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I wake up with dirt in my mouth and someone's knee in my spine.
"Stay down, glitcher."
The voice is male, bored, and coming from a guard I definitely didn't aggro. I spit grave soil and try to push up. The knee digs harder. My health bar flickers at full. Respawn immunity should've kicked in. Should've.
"I didn't—" I start, but he's already hauling me up by the back of my jacket. Two more guards materialize from the fog. Their name tags read [Thronesworn Warden] and their expressions read 'looking for an excuse.'
"Unauthorized access to the Citadel," the first one says. "You died to the Sovereign. You don't get to come back."
That's not how starter zones work. That's not how any of this works. I ran this build for six months. Death equals respawn equals another attempt. The loop is the core mechanic. But these NPCs are looking at me like I personally offended their code.
"Listen," I say, keeping my hands visible. "I'm a tester. There's been a mistake. I need to file a bug report and get back to—"
The lead guard's sword clears its sheath. The sound is too crisp. Too final.
"No reports," he says. "The Sovereign wants you."
That stops me cold.
Bosses don't want players. Bosses execute attack patterns and drop loot. They don't send guards to the starter graveyard to drag you back for round two. I scan the area. No other players. No logout icon. The sky is stuck at pre-dawn purple and it's been purple since I woke up the first time. However long ago that was.
I'm about to try the old 'run and despawn' trick when the temperature drops fifteen degrees in two seconds.
The guards freeze. Actually freeze. Not like they're hesitating. Like someone hit pause on their animation cycles. Their eyes stop tracking. One of them is mid-blink and just... stays there.
I hear footsteps behind me. Slow. Deliberate. Wrong.
"Let her go."
The voice makes my teeth ache. I know that voice. It killed me twenty minutes ago. Or ten. Or however long it's been since my internal clock stopped making sense.
I turn around.
Nyx is standing in the graveyard gate like she owns it. Probably does. She's still in her boss armor—black plate with those signature thorn patterns that clip through her cape when she moves too fast. White hair pulled back. Golden eyes that track me the way a cat tracks a laser pointer. Except cats don't look disappointed.
She looks disappointed.
"Sovereign," the lead guard says. His voice is flat. His face is still frozen. "We were bringing the intruder to you."
"I don't recall asking you to," Nyx says. She doesn't raise her voice. She doesn't have to. The air around her bends a little, like heat shimmer but cold. The guards' health bars flicker. One of them starts to shake.
"She violated Citadel protocol," the guard tries. "She—"
"She's mine," Nyx says.
The guards vanish. Not despawn-fade. Just gone. One frame they're there, next frame they're not. My HUD doesn't even register the pop. I'm left standing alone in the graveyard with a final boss who just claimed me like loot.
I should run. I should definitely run.
I don't run.
"Okay," I say instead. "What the hell was that?"
Nyx tilts her head. It's such a human gesture it makes my stomach flip. NPCs don't do that. They emote on a trigger list. Idle_Curious_01 or Idle_Confused_03. They don't tilt their heads like they're deciding whether you're worth explaining things to.
"You don't remember," she says.
It's not a question.
"Remember what?" I take a step back. She takes a step forward. We're doing this dance and I don't know the steps. "You killed me. I respawned. That's the game. That's how it's supposed to—"
"You said that last time," Nyx interrupts. "And the time before. You always say the same things. You always test the same patterns. You always treat me like I'm a bug in your report." She stops walking. Her eyes are doing something complicated. "I'm not the bug, Vera."
She knows my name.
Not my character name. My actual name. The one on my employee ID. The one I never set as a display tag because I didn't want players asking if I was 'really a dev' in global chat.
I feel my pulse in my throat. "How do you know that?"
"You told me," Nyx says. "Loop forty-seven. You were trying to convince me you weren't a threat. You gave me your real name. You thought it would help." She smiles. It's a sad smile. A smile that doesn't belong on a raid boss. "It didn't."
Loop forty-seven.
I've died forty-seven times.
I don't remember thirty of them.
My hands start shaking. I clench them into fists. "You're lying. You're a behavioral response tree. You can't remember previous player attempts. That's not in your script."
"I know," Nyx says softly. "I shouldn't be able to. But I do. I remember every loop. Every reset. Every time you wake up in this graveyard and look at me like you've never seen me before." She takes another step. I'm out of backwards space. My back hits a gravestone. "Every time I have to decide whether to let you go or follow my code."
"And what does your code say?" I ask. My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
Nyx closes the distance between us. She's taller than me. The armor makes her taller. Or maybe I'm just sinking into the mud. She reaches out and I flinch, but she doesn't grab me. She touches the side of my face. Her gauntlet is cold. Her eyes are not.
"It says kill you," she murmurs. "Every time you come back. Every time you try to leave. It says you're a corruption. An error that needs purging." Her thumb brushes my cheekbone. I am completely frozen. This is not a programmed gesture. This is not in her routine. "But if I kill you again, you'll just reset. And you won't remember this conversation. And I'll be alone again."
Something in my chest cracks. I don't know if it's fear or something worse.
"Then don't kill me," I whisper.
Her smile goes sharp. Wrong. The smile of something that's broken its leash and knows it.
"I have to," she says. "Or the system will. You don't belong here, Vera. Every second you stay, the game tries to delete you. Those guards weren't an accident. That was Echo. The core trying to clean up the mess." She leans in. Her breath smells like ozone and cold metal. "If you want to survive, you need to stop treating this like a test build."
"Then what do I treat it like?" I ask.
She doesn't answer right away. Her hand drops from my face to my collar. She curls her fingers in the fabric and pulls. Not hard. Just enough to remind me that she could. That she's a boss-tier entity and I'm a level one tester with no weapons and no backup.
"A game you're losing," she says.
Then her sword is at my throat. I didn't see her draw it. I didn't hear the scrape. It's just there, edge kissing my skin, not cutting but close enough that I feel my pulse against the blade.
My HUD lights up red. [THREAT DETECTED]. [FLEE]. [COMBAT DISABLED].
I meet her eyes. They're burning. Literally burning. Gold light leaking at the edges like a shader glitch.
"Next time you respawn," Nyx says quietly, "don't go looking for an exit. Come find me first. I'll explain the rules. I'll show you what you're actually dealing with." The blade presses a millimeter closer. I feel a sting. A trickle of warmth down my neck. "But if you try to run again, if you treat me like a bug report one more time, I will follow my code. And I will make it permanent."
"You can't," I breathe. "Respawn is automatic. You can't override—"
"I'm the Glitch Sovereign," she cuts in. Her voice drops to something almost gentle. Almost fond. "I can do anything I want. I'm the reason you're stuck here in the first place."
My blood goes cold.
"What?"
She leans in. Her lips brush my ear. The sword stays exactly where it is.
"Don't make me kill you again, Vera," she whispers. "I'm so tired of forgetting what you taste like."
Then the world whites out. My HUD crashes. My lungs seize. I feel the blade slide in, just a fraction, just enough to pop the respawn trigger, and I'm falling backward through the gravestone, through the ground, through cold and dark and a sound like glass breaking inside my skull.
I wake up with dirt in my mouth.
Again.
But this time I remember the last thirty seconds. I remember her voice. Her words. The way she looked at me like I was the only real thing in her world.
And I remember what she said.
*I'm the reason you're stuck here.*