The chamber screamed.

  Not metaphorically. Not atmospherically.

  It actually screamed.

  A sound ripped through the unfinished arena like torn metal dragged across stone, layered with a second harmonic that didn’t sound like anything a speaker was meant to produce. Ash clapped his hands over his ears as his HUD flared red.

  [AUDIO BUFFER OVERFLOW]

  [WARNING: ENTITY INITIALIZATION FAILED]

  The wireframe walls convulsed.

  Lines bent. Geometry folded inward on itself. A section of the far wall collapsed into raw grid, exposing a nothingness beyond that shimmered like heat haze and swallowed light.

  The tiny dragon chirped a sharp, alarmed sound.

  “That’s not good,” Ash said. He was already backing away.

  “No,” the dragon said. It’s voice was tight. “That is very not good.”

  Something moved beyond the torn geometry.

  Not entering. Not fully loading. Just pressing against reality.

  The silhouette distorted as the engine struggled to define it. Limbs appeared and vanished. Its outline jittered between possibilities: sometimes tall, sometimes impossibly wide, sometimes wrong in ways Ash’s brain didn’t want to imagine.

  A nameplate tried to render.

  Failed.

  Tried again.

  [ENTITY_NAME: NULL]

  Ash’s HP ticked down one point.

  “One point?” he said. “It’s hurting me just by existing?”

  “Yes,” the dragon said. “That means its idle aura is active. Which means—”

  The thing breathed.

  Not air. Not sound.

  The space around it warped, and the floor between Ash and the tear erupted as a jagged extrusion of half-loaded terrain speared upward.

  Ash rolled, barely clearing it. Stone clipped through his shoulder, and his HP dipped even lower.

  [BLEEDING: UNSTABLE]

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “Okay,” Ash said. He scrambled to his feet. “What’s the plan?”

  “Run,” the dragon said.

  They bolted.

  The lighting snapped to emergency fallback, plunging the chamber into harsh white illumination as textures failed left and right. The circular platform cracked beneath Ash’s boots as he sprinted, each footfall leaving afterimages.

  Behind them, the thing pushed harder.

  The tear widened.

  Ash risked a glance back and immediately wished he hadn’t.

  It wasn’t a boss.

  It wasn’t a monster.

  It was a system problem wearing the suggestion of a body.

  The dragon hissed sharply. “If it finishes loading, we will be flagged. If we are flagged, this entire shard will be purged.”

  “Purged how?”

  “Thoroughly.”

  They reached a spiral stair that hadn’t existed a second ago, shoved into place by the engine as a panicked attempt at path resolution.

  Ash took it two steps at a time.

  The stair groaned under him, segments popping into solidity just before his feet landed. Above, a faint glow pulsed. It was the well shaft, open again.

  Almost out.

  The dragon wheeled overhead, wings beating frantically. “That entity is not meant to perceive players. It is a correction.”

  “A correction for what?”

  Something shrieked behind them.

  The stair lurched.

  Ash slipped, barely catching himself on a protruding chunk of half-textured stone. His fingers sank too deep into the mesh, passing through before solidifying again.

  The creature behind them breached.

  Reality rippled as it surged through the tear, dragging corrupted code into the arena with it. The stair disintegrated beneath Ash’s feet.

  He fell.

  Just for a moment.

  Then heat exploded past his shoulder as the dragon dove, flames erupting from its mouth in a violent, incomplete cone.

  The fire wasn’t fire.

  It was raw light and particle effects that hadn’t been properly masked, burning through the air in jagged ribbons. The blast slammed into the thing’s half-formed body.

  Damage numbers flooded Ash’s screen.

  Not thousands.

  Not millions.

  Just ERROR repeated in cascading red text.

  The entity reeled.

  So did everything else.

  Ash screamed as the recoil slammed into his HUD, draining his mana to zero and ripping half his debuff timers off their tracks.

  [MANA: EMPTY]

  [WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED ABILITY RESOLUTION]

  [ZONE INTEGRITY CRITICAL]

  The dragon slammed into Ash’s chest, wings locking around him as the engine attempted to reconcile twelve incompatible states at once.

  “We go now,” it said.

  The world collapsed inward.

  Ash felt himself pulled upward as the well shaft forced a transition. Darkness swallowed him, HUD flickering wildly as the engine dumped him into the nearest valid space.

  Then, grass. Blue sky. Ambient music.

  Ash stumbled forward and collapsed onto his hands and knees, retching as his senses snapped back into alignment.

  For a heartbeat, everything was normal.

  The well behind him dissolved into a mundane stone structure, inert and harmless. The music looped cheerfully. The sun hung in a perfectly rendered skybox.

  Then his party UI refreshed.

  [WARNING: PARTY LIMIT EXCEEDED — 7/6]

  Ash groaned.

  A shadow passed over him.

  Not from a cloud.

  From wings.

  The dragon hovered at shoulder height, flickering slightly but unmistakably real. Nearby players froze mid-animation as they noticed it.

  Chat exploded.

  [LOCAL] whoa what pet is THAT

  [LOCAL] dude inspect

  [LOCAL] WAIT WHY IS IT TARGETABLE

  [RAID] Ravenous: ASH WHAT DID YOU BRING BACK

  [RAID] HealerDad: MY UI JUST HARD STUTTERED

  [RAID] Dove: is that a BOSS???

  Ash pushed himself upright, heart pounding.

  The dragon settled onto his shoulder, claws digging in.

  “We escaped,” it said.

  Ash stared at his UI. At the dragon. At the players staring back.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We did.”

  Behind them, far below the surface, something shifted. He knew whatever he’d broken down there wouldn’t stayed buried.

  He looked at the dragon.

  And part of it had followed him up.