The idea came slowly.
Not like inspiration — more like erosion. The constant pressure of the system, of Lucid's whispers, of the offer he hadn't yet taken… it all pressed on his mind until a path revealed itself.
Not forward.
Sideways.
The system didn't just monitor and regulate. It defended itself. And like any defense mechanism, it followed patterns.
Triggers.
Rules.
Elian wanted to know those rules.
So he decided to poke the hive.
He found a fringe ruin — barely connected, half-submerged in corrupted thread. Forgotten enough to be quiet, alive enough to respond.
Perfect.
He began crafting the bait.
A corrupted node, pulled from the Lurker's Archive and destabilized further with raw thread-glass. It pulsed with artificial errors — fake breaches, looped command violations, signature inconsistencies.
Enough to mimic a wild Glitchborn.
Not a real one. But the system wouldn't know that until it was too late.
He planted it in the center of the ruin and stepped back, Threadsense humming.
Then he waited.
It didn't take long.
[Thread Anomaly Detected – Zone: D-Scarr 9]
[System Response: Sentinel-Class Enforcer Deployed]
[Designation: Harmonizer A-11]
The air cracked.
A figure descended from a ripple in the ceiling — not flying, not falling. Placing itself.
Tall. Armored in geometric patterns of shifting blue and white. No face. Just a mirrored helm. No weapon. Just a hand outstretched.
The Harmonizer turned to the false node.
Its hand moved once — scanning.
Then again.
Then it paused.
Just long enough.
Elian stepped from the shadows.
He didn't strike.
He disrupted.
Threadbreaker activated.
Not on the enforcer.
On the connection tether binding it to the system.
[Severing Link: Sentinel-Class Harmonizer A-11]
[Thread Integrity: 79% → 43% → 12%…]
[Link Severed.]
The Harmonizer froze.
The light behind its helm flickered. Its stance wavered — not hostile, not defensive.
Lost.
Elian approached slowly.
"Do you know where you are?"
No response.
"Do you know who sent you?"
A whisper. Not from the Harmonizer. From the threads themselves.
It was never meant to think.
He extended a thread-glass shard toward its core. The Harmonizer didn't move.
He tapped it once.
The shard lit with scattered glyphs — fragmented system code. Logs. Routing maps. Protocol trees.
He didn't have time to decode them all. But he didn't need to.
What he saw was enough:
Enforcers didn't choose.
They weren't even updated. They were reactive shells.
And worse — some of them were built from former Seedborne.
The Harmonizer twitched.
Stability failing.
He backed away as its form began to unravel. Threads pulling it back into system storage — not dead. Just… recycled.
[You have initiated an Unauthorized Disjunction Event.]
[Threadbreaker Progress: 1.7% → 2.2%]
[Lucid Trait Progress: 18% → 19%]
[Warning: Retaliation Flag Set – Delay: Unknown]
He walked away before the ruin collapsed in on itself.
Not quickly.
Calmly.
He hadn't just baited the system.
He'd learned from it.
And if they sent another?
He'd be ready.
Not with more strength.
But with a sharper knife.