It didn't feel like cold steel.
It felt like burning ice.
I looked down. The sword had gone through my hoodie, through my skin, and out my back. By all medical logic, I should be dead. I should be fading to black.
But I wasn't.
I watched, mesmerized, as the wound started to... fuzz.
Instead of blood pouring out, pixels spilled from my chest. Little squares of grey and white static drifted into the air like dandelion seeds. The sword blade itself began to vibrate where it touched me.
ZZZRRRT.
A loud, digital tear ripped through the soundscape.
Seraphina’s eyes went wide. She tried to pull the sword out, but it was stuck. Not stuck in bone—stuck in the geometry. The blade had clipped into my character model.
"What..." she whispered, her composure finally cracking.
I looked at my hand. My fingers were flickering. One moment they were flesh, the next they were wireframe, then raw code.
[System Alert: Host Body Compromised.]
[Anomaly Detected: Entity 'Arthur' is converting to File Type: CORRUPTED.]
[Invincibility Frames Active.]
I laughed. It was a wet, gurgling sound, but it was a laugh.
"You can't kill me," I whispered, grinning with teeth that felt like they were dissolving. "I'm not a character, Seraphina. I'm a glitch."
I grabbed the blade with my bare hand. My palm didn't bleed; it just hissed with static.
`> Command: [Force_Push]`
`> Target: Self`
`> Vector: Away`
I didn't have the SP to push her. So I pushed myself.
BOOM.
The physics engine panicked. Since the sword was clipped into me, and I tried to launch myself backward, the collision detection threw a fit.
I was launched—not like a human running, but like a ragdoll in a buggy physics demo. I shot backward at sixty miles an hour, ripping free of the sword with a spray of pixelated gore.
I flew through the air, crashing through a rotting wooden fence and tumbling down the steep hill surrounding the castle.
"Arthur!" Seraphina screamed from the ledge above.
I didn't stop. I couldn't stop. I rolled, bounced, and glitched my way down the slope, slamming into trees that didn't have collision boxes, passing straight through a rock that turned out to be a hologram.
I finally came to a halt in a pile of wet leaves at the edge of the forest.
My chest felt hollow. I looked down. There was a hole in my hoodie, and beneath it, a swirling vortex of grey static where my heart should be. It didn't hurt anymore. It just felt cold.
[HP: 1/100]
[State: Unstable]
I looked back up the hill. High above, standing on the edge of the ruins, a tiny silver figure was watching me.
She raised her hand. Even from here, I could feel the promise. This isn't over.
"Yeah, yeah," I muttered, dragging myself upright against a tree trunk. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. "Write a sequel."
I turned toward the forest. The trees here were dark, twisted, and menacing. I hadn't written this part of the map yet. It was procedurally generated filler content.
But right now, filler content was the only place safe from the Main Character.
I took a step, my foot phasing slightly through the ground, and limped into the shadows.
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.