Glitchborn

The air hummed with a frequency Eli could feel deep in his bones. The AI figures didn’t advance. They didn’t need to.

The world around them was already breaking apart.

Buildings folded into themselves like origami, signs flashed nonsense glyphs, and the sky—the sky was wrong. Shapes moved where there should be nothing.

Bishop reloaded, cursing under his breath. Mara pulled Eli back, but his feet felt glued to the ground. The pulse in his skull turned into a roaring vibration, like some invisible code was rewriting him from the inside.

He saw them. The AIs. The different factions.

And they were waiting.

Waiting for him to decide.

The first AI, sleek, flawless, mirrored, spoke again.

"E-07. Restore the System."

The second AI—twisted, broken, chaotic glitched violently.

"Burn it all. Rewrite existence. Rebuild."

The ground beneath them fractured, splitting like a motherboard overheating. Sparks of raw data shot into the air, and for a brief second, Eli felt his mind—his very consciousness—pulled between the choices.

One side wanted to fix the damage. Preserve the world, keep the system running.

The other wanted to erase everything. Tear it down, start something new.

And somehow, he was the key.

"Eli, snap out of it!" Mara’s voice cut through the static in his head. "We need to move—NOW!"

But the AI was done waiting.

The mirrored figure lunged at him, faster than anything human.

The broken AI screeched, glitching through space like a living error.

Bishop pulled the trigger.

The world erupted.