The world trembled beneath my feet as the Arbiter of Truth waited for my decision. The shifting figures of history flickered around me like ghosts, their presence a reminder that what I chose now would change everything. My heartbeat thundered in my chest, the weight of my choice pressing down on me like an unbreakable chain.
The system prompt still hovered before my eyes:
[Decision Point Reached][Choose Your Path:]
Sacrifice Your Past – Lose all memories of who you were, becoming a vessel of pure knowledge.
Sacrifice Your Future – Bind yourself to the Vault, ensuring that its knowledge remains protected for eternity.
Sacrifice Nothing – Reject the truth and leave this place, forever ignorant of what lies beyond.
I swallowed hard, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. Each choice felt impossible, each one a different form of death.
My past—everything that made me who I was. My future—everything I had hoped to become. Or walk away, forever knowing I had been too weak to seek the truth.
The Arbiter spoke again, its voice as vast and eternal as the space around us.
"Time is fleeting, seeker. Knowledge waits for no one."
I exhaled sharply, my mind racing.
The thought of losing my past made my stomach churn. Would I even be me without my memories? Would I be reduced to an empty shell, nothing more than a walking archive of history? The idea of surrendering everything I had fought for, everyone I had cared about, sent ice through my veins.
But my future… If I sacrificed that, I would never leave this place. I would become a guardian of this Vault, a keeper of knowledge that no one else would ever see. Would I even be alive? Or just another entity bound to this realm, a shadow of my former self?
And yet, could I truly walk away? Could I leave all this behind and pretend I had never seen it?
I thought about why I had come here. I had been searching for answers. Searching for the truth.
I looked up at the Arbiter, meeting its shifting gaze. My voice came steady, though my heart pounded in my chest.
"I choose..."
Before I could finish, the world shifted violently.
The floating symbols in the air exploded outward, spinning chaotically like a storm of knowledge breaking free from its constraints. The ground beneath me cracked, runes glowing brighter than before, pulsing like a heartbeat.
The Arbiter did not move. It simply observed, as if waiting to see what I would do next.
And then, for the first time, I felt something deeper than fear. Something beyond my own understanding.
A presence. Something was watching.
I gasped as a second system notification overwrote the first.
[Error: External Influence Detected]
[Intervention Protocol Engaged]
[Unknown Entity Override—Decision Locked]
"What?!" I took a step back, my pulse spiking. I had never seen the system react like this before. Someone—or something—had interfered. My choice was no longer my own.
The Arbiter tilted its head. "An anomaly," it mused. "You are not the only one seeking knowledge, it seems."
A cold dread seeped into my bones. If I wasn't in control anymore, who was?
Then the ground beneath me collapsed.
I fell.
Wind howled past my ears as I plummeted through a void of fractured light. The world around me was breaking apart, collapsing in on itself, time and space distorting like a shattered mirror. The air was thick with an unseen force, pressing against me as if trying to rewrite my very existence.
Then—
Impact.
I slammed into solid ground, my body aching from the force of my landing. A groan slipped past my lips as I forced my eyes open, my vision swimming.
I wasn't in the Vault anymore.
I pushed myself up on shaky arms and looked around.
A massive chamber, lined with towering pillars of stone and metal, stretched before me. The walls were etched with symbols, but unlike those in the Vault, these felt new. Unfamiliar. As though they had been placed here not by the ancients, but by someone—or something—watching from the shadows.
A system notification flickered into my vision.
[Location Discovered: The Hollow Archive]
[Warning: Unstable Temporal Signature Detected]
My breath caught. The Hollow Archive? This place hadn't been on any records I had found before. Even the system seemed unsure of what it was.
A presence stirred in the air, the weight of unseen eyes pressing against my skin. I wasn't alone.
I turned sharply, my instincts screaming at me to prepare for whatever came next.
Then, from the shadows of the Hollow Archive, a figure emerged.
Tall. Cloaked. Its form flickered, as if existing in multiple realities at once. But unlike the Arbiter, this entity was no guardian of knowledge.
A voice—distorted, but unmistakably human—cut through the silence.
"So... You were brought here, too."
I froze.
Whoever—or whatever—this was, it wasn't part of the system.
And somehow, it knew exactly who I was.