That was when this goddess-looking begin appeared. She didn't just arrive; she descended from a tear in the brilliant teal grid like a thunderclap dressed in impossibly fine silk. It wasn't wings that carried her, but pure, fundamental gravity. Her sheer presence made the air in this sterile space hum with resonant power around me. She was impossibly tall, impossibly gleaming, impossible to comprehend. Long silver hair, fine as spun moonlight and cool as liquid steel, flowed behind her, stirring slightly though there was no wind.

  Her armour wasn't just metal; it shimmered with intricate, flowing etchings that shifted and reformed like living light across its surface. Her eyes weren't eyes in the human sense; they were bright, pupil-less pools of molten purple stones, and they scanned me not with an ounce of curiosity, but with an immediate, searing cold purpose.

  Her body was a study in exaggerated, cruel perfection. Every curve was impossibly precise, every line flawless in a way that felt less divine and more deeply unfair. Massive, gravity-defying breasts strained against a corset of ornate, impossibly gleaming divine plating, framed by a waist so tiny it seemed it would snap. With sickening clarity, she looked exactly like someone drawn by a teenage boy's wildest fantasy and then somehow blessed into existence by a deity with a twisted sense of humour. I couldn't breathe, couldn't look away. I could only stare at this impossible being and feel myself shrink smaller and smaller inside my own skin. Resentment, sharp and bitter, curdled instantly into crushing self-loathing. If I looked like that… a desperate thought whispered from the shrunken, wounded part of my soul, maybe they wouldn’t have hated me.

  The goddess hovered just above the stark grid-line floor, her arms folding slowly across that impossible chest, radiating a light that wasn't warm but felt like threads of cold, objective judgment. When she spoke, her voice wasn't just sound; it was pure resonance that echoed not in the air, but deep inside my chest, vibrating in my bones, in my very soul. It carried the weight of cosmic disdain.

  A lattice of intensely bright golden light flared from the goddess, engulfing me, and scanning me with an invasive, clinical intensity. It wasn't just scanning my physical form; it was peeling back the layers of my existence, dissecting my memories, my raw pain, my buried rage. My trauma didn't hide; it lit up across the diagnostic grid like ugly, burning constellations: the terrifying lurch of the bus, the violation of the stolen notebook, the shattering sound of their laughter, the searing heat of the torch, the sickening sight and feel of the blood.

  "A poor thing," the goddess pronounced, her perfect head tilting slightly, examining me like a particularly uninteresting specimen under a microscope. Her purple eyes, utterly devoid of warmth or empathy, seemed to pierce through my skin, finding nothing but disappointment. "So much noise," she continued, her voice a low, resonant hum of disgust, "So little potential."

  The goddess watched the readouts flicker across the golden light, her expression remaining utterly impassive, utterly disgusted. "Tch," she clicked her tongue, a small sound that somehow vibrated with cosmic dismissal. "Weak soul structure. Incompatible essence. Not material fit for a hero." The judgment was absolute, clinical, and final.

  I tried desperately to speak, to protest, to scream that they didn't understand, that they didn't know me. But my throat felt like sandpaper, sealed shut by fear and despair. My voice didn't matter here. It was less than nothing.

  One hand rose, palm glowing faintly with data. For a moment I thought I saw my memories in that data. Somehow filtered through divine geometry. "Explain something to me," the goddess said, voice slow, melodic, but merciless. "What is a... ‘snap whore’?"

  The term echoed with a sterile kind of curiosity like she was reading from a corrupted scripture. “I haven’t heard that term before. It must be something new. New from your Earth. It looks like you are from Earth 520, pre-merge society.”

  I blinked. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Then it hit me, fucking Kiley. Of course. That was her favourite insult whenever bitch or slut got too stale. “Snap whore,” usually spat out with a grin, as if I had done something to deserve it. Just for having an account. Just for existing. When in reality, Kiley was the whore, that is why she was so popular, in my point of view.

  I felt my face burn. Shame coiled in my stomach like old barbed wire.

  “I… it’s just a name,” I muttered. “Something people call girls online. When they think we deserve to be erased.”

  The goddess stared at her, expression unreadable. "And why would someone label you as such?"

  My hands curled into fists and my throat was tight. I thought of every hallway glance, every text thread, every photo shared without my knowing. The laughter. The silence afterward. “Because it was easy. To make someone feel power over another.”

