I didn't stick around after the wolf-thing exploded into static.
Running felt like the only smart decision.
Running away from everything glitching into nightmares? Even smarter.
The broken village blurred past me, NPCs stuck mid-animation, T-posing like a cursed flash mob. Trees flickered from pixelated wireframes to giant mushrooms and back again. Somewhere, a cow mooed in reverse.
Every instinct screamed:
Get away.
But where was safe in a world falling apart?
Ahead, I spotted a crooked tower, its top half missing as if someone had selected it with a mouse and hit delete.
Didn't matter.
I needed shelter.
I bolted inside and slammed the cracked wooden door shut behind me.
Silence.
Not real silence — the soft crackle of static echoed from deeper inside.
Cautiously, I crept forward.
Sitting cross-legged among the wreckage was a girl.
Or something that looked like one.
She had long silver hair that glitched between frames, constantly shifting texture. One pointed elf-like ear twitched; the other stayed perfectly human.
Her clothes — a mage's robe — flickered between cloth, leather, and shimmering crystal.
Even worse, her lower body was half-phased into the floor like a character stuck in terrain.
> [Glitch Detected: Unstable Entity.]
[Warning: Interaction May Cause Unpredictable Behavior.]
I swallowed hard.
Every brain cell screamed run.
But the way she curled into herself, the way the glitching slowed when she noticed me — something about it pulled at me.
I raised my hands, palms up. "Hey. I'm not here to hurt you."
Her head jerked — sharp, puppet-like — and her mouth opened.
"W-Welc–Welc–Welcome... Wel–Welcome..."
Her voice stuttered and skipped like a broken MP3.
I took a step closer —
She moved faster than I thought possible, grabbing my wrist in a cold, glitching grip.
System windows exploded across my vision:
> [Link Request Detected.]
[Entity: Unknown Half-Elf — Status: Corrupted.]
[Attempting Stabilization...]
Lines of broken code streamed past.
Errors. Patches. Rewrites.
I tried to yank my arm free —
Too late.
> [Link Established.]
[New Ability Acquired: "Memory Patch (Beta)"]
[Entity Name Unlocked: "Elara."]
The girl's trembling slowed.
For the first time, her eyes focused properly — vivid silver, deep as broken mirrors.
"...Hikaru," she whispered.
I staggered back. "How do you know my name?"
Elara tilted her head slowly.
"You... are the Patchbearer," she said softly.
Patchbearer?
What the hell was a Patchbearer?
Before I could ask, the ground shook.
BOOM.
A wall behind us exploded into shimmering fragments, showering the room in red system warnings.
Something monstrous oozed through the hole —
A towering nightmare stitched from jagged polygons, twitching scripts, broken textures.
Above its head flickered red error text:
> [ERROR BOSS: CODE REAPER LV.???]
[Stability Threat Detected.]
The Code Reaper shrieked —
A sound like a thousand corrupted files crashing at once.
Elara gripped my wrist tighter, terror shining on her glitching face.
"Patchbearer," she gasped. "You must Debug... or it will overwrite us all."
I stared at the abomination, at the broken system prompts flickering across my vision.
This world wasn't just broken.
It was trying to erase itself.
And somehow, I was supposed to fix it.
I wiped my sweaty palms on my shirt and exhaled shakily.
"...Alright," I muttered, pulling up the basic debug menu flashing in my mind.
"Time for some emergency patch notes."