Elderfall had always been quiet after midnight.
But tonight, it felt… hushed.
Not in a peaceful way. More like the town was holding its breath. As if the stones in the streets were waiting for something to stir beneath them.
Lyra and I didn't speak much on the way to the chapel. We didn't need to. The SYSTEM glitch in the grove had shaken us both—her for what it showed, me for what it didn't.
It hadn't been a lag spike.
It had been a pause. A full stop in the middle of a live world. A moment that had no explanation, even in ten years of knowledge.
Someone—or something—is looking back now.
The chapel sat on the eastern edge of Elderfall, half-sunken into the hillside. Most players missed it. The doors didn't open unless two conditions were met: you had a magic-based class, and you had encountered a SYSTEM notice with a direct anomaly flag.
I met both.
[Location Unlocked: Chapel of Echoes]Instanced Zone – Access Level: Variable | Player Count: 2/2
The air changed as we stepped inside.
The ambient music dropped away, replaced by silence so thick it made my head buzz. The walls shimmered faintly—like they were coded to fade in and out of existence depending on where you stood.
Light from the stained glass windows didn't cast shadows.
Instead, it absorbed them.
Lyra stepped forward first, her voice low. "This place isn't just off the map—it's not in the game files. I checked last week. There's no data string for this building."
I nodded. "It's generated procedurally when you meet certain SYSTEM triggers. Anomaly tags. Sync levels. That sort of thing."
Her eyes narrowed. "So the game just makes stuff up for you now?"
"No," I said. "Not for me. For people like me."
"Loopwalkers."
The word hung in the air.
I hadn't said it aloud. Neither had she. But we both heard it.
A figure sat at the altar.
Hooded. Masked. Motionless.
Not an NPC. Not a player tag I recognized. The SYSTEM didn't register them at all—no name, no affiliation, not even a presence in the party field.
Just:
[?????? – Listener (Status Unknown)]
Lyra's hand went to her dagger.
I raised mine slightly. "Wait."
The figure slowly turned their head toward me.
They didn't speak. But something did.
[WHISPER: You were not meant to return.][WHISPER: But you remember. That makes you dangerous.][WHISPER: And useful.]
My breath caught.
This wasn't a normal dialogue trigger. There were no branching options, no text prompts. Just sound. Real sound. Filtered through my pod's neural audio, laced with raw code static.
The Lexicon at my side trembled—just a ripple of motion, like a page caught in the wind.
Then the whispers stopped.
The figure pointed to the center of the chapel floor, where a circle of broken glyphs burned faintly into the stone.
I stepped forward. The moment I crossed the boundary, my interface glitched—just for a second. Everything around me flashed with negative light, and a rush of air stole the warmth from my limbs.
[System Event: Anomaly Recognition Thread – Active]You have heard the Call. You are marked.Trait Gained: Listener's Insight (Passive)Effect: When observing glyphs, chance to detect pre-scripted anomalies increases.Warning: SYSTEM attention will escalate.
The chapel trembled.
The figure stood without sound. Then vanished—just a ripple of empty code, as if they had never been rendered properly to begin with.
Lyra looked pale. "That wasn't a player. That wasn't an NPC either."
"No."
"So what the hell was it?"
I looked down at the still-glowing floor.
"Something that knows I shouldn't be here."
We left the chapel in silence.
The town was still quiet. Still breathing beneath itself.
Just before we parted for the night, Lyra hesitated.
"You said before… you'd done this all once already."
I nodded.
"Then why didn't you win?"
Her voice wasn't accusing. Just curious. Just… tired.
"I didn't know what I was fighting," I said.
Now I did.
Back in my dorm, I lay awake for hours.
The pod hummed beside me. My class notes blinked unread on my terminal. The Lexicon interface shimmered on my projection screen, displaying the new trait at the top of the page like a brand.
Listener's Insight.
Not a power.
A label.
Something had tagged me.
And I didn't know how many more would follow.