Rejected by the reincarnation system

16THE THINGS THAT STARES BACK

The Nether was quiet. Too quiet. Not the normal “something’s stalking you” quiet—the

kind where even fear holds its breath.

Alis was asleep by the dying fire, blade resting across her lap. I couldn’t. Sleep, that is.

Every time I closed my eyes, the Laws hummed in the back of my skull—lines of glowing

script threading through the dark like veins of living light.

I stared at my palm. The marks from before were pulsing faintly, rearranging themselves.

Words, sentences… rules.

I didn’t read them so much as feel them. Like the universe whispering its cheat codes.

“If it bleeds, it can be rewritten,” a voice murmured in my head. It sounded suspiciously like

mine.

I raised my hand toward a rock nearby. One single glowing line floated above it—[Law:

Gravity]

“Okay, maybe just a little test,” I whispered.

I tapped it.

The rock screamed. Not metaphorically—it screamed like a living thing being peeled out of

reality. Then it floated upward, twisting mid-air, melting into ash and light.

I stumbled back. “Oh. Oh no. That’s bad. That’s really bad.”

Behind me, Alis stirred. “What did you break this time?”

“Gravity?” I said weakly.

She groaned. “Put it back.”

“I don’t know how!”

The ground tilted. The air pulsed. The stars—well, the Nether’s fake version of

stars—flickered like dying bulbs.

Then everything froze.

The world’s heartbeat stopped. Even Alis. Time itself glitched, every frame repeating in

jagged stutters.

And then… something looked back.

Not from the sky. From between moments.

A shape formed out of the static—not a demon, not a god—a correction.A voice like rust grinding on glass whispered: “Law breach detected. Source: Unnamed

anomaly.”

I could feel it reading me, dissecting me. Every thought, every regret, turned into raw code

in its gaze.

Alis hung in the air mid-blink. I was the only thing moving.

“Great,” I said. “I broke the universe and summoned tech support.”

The thing stepped forward—or maybe the world moved around it. It had no face. Just an

endless hole filled with eyes. Each one blinked out a sentence in divine language,

rewriting itself as it spoke.

“Return the Fragment.” “Cease deviation.” “Unmake.”

The mark on my chest burned. “Sorry,” I said, “no refunds.”

I reached out instinctively, gripping the nearest glowing line of Law in the air. It vibrated

like a live wire. The thing screamed—not in anger, but recognition.

And then everything went black.

When I woke, the world was different.

The fire was cold. Alis was standing, sword drawn, staring at me like I’d just crawled out of

a grave.

“What happened?” she asked.

I blinked. Her voice echoed twice—like two versions of her were speaking a fraction of a

second apart.

“You… glitched,” she said. “You were gone for a moment. Then the sky started bleeding.”

I looked up.

The Nether’s clouds were dripping red light.

And in that glow, for the first time, I saw words written across the horizon—massive, divine

runes stretching for miles.

[ERROR: LAW ANOMALY — ECHO-BORN HAS BREACHED ACCORD]

Alis swallowed. “They’re coming, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “But this time, I’m not running.”

The mark pulsed once—blue fire, alive—and the air tasted like thunder.

Somewhere above, the gods finally noticed their mistake. They’d tried to erase me.

Now I was rewriting back.