CHAPTER 1: The First Fracture

You can’t erase what the system depends on.

That was my last thought before the light disappeared.

And then — nothing.

Not blackness. Not silence. Not even pain.

Just… non-being.

Like I’d been unplugged from existence, but left conscious enough to know I shouldn’t be.

Time didn’t pass. Or maybe it passed a thousand times. I couldn’t tell.

There was no body to feel. No senses to orient me.

Only a single constant: the fury in my core.

That rage — that refusal — was the one truth they couldn’t delete.

Then something changed.

Like a corrupted equation trying to solve itself, the void stuttered.

I felt myself knit back into shape, fragment by fragment — atom by atom.

Not like healing.

More like… reassembly.

Reality around me flickered into place — broken geometry, floating debris, recursive light looping in all directions.

A ruined platform beneath my body — barely real, glitching at the edges.

Above, a sky that stretched into nothing and everywhere at once.

This wasn’t a place.

It was an error.

A fracture between worlds — where discarded code, dead universes, and forbidden anomalies drifted like wreckage.

And I was here.

I coughed hard, blood splashing from my mouth. Pain hit me like a delayed tsunami.

My arm — still gone. My ribs — cracked. My mind — fractured.

But I was alive.

Not erased. Not dead.

Rejected.

The gods tried to erase me — and the system refused.

I pushed myself upright, breathing raggedly. Every movement burned, but I welcomed it. Pain meant I still existed.

I looked around. The place shimmered: a quantum graveyard of aborted realities.

Fragments of cities floated in the distance — upside-down towers of glass and stone suspended in a sea of distortion.

And something… was watching me.

Not the gods.

The system.

The Scalar Grid.

It wasn’t just code.

It was alive in its own way — conscious, not like a mind, but like math itself.

And it was reacting to me.

The air shifted.

A ripple pulsed through the broken platform.

Equations flared into view for a second — glowing symbols written in light and logic, spiraling around me.

Scalars.

The constants behind everything. The invisible framework.

And I was touching them again — without tools. Without tech.

Just by existing.

Was I controlling them?

Or were they responding to what I had become?

Either way, it meant one thing:

They failed to kill me.

Now… they’ll wish they had.

I look around me once more finally taking where I was banished to

“Nothing here feels real — the sky stutters, gravity shifts when I move, even time lags…”

He stops, breathes deeply.

“…No. It’s not the place.”

He touches the air. A ripple spreads, like static through water.

“It’s me.”

“I can feel it — numbers under everything. Not math. Constants. Rules.”

“Time. Gravity. Decay. Identity… They’re not fixed here. I can see the values behind them.”

Another ripple. Symbols appear — not language, but logic.

“And somehow… I can change them.”

His eyes narrow.

“I don’t bend the world with strength…”

“I rewrite its code.”

Pause.

“I can control scalars.”

I’ve been walking for hours… or seconds.
Time doesn’t follow the rules here.
Shadows twist and writhe impossibly. Some stretch like claws tearing at the sky. Others… cast no shadow at all.

The platform beneath me ends abruptly—cold metal fading into nothingness. A faint hum vibrates through the air. Beyond, broken worlds drift: upside-down cities, forests frozen mid-fire, a shattered moon stitched back wrong.
It’s a graveyard of errors—every broken reality dumped into one place.

Each step ripples through the warped ground. Sometimes the system reacts—glyphs flare beneath my feet like pulsing code, then vanish.
I can’t tell if I’m moving forward… or if the world is folding around me.

But I’m not alone.
Something watches. Sharp. Cold. Neither god nor Grid. Something else. Something that knows this place intimately.

Then I hear it.
Not a growl. Not quite a voice.
A whisper caught in static:
“You’re not the first they threw away.”

I turn slowly.
She stands on a jagged glass platform, no more than twenty meters away. Barefoot. Thin, almost fragile. Long blonde hair braided tight, soft bangs just above piercing eyes.

She doesn’t look like a warrior or scientist. Her patchwork clothes—scraps from different realities stitched together. One sleeve armored, the other silk.

