The Prototype Shard pulsed in Erevan's hand like a living heartbeat, erratic and unpredictable. Its colors shifted constantly—blue, then red, then a sickly static white—as if it couldn't decide on its true form. Holding it was like cradling a fragment of reality that wanted to escape his grasp, alive yet somehow… wrong. The energy throbbed through his palm, tingling up his arm, making his nerves buzz as though every tiny hair on his body had suddenly gained sentience.

Kaelith's eyes never left it. Her bow was at the ready, fingers tight against the string, shoulders tense. "That shard… it's not just loot. I can feel it," she warned, voice sharp. "It's dangerous."

"Yeah, join the club," Erevan muttered, spinning the shard between his fingers. "Every shiny thing I've picked up so far either blows up, screams, or summons eldritch poultry. Honestly, this one's an upgrade in the chaos department."

The shard pulsed again, almost like it was laughing at him. Simultaneously, his system window flickered violently, alerts cascading across his vision.

[System Notice: Anomaly Detected]
[Prototype Shard attempting to interface…]
[Warning: This action may corrupt stability]
[Proceed? Y/N]

Erevan groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. "Oh, here we go again. Another 'may or may not kill me' prompt. Just my luck."

Kaelith's gaze sharpened, her bow lowered slightly but her voice carrying steel. "Don't even think about it, Erevan."

"Come on," he said, smirking despite the tension knotting his stomach. "What's the worst that happens? I explode? I already survived that once."

He hesitated, thumb hovering over the YES prompt. This time, the warning wasn't a joke; it throbbed with a very real threat.

Sir Quacksalot flapped furiously onto his head, quacking in protest—or encouragement—puffing up against the shard's pulsing glow.

Kaelith's voice cut through the tension like a knife. "Erevan. Look around you."

He did, and his stomach dropped. The forest was no longer just crooked—it was unstable. Trees bent at impossible angles, rivers ran upward into the sky before dribbling back down like melted paint, and the air shimmered like fractured glass, vibrating with every pulse of the shard. Shadows of themselves flickered in and out of reality, as though the world itself was a failing hologram.

Kaelith's voice softened, though it carried weight and urgency. "This world is collapsing faster than we thought. If that shard accelerates it…"

The ground trembled beneath them. Before either could speak, a new system alert blared across Erevan's vision:

[World Event Triggered: Shard Resonance]
[Nearby Entities Corrupted: 3]

From the warped treeline emerged three figures. Players—or what had once been players. Their armor shimmered like cracked glass, faces twisted in frozen expressions, movements jagged and unnatural, like puppets on broken strings. Their eyes burned with static, vacant and cold.

Kaelith cursed under her breath. "Corrupted."

The lead one opened its mouth. Instead of words, streams of raw code spewed out like black smoke curling in the wind.

Erevan's stomach sank. "Okay. Talking is off the table. Fantastic. We're communicating through corrupted binary now. Perfect."

The corrupted charged. Kaelith's bow hummed, arrows glowing with digital fire, slicing cleanly through the glitching forms—but the entities barely slowed. They reassembled in flashes of glitch-light, their shapes snapping back together with a sickening pop, like broken toys reset by a cruel child.

Erevan exhaled sharply. "Guess we're doing this the hard way." He tossed the Prototype Shard into the air, letting its pulse sync with the beat of his racing heart.

[Ability Echo Activated]

A surge of energy coursed through him. His new trait, the Echo, connected to the corrupted entities' movements. He flickered unpredictably, slipping between frames of reality, his body phasing in and out as if the world couldn't decide where he belonged. His fist shot out, connecting with the first corrupted's chest—not with brute force, but by syncing with its glitch. The player's body exploded into polygons, scattering like shards of broken glass across the forest floor.

Erevan staggered, blinking. "Whoa. Okay. That was… new. And kind of awesome."

[Echo Effect: Unstable. Random Mutation Triggered.]

Pain shot up his arm as his hand warped, momentarily sprouting a second spectral limb before snapping back. "And there's the downside," he muttered, teeth gritting. Every pulse of the shard seemed to pull more of the corrupted world into him, threatening to overwrite his very existence.

The second corrupted leapt with jagged precision, blade raised. Erevan ducked instinctively—but his vision split, fracturing into two possibilities: one where he dodged right, another where he ducked left. His body wavered, suspended between two realities for a fraction of a heartbeat.

[System Glitch: Echo Timeline Fracture]
Outcome: Randomized.

Blinking, Erevan found himself behind the corrupted figure, which swung its blade through empty air. A grin split his face. "I could get used to this."

Kaelith dispatched the last corrupted with a clean shot to the head, but her jaw was tight, eyes flicking nervously to the pulsing shard. "That shard is bleeding into you. You can feel it, don't you?"

As if to prove her point, the Prototype Shard floated back into Erevan's palm, pulsing with an almost smug rhythm, echoing the beat of his own heart.

[Prototype Shard Integration: 12%]

Erevan's smile faded. "Integration? Oh no. Nope. We are not doing possession storylines today."