Yuki remained at the vault longer than expected. With Selene's help, he didn't proceed to the next lab immediately. Instead, they examined the Nexus Tome, which unraveled encrypted logs and blueprints from the lost creators.
They constructed a field lab from scraps around the ruin. Each day brought new revelations—like how Glitch Pulse had a secondary function when amplified through Nexus energy, or how Selene's data manipulation let her subtly rewrite minor codes in corrupted beasts.
They trained. Slept. Fought off wandering Nullborns.
But the more they stayed, the more anomalies appeared. The walls trembled at night. One evening, a second moon blinked into the sky—then vanished.
"Reality is slipping here," Selene murmured. "Staying too long in one fragment makes it unstable."
Still, Yuki was reluctant to move. His dreams were clearer. His sync rate rose.
Sync Rate: 29%
Instability: 20%
Neural Thread Integration: Ongoing
In one dream, he saw Mira. Not as a heroine—but as a girl in a hospital bed, wires feeding into her.
"Do you remember me?" she asked, crying.
He woke in a sweat. What if the heroes... were people he once knew?