The corridors felt thinner now.
Not smaller. Closer.
As if the world was watching him not through surveillance — but through its very skin.
Elian moved fast, slipping between zones, following decaying threads where the system's grip was weakest. Each step carried weight, and his Threadsense burned with too much input — shapes behind walls, pulses under stone, echoes of data loops trying to restart.
He bit back a headache. Then another. By the third, his hands were trembling.
[Warning: Cognitive Load Critical]
[Lucid Trait Exceeding Stable Parameters – 16% Synchronization]
[Error: No Anchor Detected. Emotional Regulation Declining.]
He staggered into a ruined chamber — collapsed walls, shattered glyphs. It was quiet. Safer.
He dropped to one knee, forcing his breath into rhythm.
This wasn't a system attack. It was his own trait turning on him.
Lucid gave him clarity. Pattern recall. Resistance.
But the deeper it synced, the more it peeled back.
Not just the system's illusions.
His own.
Regrets he'd buried. Doubts he'd learned to ignore. Faces. Screams. Choices.
Run.
Leave him.
Don't look back.
"Stop," he whispered. "Not now."
But Lucid didn't care.
It wasn't a tool. It was a mirror.
He reached for the thread-glass node he'd hidden in his satchel — a focus tool, meant to ground unstable thought.
But before his fingers touched it…
The room shifted.
Not physically.
Thread-depth change detected.
A slow pulse moved through the floor — not a vibration.
A heartbeat.
From something buried.
The light dimmed. The threads in the walls curled inward.
A new message appeared.
Not blue. Not red.
Black.
[Thread Instability Spike: External Presence Detected]
[Classification: Unknown – System Unresponsive]
[Protocol Suggestion: Retreat Immediately]
Elian didn't move.
Something else had found him.
Not the system.
Not an echo.
Something beneath.
The presence seeped into the room like oil, thick and silent.
Then it spoke.
Not with words.
With intent.
A pressure pushed against his mind. Not painful. But curious.
What are you?
Elian's breath froze.
He didn't answer.
The presence pushed again.
Threadbreaker. Lucid. Variable. Unmarked. Interesting.
Then silence.
Then — a third pulse.
Offer.
A piece of stone rose from the floor. Not placed. Formed. Atop it, a splinter of threadlike crystal, dark as ink, humming with potential.
He stepped back.
Whatever this was — it wasn't system-sanctioned.
It was older.
Deeper.
And it was offering him a trait.
[Uncatalogued Trait Offered: Fraywalker (Experimental)]
[Warning: No system support. Trait exists outside stabilizing protocols.]
[Effect: Unknown. Risk: Absolute.]
Elian stared.
This was suicide.
Or salvation.
Or both.
He didn't reach for it.
Not yet.
But he didn't walk away either.
[Lucid Trait Progress: 16% → 18%]
[New Behavior Logged: Controlled Exposure to Unclassified Entity]
[Result: Lucid is learning.]
He sat down, back to the wall. Breath steady now. Mind sharp.
Fraywalker would wait.
Elian had made it this far by resisting easy power.
But now he knew:
The system wasn't the only god in this world.
And the deeper he went…
The more they'd start to notice.