Alicia stood frozen at the rooftop entrance, hair tousled by sharp wind, her gaze torn between Jay and the sky that had stopped pretending to be normal.
The clouds above bent at impossible angles. Rays of sunlight flickered like old projector film. Even the wind had started to whisper... in binary.
> [Reality Layer 001–A1: Instability Detected]
[External Correction Unit En Route]
[Name: SYSTEM WARDEN – Sigil: "Null Flame"]
He was staring at the skyline now, at the faint traces of code that curled around the academy towers like vines on a dying tree.
"I didn’t expect the janitor to show up this fast," he muttered.
Alicia stepped forward, her voice trying to remain steady.
"Jay... what did you do?"
The moment the words left his mouth, a new sound echoed.
It wasn’t thunder. It wasn’t magic.
It was like a hard reset key smashing down across the world.
The clouds parted—not naturally—but like they were unzipped.
And through that scar in the sky came a figure cloaked in black fire.
No wings. No body. Just the outline of a man wrapped in equations, burning with nulllight, each step rewriting the rooftop tile he floated above.
Alicia gasped. Her magic reflexively activated.
But her flame died instantly.
> [System Lock Override: All External Magic Temporarily Disabled]
[Authority Signature Confirmed: WARDEN CLASS – ∆ Null Flame]
The Warden raised a hand.
Reality stopped glitching. Just like that.
The silence was worse than chaos.
The Warden didn’t speak with a voice.
> ❝You are a non-registered thread anomaly.
Unauthorized rerouting of Dreamer designation.
Violation of Layer Integrity Clause 3-A.
Your punishment is containment.❞
Jay scratched his head.
"Kinda rude for a first-time visitor."
The Warden raised his other hand—and Jay’s system howled in protest.
> [WARNING: Host Presence Tagged for Isolation]
[Sanity Check Failed – Begin Temporal Detachment?]
Alicia ran forward, shield forming, barely holding.
And in that blink, twelve million possibilities unfurled in his mind.
He chose the worst one.
"Fine," Jay said, cracking his knuckles, "you want to contain me?"
The Warden paused mid-cast.
"Let me show you what happens when a lazy genius stops pretending to sleep."
The rooftop shattered.
Every pixel, tile, and molecule folded backward.
The world inverted like a card trick.
And Jay grabbed the collapsing script, twisting it with lazy precision.
The Warden screamed—not in pain—but in denial.
> [ERROR: Host rewriting Instance Mid-Process]
[Impossible without—]
> [Dreamer Seed: ACTIVE]
[New Authority Path: Opened – THREAD ID: Slumbering God (BETA)]
The Warden’s flames flickered.
Jay, hovering just above broken time, looked bored.
"Told you. Don’t wake me unless you wanna get rewritten."
Then he flicked his finger.
The Warden vanished into a spiraling loop of corrupted nulllight and banished timelines.
The rooftop, somehow, rebuilt itself beneath his feet.
Alicia was still there—shaken, wide-eyed, her sword now trembling in her hand.
"Don’t worry," he said. "That guy was just a glitch-cleaner. The real problem’s still dreaming."
Far below, in a forgotten sub-layer of the academy...
...a cracked crystal pulsed once.
Rei’s face twitched in his sleep.