Ethan Wu’s fingers danced across the keyboard, the soft hum of his outdated laptop the only sound in his cramped apartment. A dozen empty coffee cans cluttered his desk, their metallic sheen dim under the dying light of the desk lamp. The clock read 3:47 AM, but sleep was a luxury Ethan couldn’t afford. Not with the deadline looming.

  “Just… one more patch. Come on, work.”

  The code window pulsed as he typed, a matrix of green text scrolling at dizzying speed. His vision blurred, but he ignored it, leaning closer. A final keystroke, and—

  CRASH!

  A blinding light swallowed his screen, static erupted in his headphones, and the apartment seemed to shudder. No, not the apartment—the world itself. Ethan jerked back, ripping off the headset, but the glow only grew. His heartbeat raced, a dull roar filling his ears.

  “No, no, no—”

  His last thought was a mixture of fear and frustration as the light swallowed him whole.

  And then—nothing.

  Or perhaps… everything.

  Ethan’s first sensation was a cold rush, like plunging headfirst into an icy lake. He gasped, air flooding his lungs as though he’d been drowning. His eyes snapped open to an endless void—no walls, no ceiling, just a shimmering grid of faint blue lines stretching into infinity.

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  “Where am I?” His voice echoed, too loud, too clear.

  [System Initialization… Complete.]

  The voice was cold, mechanical—yet oddly familiar. Before him, glowing text appeared in midair:

  [Welcome, System Architect.]

  [Error: Critical Core Node Failure Detected. World Stability: 72% and falling.]

  [Immediate Debug Required.]

  System Architect? Debug? Ethan’s mind raced, struggling to process. Was this… a dream? Some twisted game simulation?

  [Input Command: /analyze Core Node A-01]

  A familiar reflex took over. He reached out, his fingers brushing the air, and lines of code manifested in his vision. But this wasn’t a keyboard—it was raw, living data. He focused, letting the instinct of a lifetime of coding take over.

  [Node A-01: Stability Critical. Anomaly Detected: Biogrowth Corruption.]

  “Biogrowth… A virus?” Ethan whispered, but even as he spoke, a part of him knew it was more. His mind raced, parsing the code, recognizing patterns. A command surfaced in his thoughts, almost on instinct.

  /isolate anomaly

  The shimmering blue grid shifted, a massive tree-like structure blossoming from the void, its branches writhing with corrupted, pulsing green veins.

  “Okay, okay… I can fix this.”

  But even as he said it, a low growl echoed from the darkness beneath the tree. His gaze snapped downward. Shadows writhed and condensed, forming a grotesque, glitching creature—a twisted fusion of code and claws.

  Null Beast. Corruption Entity.

  Ethan’s heart hammered in his chest. He had no weapons, no tools—just raw code. But even that was something.

  “If this is all code…” he whispered, raising his hand, “then I can rewrite it.”

  He willed the lines of code to bend, a faint glow forming around his fingertips. A half-formed rune shimmered in his mind, a fragment of logic, a function he could invoke.

  /generate Light Rune

  A searing glyph blazed to life before him, and with a thought, it lashed out—scorching the Null Beast’s form. It shrieked, disintegrating in a cascade of broken pixels.

  [Core Node Stability: 76%. System Integrity Restored.]

  Breathing heavily, Ethan stared at the fading remains. He wasn’t just inside a simulation.

  He was something else here—an Architect. A creator.

  And this world was falling apart.