But her eyes—soft lavender flickers glow faintly, strange and stunning. Eyes that don’t belong to any world.

I force myself to look away, stepping cautiously forward.
“Who are you? What’s your name?”

She watches me silently, then the platform beneath her slides smoothly toward mine—obeying her will.

“My name’s Saaya Asato.”
Her voice is calm and steady—balanced perfectly between sweet and sure, enough to make me wonder if it’s real.
She tilts her head.
“You know, it’s polite to introduce yourself first.”

Caught off guard, I blink. “You’re right. Sorry.”

I straighten, gathering myself.
“My name’s Sukara Meika. I was banished by the Five Gods. I ended up here… and now I’m trying to find a way out—”
I trail off, glancing at the fractured sky and warped terrain.
“…realm? Is this even a realm?”

Saaya nods slowly.
“It was,” she says.
“But not anymore.”

I stare, confused. “What does that mean?”

She gestures to the broken landscapes drifting around us.
“This is where the gods send their mistakes. The ones who don’t fit. The ones they fear.”
“This place is made of erased things—people, timelines, ideas. The system’s trash bin.”
Her voice drops. “Once you’re here, you’re not meant to leave.”

I look up at the shattered sky, absorbing her words.
“Wait,” I say. “If this is where they send those they fear… then you were banished too.”
I turn to face her.
“So why haven’t you escaped?”

Saaya’s gaze drifts—distant, like she’s replayed this conversation a hundred times.
“I tried,” she says softly. “For years. There are cracks—thin spots in the walls. But every time I get close, the system rewrites them. Like it’s watching. Learning.”
She meets my eyes.
“But it’s different with you. When you arrived, I felt the world shift.”

I frown. “You think I can break it?”

She shakes her head.
“No. I think you already have. The moment you stepped in, everything started changing.”

She breathes steady.
“You’re not just a reject like the rest. You’re something the system doesn’t understand.”
A pause.
“And that scares it.”

Silence swallows the air. The platforms beneath us shudder, trembling as if reality itself is tearing.

“Do you feel that, Saaya?” I ask, bracing myself.

She says nothing. Her head turns slowly toward the darkness behind me.

Then we both see it.

A black knight steps from the shadows. A twisted figure—armor pitch black, scarred across the right side of its helmet. A sword rests at its waist, but its fists look sharper—scratched and battered from countless battles.

“It’s a Reclaimer,” Saaya whispers, stepping back.
“A part of the realm’s correction protocol. When I first arrived, I saw one pulverize another reject—hammering him long after he passed out. Ribs crushed to mush. Blood everywhere. All I could do was hide.”

She backs toward the platform’s edge, voice trembling.
“My power… it’s not for fighting, Sukara.”

I meet her gaze, a flicker of resolve rising.
“Thanks for the warning. Back home, I was a scientist—maybe a genius. But I also know how to fight.”

I look at the knight, stepping away from Saaya.

Before I focus, Saaya yells, “Wait!”

What happens next shocks me. My missing arm—the one the god took—returns!

I spin, staring at her. “Did you do this?”

She nods, eyes glowing fiercely—a radiant purple light pulsing through her. Then it fades.
“You should fight better with two arms instead of one,” she says with a small smile.

“Thanks, Saaya. I have more questions, but those can wait.”

I glance back at the black knight. It stands still—confident, arrogant.

“Oh, I get it,” I mutter, anger rising.
“You have the same arrogance as those false gods—looking down on us, not even striking first.”

I grit my teeth.
“Know this: by waiting, you’ve already lost.”
“Since I got here, I’ve been calculating a thousand ways to use my abilities. And you, standing there like a god-tier statue—it’s pissing me off.”

Behind me, Saaya steps forward, voice low.
“How can you even beat that? I’ve seen what it can do.”

I don’t look back. I grin.

“Gravity isn’t a force. It’s a scalar—a number the system uses to define pull. Change the number…”

I clench my fist.
“…and you change the weight of reality.”

I lock eyes with the black knight. Neither of us moves.

Then—it launches, straight at me like a bullet.

My first fight in another realm begins.