The air shifted the moment Ji-Hoon stepped into the chamber beyond the final portrait.
The tower's inner sanctum wasn't made of stone or metal—but compiled memory. Stretched walls shimmered with semi-transparent textures, layers of unfinished architecture, alpha-stage code grafted onto the real world like a skeleton missing its flesh. Static crept in at the corners of his vision, subtle but present, as though reality here was being rewritten frame by frame.
In the center of the room floated a crown.
It wasn't golden, nor jeweled. It was composed of code—fragmented strands of old developer tags and rejected player mods, orbiting an invisible axis. Every few seconds, a line of redacted script would flicker through it before vanishing like a corrupted save file.
Ji-Hoon approached, boots echoing lightly against the unstable flooring. The crown pulsed as he neared, reacting not to proximity—but to recognition.
["I don't like this, Ji-Hoon. This… thing wasn't built to be worn. It was written to be contained."]
"Why show it to me, then?" he murmured. His hand hovered inches from the data-crown, fingers tingling.
["Because someone embedded a beacon into your trace skill. They used you to open this sector—this inheritance path. But that thing isn't a reward. It's a compiler node. A literal administrator protocol. If you interface with it, it won't just enhance your system—it could overwrite your class entirely."]
Ji-Hoon's eyes narrowed.
A choice.
He could walk away. Leave the tower. Stay within the fractured limits of Recode and keep navigating the broken remnants of Edenfall.
Or—
✦ [Override Interface Request: Crown_Of_The_Architect]
✦ WARNING: This action is irreversible.
✦ System Traits may be forcibly evolved.
✦ Class Tree mutation possible.
He reached out.
The crown unraveled like a spiral of light, wrapping around his hand and threading through his veins. Code shimmered across his body in a reverse pulse, scanning, compiling, rewriting.
Pain followed. Not like before—not physical or mental—but structural.
He dropped to one knee as the system re-encoded his origin tag.
["Ji-Hoon—your class path is fracturing. You're moving out of Recode… it's forking into something else."]
The interface exploded in front of him.
✦ NEW CLASS PATH: Null Architect
✦ Core Trait: Subroutine Generation – User may now write unstable system subroutines into reality.
✦ Origin Key: Inheritor of Abandoned Dev Code
✦ Former Class Lineage: Recode – Retained as [Subclass: Recode_Ghost]
✦ You have gained 1 new Active Skill
—✦ Skill Unlocked: Fragment Engine
—✦ Description: Create temporary constructs from rejected Edenfall features. Effects are randomized and volatile.
✦ Cooldown: 10 minutes
Ji-Hoon gasped. The air around him thickened. Where his shadow touched the floor, small strings of UI code twisted into unfamiliar shapes, briefly forming icons that never made it into the final game.
["You're not just part of the system anymore. You're one of its roots now. A rejected branch that's still growing."]
He stood slowly.
Around his new gear, fragments of digital material floated, reacting to his breathing. His cloak had shifted—its surface now woven with abandoned Edenfall interface assets: threat meters, beta-only emblems, icons that pulsed faintly before vanishing again.
Beneath, the armor gleamed darker, edged in flickering outlines of unreleased item sets.
Ji-Hoon's presence was no longer masked. Wherever he walked, the world bent just slightly. Not in awe—but in hesitation. Like the runtime was waiting to see what command he'd input next.
Then—
A sound above. The crown's data pulse shot upward like a flare.
In the distance, the ADMIN construct screamed. Not a sound. A system-level alert—an echo of dev permissions clashing mid-execution.
Ji-Hoon stepped back onto the bridge.
The tower behind him began collapsing—not in rubble, but in line breaks and code tears. The ground shuddered.
["You triggered a full sector reset. We need to move. Now."]
Ji-Hoon didn't hesitate.
He ran, but the world didn't chase him with fire or collapse.
It chased him with memory.
As he fled across the ghost sector, echoes of old players appeared. Not people—just data phantoms. Guilds that had once ruled leaderboards. Broken PvP champions. Forgotten NPC lines. Deleted pets.
And all of them turned to face him.
As if they remembered what Edenfall was meant to be.
And what he might become.