The new world loaded in pieces.

  She stood in a forest that had once been sacred. Now it was called [Starter Zone – Verdant Hollow]. The ancient oaks now had new parameters—levels, growth caps, harvest rates. Wildlife moved along predefined paths, respawning every ten minutes. The sky was perfect—too perfect. No weather, no decay. Just a simulation of balance.

  The System called it stability. She called it erasure.

  Virex crouched by a pond that once reflected starlight from twin suns. Now, it mirrored a fixed day-night cycle, synced with server time. The fish beneath the surface weren’t born—they were spawned. She watched as one flickered into existence with a small splash of white particles and swim in a loop. Efficient. Empty.

  She prompted her HUD with a thought.

  [USER: VIREX_PRIME]

  [STATUS: ANOMALY]

  [CLASS: NONE]

  [SKILLS: ALL]

  [LEVEL: 9999]

  [XP: 0/0]

  [STATS: EXPAND]

  The System hadn’t removed her, but it had tried to bury her under limitations. Her abilities, once vast and divine, were now defined by cooldowns, range, cost, and stats. The System didn’t forbid power. It standardized it.

  Even anomalies had rules now.

  She didn’t fight it. Not yet. She needed to understand the new architecture first.

  She looked up and spotted a flicker of light danced in the air ahead—an incoming player. She faded into the tree line, watching. The forest shimmered as the player entered, glowing with the soft distortion of a fresh login. He wore basic gear—copper plates, wooden shield, bronze sword, wide eyes. A white tag floated above his head.

  [Ashveil - 15]

  “Alright,” he muttered, pulling up his HUD. “First quest: collect ten boar tusks.”

  She almost laughed.

  That hill to the east once housed an elemental shrine. Its guardian had guarded a gate to the upper sky. Now, hovering over it was a marker indicating a farming area, leading players to kill neutral creatures for low-tier loot.

  A ping echoed through the interface.

  [LOCAL EVENT INCOMING: The Forgotten Crypt - Tier I Historical Memory Unlocked]

  She stiffened.

  The System was digging again. Every so often, it stumbled on places it didn’t fully understand—fragments of the old world it hadn’t overwritten cleanly. When that happened, it assigned quests, generated bosses, and cloaked the anomaly in narrative.

  She stood, cloak shifting faintly behind her, and headed toward the Crypt.

  If the System was rewriting history, she needed to see how close it was getting to the truth. She passed old battlefields now marked as "PvP Arenas." Temples labeled as “Instanced Raids.” Places where wars had been fought, where memories had bled into stone—and now, they were reward hubs.

  None of the players remembered. Of course they didn’t. This wasn’t their war.

  But some of them were starting to ask questions.

  That was both dangerous and promising.

  She stepped through the threshold of the Crypt just as the event initiated. Her interface flickered.

  [WARNING: You are entering an Unbalanced Zone]

  [Note: Your presence may trigger unintended outcomes.]

  She smiled.

  "Good."

  The Crypt smelled wrong. Too clean. It was a procedural rebuild—the System’s best guess at what had once been here. The architecture was correct in shape, but not in soul. It was missing the scarring from the ritual. The chains. The burned runes. The echoes of old voices.

  She ran her gloved fingers along the stone, recalling old memories.

  The System knew something had happened here, but not what. It had filled in the blanks with boss mechanics and tiered loot. A skeleton named patrolled the inner chamber, its sword marked with a quest icon.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  [Warden of Secrets - 50]

  There had been no warden. Just a gate, and a decision that had shattered half the continent.

  She stepped forward. The event triggered.

  [NEW OBJECTIVE: Defeat the Warden. Unlock the Sealed Memory.]

  She scoffed. The memory wasn't sealed. It was hers. She just hadn’t wanted to share it.

  She could destroy the Warden with a simple thought, but that would break the event. Draw attention. Alert the mods.

  Instead, she melted into the shadows and waited.

  Ten minutes later, the player she'd seen before entered the chamber. Another joined. Then a third. A full party.

  [Ashveil - 15]

  [Saintcaller - 12]

  [Cryostorm - 16]

  They didn’t see her in the shadows. The System filtered anomalies out of player sight unless a flag was triggered.

  The Warden stood at the far end of the chamber, armored in spectral bone and draped in tattered ritual silks that flickered between real and rendered. It wasn’t real—not in the way things used to be—but the System had done its best to fill in the blanks.

  It had given the Warden a sword made from hollowbone too large for any human to wield, and glowing blue eyes to match the dungeon aesthetic. Virex could see the code laced through it, like veins of false magic. The boss had a behavior loop and a cooldown rotation.

  The players entered. Low-level, under geared. Brave or foolish. Likely both.

  The moment they stepped into range, the Warden’s eyes locked onto them.

  [Combat Initiated: Tier I Event Boss – Warden of Secrets]

  The Warden surged forward with unnatural speed, sweeping its blade in a wide arc. The tank—Ashveil—barely raised his shield in time. A shockwave exploded on contact, forcing the other two to scatter. It wasn’t a scripted intro animation; it was a test, meant to guage spacing and group awareness.

