when you can weaponize its extinction? Those old fossils would rather rule a graveyard than share a world they can't control."
"If you want to stop the first expansion of the Grey," The Patch continued, the drone's light flickering red, "Go to the Aokigahara Forest. The second Logic-Smith, a man known as the 'Compiler,' is currently being hunted by an elite 'Eraser' unit of the Execution Squad. If the Elders get his shard, they'll have the power to delete anyone they deem an 'Error' with a single strike—including all of you."
Ren looked at his team. They were exhausted, branded as top-tier criminals, and facing the literal deletion of their existence. Yet, in the eyes of Maki, Nobara, Megumi, and Yuta, he saw no hesitation.
"We're going to Aokigahara," Ren said, his eyes glowing with a controlled, cold violet light that seemed to push back the morning shadows. "We find the Compiler, we secure the second shard, and we start rewriting the map on our terms. If the elders want to use Entropy, they can find out what happens when the Editor hits 'Undo' on their entire existence."
As the drone sparked and vanished, the group turned toward the south. The sky over Japan was flickering now, the stars appearing in the wrong constellations as the world began its slow, terminal descent into the Grey. They were no longer just sorcerers; they were the last debugging team for a reality on the brink of a total crash.
Author note...
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