Ari fell asleep only briefly.
Or so he thought.
The moment his eyes closed, the world did not go dark—it bled into pale grey light, like chalk smudged across the veil of reality. When he looked around, there was no room, no bed, no Sanctum.
Just an endless, white-washed void.
And he was floating—weightless, thoughtless, rootless.
Until he wasn't.
Until he stood.
The Middle of Life and Death
He stood in what resembled a forest—but not one born of nature.
This place was composed of half-formed code-trees, their branches twitching with strings of glyphs. The wind whispered in runes, not air. A single path stretched forward, flanked by dying roots and phantom light. In the air, hollow echoes of forgotten spells pulsed faintly, rippling through the atmosphere like breathing language.
"This is where things that were never meant to be… still are," a small voice said.
Ari turned.
There, sitting on a glyphstone, was a child no older than seven—barefoot, eyes wide, hair pure white. But the strangest part was their aura. They were… blurred. Like a memory, or a concept still deciding how to exist.
"Are you… a Dreamscript projection?" Ari asked.
The child smiled faintly. "No. I'm not a spell. I'm the consequence of all of them."
They stood and took a step forward, and the trees glitched in response. A subtle hum vibrated through the ground, matching the resonance Ari had heard once when opening a forbidden codex.
"You exist because the world has boundaries," the child said. "I exist because someone crossed them."
Ari narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?"
The child tilted their head.
"I am the embodiment of the System—the part that watches, records, and corrects. But only in this layer. In higher code, I am just a subroutine. In lower code, I am law."
"You're… the System?" Ari asked, uneased.
"No. Not all of it. Think of me as its dream of itself. You are in the place where broken spells go to sleep, Ari Solen."
The air pulsed.
[System Exception: Anomaly Recognition]Entity: Ari Solen — Threadless Anomalous NodeThread Affinity: NULL-ORIGIN CONFIRMEDAction: Pending Review
The child sat again, legs crossed like an ancient monk inside a young body.
"You were not supposed to exist, Ari. You interfere with cause. Not effect. That makes you dangerous."
"Then why am I here?"
"Because you're about to cast something that breaks the recursion layer. You must understand the risk. Even if you don't remember this fully when you wake."
Ari looked at his own hands. His fingers glowed faintly—threads of golden light trailing like traces of ancient memory. They looked like code-silk.
"What happens if I don't stop?"
The child didn't answer. Instead, they reached into the air and drew a shape. A spiral of descending glyphs, each one unfamiliar.
"This is what you'll cast in three days," they whispered. "And when you do, someone will die who wasn't meant to."
Ari stared. "Is this prophecy?"
"No. This is the code predicting itself. You change the code, Ari. But that means the code tries to change you back."
Before the world could fade, Ari asked: "Why are you a child?"
The System-child smiled with a sadness too large for their form.
"Because the System is still learning how to be alive. Just like you."
And with that, the glyph-forest shattered—like a spell collapsed mid-cast—and Ari awoke.
He shot upright in bed, drenched in sweat. Eluin was sitting nearby, scribbling on a notebook of Dreamcode. She looked up.
"You okay? You were murmuring glyphs in your sleep."
Ari didn't speak right away.
His hands were trembling. Not from fear.
From recognition.
He had remembered the spell.
A spiral.
A name.
A warning.
"I met the System," he said quietly.
Eluin froze. "…What?"
"It looked like a child," he murmured. "And it said I was about to break something I can't fix."