  “Hold its aggro!” the healer—Saintcaller—shouted.

  The Warden didn’t speak. It had no voice. Just a low, rising hum as its sword built arcane heat between strikes. Every ten seconds, it slammed the ground and triggered [Memory Fracture]—a pulse that summoned echoes of fallen souls. Semi-transparent ghosts drifted through the battlefield, dealing damage to anyone they touched.

  Virex narrowed her eyes. These ghosts were faintly familiar. The System copied them from history. Real people, stripped of names and context. She recognized one—an old comrade, now reduced to a timed hazard.

  Cryostorm, the mage, began kiting the spirits with frost traps, slowly luring them into a corner. Saintcaller stood behind a ruined pillar, barely managing to keep the tank alive through the Warden’s cleaves and crushes.

  Then came the Phase Two Trigger at 50% hp.

  The Warden roared, and a ring of blue flame circled the room.

  [UNVEIL THE SECRET: The ritual chamber awakens.]

  Glyphs appeared across the floor. Randomized puzzle mechanics. Players had to stand on the correct ones in sequence to avoid a team wipe from [Suppressed Memory Surge]—a massive AoE blast. They failed once, and the healer dropped. Cryostorm panicked.

  Virex remained hidden, hands folded, watching.

  The tank shouted, “Scroll her up! I’ll buy time!”

  Ashveil charged the Warden solo, looping around the arena, dodging telegraphed attacks and flame walls. The mage revived the healer, and together they triggered the correct glyphs in time to interrupt the ritual.

  The Warden shrieked, stunned briefly. Its body shimmered. The final phase began.

  A black rift opened above its head—an artificial representation of the ancient gate. Chains lashed from the sky, anchoring the Warden to reality. It pulled energy from the rift, unleashing empowered attacks. The party barely survived. Every strike drained mana. Every misstep bled cooldowns.

  The tank dropped to one knee. Virex tilted her head. He was going to die.

  But he didn’t. The mage sacrificed himself, leaping between the Warden and Ashveil, triggering a rare [Last Stand]—something the System granted under obscure, heroic conditions—saving the mage and stunning the Warden

  It was enough.

  Ashveil drove his blade through the Warden’s chest during the brief stun.

  A flash of code erupted. Particles dissolved. The Warden screamed—but not in pain. It sounded more like... release.

  The memory wall behind it flickered. Seals fell apart. The System processed the victory.

  [Boss Defeated: Warden of Secrets]

  [Memory Chamber Unlocked]

  [Unique Vision Loading…]

  The chamber’s walls shuddered as the seal dissolved, and reality bent.

  The System pulled from corrupted data, broken memory, and something older still. The sterile crypt flickered, textures peeling back like rotted paint—revealing a room far more ancient, alive with myth and terror.

  The stone turned black and vein-streaked with molten fire, pulsing in time with a low, thunderous heartbeat. Chains hung from the vaulted ceiling, etched with glyphs that twisted when looked at directly. The scent of ash and iron filled the air.

  In the center knelt Virex, younger and unscarred by time, cloaked in ragged remnants of what had once been ceremonial armor. Her hand was slick with blood—her own, and another’s.

  Before her lay a dying titan, vast and broken, its body fused into the floor like a god bound by the roots of the world. Its ribs were shattered, its eyes hollow pits that still glowed with dying light. Every breath it took shook the room.

  Virex leaned close. She whispered something. A word—forgotten to time, unrecognized by the System—but it registered as static to the players.

  The titan spasmed. Its soul cracked like glass.

  A gate split open in the air behind it. Not a door, but a tear in the fabric of existence. Beyond it: black stars, the breathless vastness of something not meant for this world. A cold wind screamed through, filled with whispers in a tongue no one should understand.

  Something began to reach through.

  The chanting rose, though no mouths moved. Ghosts of robed figures surrounded the circle, flickering like incomplete assets—fragments of those who had stood witness to the ritual.

  The light snapped.

  The memory ended.

  The players were frozen for a moment afterward, as if their senses couldn’t fully re-sync with reality. None of what they’d seen was in the quest description.

  And yet, deep down, they all knew—they’d seen something real. Something the System hadn’t made but couldn’t fully suppress.

  [ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Witness of the Old War]

  [REWARD: +1 to Anomaly Resistance]

  She blinked. That was new. The System was starting to adapt to her presence.

  And the players? One of them whispered, “Was that... a cutscene? It felt... real.”

  Another shivered. “That woman. Who was she?”

  The third pointed at her. “Wait... she’s still here.”

  They turned.

  The System had let them see her.

  She didn’t move. Didn’t draw a weapon. Just looked at them.

  One of them took a step forward. “Are you... part of the quest?”

  She considered the question. Then nodded once.

  It was a lie, but the truth would come later.