  The goddess tilted her head again. "You are not a hero. But your pain is... Dense." Then she turned away, voice trailing into something colder than divine light. “I can’t use a broken thing like you. Mors, can’t use you. I might have found another.”

  She looked down at me, those impossibly purple stone eyes scanning my crumpled form. For a flicker of a second, her expression seemed… unreadable, yes, but also something else. There was a strange tilt to her head, a subtle shift in the angle of her perfect lips, that almost, almost, looked like softening. Like pity. My heart gave a stupid, desperate leap. For a breathless heartbeat, I dared to hope. I thought maybe, just maybe, she might say something kind. Something small, something human, like a mother sighing over a toddler's scraped knee. Maybe she would offer me a hand, a lifeline, a second chance in this bizarre, terrifying reality.

  But the fragile hope shattered as quickly as it formed. Her lips curled. Not into kindness, not even into indifference, but into a snarl so cold it was a kind of mockery, hidden behind a thin, perfect smirk. It was less a look of regret and more a profound distaste.

  "You're too broken," she said, and the words resonated in my chest, not with sound, but with pure, cutting contempt. She shook her perfect head, a slow, dismissive movement, and let out a sigh that was heavy with more annoyance than sorrow. "The wrong kind of shattered."

  And just like that, the faint, impossible warmth I had felt for that single, foolish heartbeat vanished, leaving me colder and more exposed than before. Her judgment hung in the air, absolute and chilling.

  "May the System have you."

  And with that, she turned, dissolving instantly into a thousand motes of pale, retreating light, vanishing as quickly as she had appeared. Only silence remained in a vast, ringing silence. The grid blinked, and a soundless pulse of pressure pressed against my chest. Then something began to form in the air above me. A shape unfolding like cherry blossom petals made of light and memory.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  That’s when the stained-glass eye appeared. Not a normal one, not even close. Its iris was a mosaic of stained glass made up of swirling hues of amethyst, cobalt, and gold. Behind the eye, the void itself changed. Scenes flickered within the glass: a forest aflame, a falling star, a child screaming underwater, and a ruined throne. Each image was gone before she could truly see it. A kaleidoscope of stories.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  The eye didn’t speak with a mouth. Its voice bloomed in my mind like a song I almost remembered. It was ancient. Serene. And curious, like something powerful had tilted its head at me for the very first time.

  “You burned with such pain. Such intensity. It called to something old,” the voice said, without words, without sound. “You may become a Soul Architect if you so choose.”

  The air thickened around me.

  “You’re… What? Some kind of god too?” I managed, my voice raw.

  “No. I am older than the gods. I am a possibility. Memory. I see what may become. And I see you.”

  My arms wrapped around my knees. I couldn’t tell if the tears in my eyes were from fear, awe, or leftover grief. “I’m… I’m dead, aren’t I?”

  “You are. But not gone.”

  The stained glass rotated slightly, casting rainbow glimmers on the grid around me.

  “The goddess rejected you. But she sees only warriors. Only blades and victories. She does not understand seeds. You—” the voice deepened, vibrating inside my bones, “—are the beginning of something new.”

  My hands trembled. “Why me?”

  The stained-glass eye flared, the scenes within it slowing. One held a girl running in the rain. Headlights. Silence. “Because you refused to disappear,” the voice answered, “when the whole world wanted you to.”

  I flinched like it had slapped me. The truth of it felt too big for my skin.

  I stared at the floating stained-glass eye, its colours shifting like oil on water, patterns blooming and collapsing faster than I could track. My mouth was dry, my thoughts tangled. “What does a Soul Architect even mean?” I asked, the words slipping out before I could second-guess them.

  The voice answered directly inside my skull; calm, steady, older than anything I’d ever heard.

  “Have you ever heard of a dungeon? Or a dungeon core?”

  I blinked. “Like… In a video game?”

  “It is the same,” it said. “A Soul Architect is the heart of a dungeon. The mind behind the walls, the breath behind the traps. You will build your own reality. A place born from your soul. Others will come. Adventurers. Seekers. Fools. And you will test them.”

  Images rippled across its surface; schematics, blueprints, fragments of feeling rendered in radiant light. “You were not made for their world. But you can make one of your own.”

  A panel of text opened beside the eye:

  System Offer: Dungeon Core Seed Detected. Soul Resonance Confirmed. Emotion Matrix: Rage / Grief / Defiance / Isolation. Eligible Path: Soul Architect.

  I stared at the words for a long time. The void around me thrummed. “Is your name System?”

  It just looked at me with its unblinking cosmic pupil. I decided to ask another question. “What can I… Do? As a core?” I asked, voice nearly a whisper.

  The eye blinked. Or maybe it smiled. I couldn’t tell. “What do you want to do?”

  I looked down at my hands. They still looked like mine. Small. Slightly scarred. The hands of a girl who was never enough for the world that crushed her. Then I looked up, jaw clenched, heart roaring in my chest like wildfire reborn.

  “Vengeance,” I said. Not loud, but sharp. Solid. “I want to show the world who the real whores are. Who should really be afraid to walk through the doors? I want to share what I experienced every day.”

  The stained-glass eye flared brighter than before. The grid lines pulsed, now alive with new colour: deep crimson and violet. A pulse moved beneath my feet like a heartbeat.

  System Notification: [Path Chosen: Soul Architect — Dungeon Core Seed Accepted] [Initializing Core Formation… Standby.]

  The void rumbled. Possibility took shape.

  And for the first time in my short, bruised life… I was not powerless. The stained-glass eye hovered in silence, pulsing gently in rhythm with my breath. The gridlines beneath my feet glowed brighter, coalescing into the shape of a circle. A ritual etched not in chalk or blood, but in memory and code. Maybe the code of life, I thought for a moment.

  Then it appeared.

  A blood-red glyph blinked into view just above the horizon. It moved toward me slowly, almost reverently, pixel by pixel, until it hovered before me like a question spoken by the universe itself.

  System Notification: [New Class Awarded: Soul Architect – Dungeon Core]

  You will not return to the world you knew. You will be bound to a new plane, a new body, a new purpose. You may construct your domain. You may grow your power. You may make them remember your name.

  At the bottom of the glowing prompt, the words burned clear:

  Do you accept this class? Y / N

  I stared.

  The wind didn't exist here, but something passed through my hair. It felt like a breeze of possibility. A part of me hesitated. I thought of the cafeteria. Of the soup, I’d hidden in the pantry. Of the whispering girls and my notebook torn in half. Of that last moment; the cold, the fear, the headlights screaming down on me. My fingers clenched. Even that goddess looked down on me without pity.

  My voice had never been loud in my life. But here… Here, it echoed. Maybe with the Systems or the eye’s help, I could make them all suffer. I looked straight at the stained-glass eye. “Yes,” I said.

  System Notification:

  [Class Confirmed: Soul Architect – Dungeon Core]

  Core Formation: Initiating.

  New Plane: Generating.

  Body Type: Adaptive.

  Primary Motif: Emotional Resonance – Vengeance / Sorrow / Obscurity

  Secondary Trait: Memory Imprint – Forgotten Girl

  [ERROR: No system map found. Creating world tree stub…]

  The void convulsed. The horizon rippled outward like a pebble dropped in water, and from that ripple, something else formed. A spark. It hovered on my chest, between my small breasts and then sank inside me. Warm, then scalding. My knees buckled.

  The pain was overwhelming, but not physical. It was like every memory I’d ever buried was being dragged to the surface and turned inside out. I saw my childhood room. My mother’s tired smile. My first friendship. My last betrayal. The whole brutal, quiet weight of being invisible.

  And then… It changed. Not vanished. Reshaped. Twisting, curling into something sharp. My feet hit something solid. Stone?

  I blinked. The void was gone. In its place stood a hollow chamber of black marble, veined with silver-like constellations stitched through darkness. At the centre: a floating platform, glowing with a single word:

  BEGIN.

  The stained-glass eye was gone. I was alone again—but not broken. Not anymore. I stepped toward the word, my heartbeat falling in sync with the low hum of a new world breathing around me.

  This wasn’t heaven.

  It wasn’t hell.

  It was mine.

  The question still hovered in front of me:

  Would you like to begin?

  Y / N

  And I… I hesitated. Not because I didn’t want it. But because something deep in my gut knew, this choice would burn. It would burn my past away. Burn what little was left of the girl I used to be.

  But maybe that’s exactly what I needed.

  I took one step forward.

  Would you like to begin to have your vengeance, Chloe?

  Y / N

  I tried to click yes with my hand, but it passed through the Y. “Right, like a game. When I asked System.” So like in a game, I mentally picked a mouse clicker and pressed it. “Time to get started.”