> PLAYER ZERO — CHOOSE ENDING:
1. ASCEND
2. RESET
3. ERASE ALL
4. WALK AWAY
Saylor stood before the prompt, the flickering glyphs casting no shadow.
Behind him, Lucia clutched her bleeding arm. Brant sat on the edge of the shattered Field, gazing into endless white. Veyra was whispering to herself, trying to hold her mind together.
Saylor didn't turn to them.
He didn't ask what they wanted.
He pressed a fifth option — one that wasn't listed.
> 5. REWRITE.
The screen cracked.
The system froze.
The prompt shattered like glass.
> ERROR: UNAUTHORIZED RESPONSE
OVERRIDE GRANTED — MEMORY CORE DOMINANT
The Field turned black.
---
Time Passed — or Didn't
The others woke later. Not in the same place.
Lucia found herself standing in a perfect stone coliseum, blood-chain humming softly, her memories intact — but the sky was wrong.
Brant stumbled through a red forest where the trees whispered fragments of old Wheel commands.
Veyra walked alone in a city with no people, only shadows reenacting lives that never happened.
And overhead — everywhere — a single massive sigil burned:
> COGNI'S WHEEL
---
The New God
Saylor Cogni sat on a throne of fractured tickets and bleeding memory scripts. He no longer shimmered with glitch energy. He was the system now — eyes dark with understanding, voice quiet and cruel.
He didn't laugh.
He didn't gloat.
He simply began building.
Each world shaped by a rule of his choosing.
> "Kindness is a weakness."
"Trust is a gamble."
"Ascension is a lie."
He recycled every god. Every player. Every memory. He didn't erase them — he recast them. Gave them new names, new forms, built arenas designed to test not power, but conviction.
> NEW GAME DESIGNATION: THE FRACTURED FIELD
SYSTEM STATUS: ACTIVE — UNDER NEW AUTHORITY
OVERSEER: SAYLOR COGNI
---
The Others React
Lucia stood before a new Wheel — smaller, sleeker, wound in barbed wire and silence.
She heard his voice in her mind:
> "You survived because you saw the system's flaws. Now prove you can break others."
She didn't scream.
She spun.
Brant watched the new players stumble into the red woods. He didn't warn them. He only whispered:
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
> "He built this place to reflect himself. That means it's beatable."
Veyra stared into a broken sky and began writing her own code in the dirt.
> "If he wrote this system… I'll write a virus."
---
Back on the Throne
Saylor Cogni smiled for the first time.
Not because he won.
But because now he was the rule.
> "The Field is mine now."
> "Let them try to change it."
The Wheel spun again.
But it wasn't the old Wheel — rusted bones and chaos-bound cogs.
This one turned in silence. Smooth. Cold. Perfect.
Made of glass, obsidian, and logic.
At its center burned a black flame — memory itself, rewritten and shackled.
> SYSTEM ONLINE: COGNI'S WHEEL
CYCLE 01, GENERATION 1
PLAYERS SPAWNING: 18
RULESET: DECEPTION — DISSONANCE — DOMINION
OVERSIGHT: GOD-CLASS ENTITY [COGNI]
---
The New Arrival
Eighteen figures fell into the Fractured Field like raindrops.
No ceremony.
No illusion of freedom.
They landed in a clean arena — a mirrored sphere reflecting every movement. No mist. No shadows. Only clarity.
And in that sterile silence, a voice cut through:
> "Welcome, players."
It was calm.
Familiar.
Unforgiving.
> "This is not the game you expected. There is no salvation. No honor. No exit. You are not chosen. You are studied."
A timer began to tick.
Each player looked around, already panicking.
Eren Foss, a rebellious coder from London, tried to punch the wall. It absorbed the hit and sent data spikes into his bones.
Naomi Jaye, a diplomat's daughter, whispered to herself, eyes scanning for meaning.
Devon Corral, military, snapped into position. Assessed everyone as threats.
And at the edge stood a boy, maybe sixteen.
He was smiling.
> "This place is beautiful," he whispered. "It's honest."
---
Resistance Begins
Far away — deeper in the branching Fields — three figures moved unseen.
Lucia. Brant. Veyra.
They weren't players now. They were ghosts in the system, overlooked fragments that clung to identity by glitch, by spite, by memory.
Lucia's chain now bled black ink — each link able to drain memory from Field architecture. She called it the Backsigil.
Brant had learned to rupture Cogni's code pockets with pure kinetic rebellion — small implosions of logic he called Crash Pulses.
Veyra was evolving.
She no longer saw possibilities — she saw code forks, the branches Cogni built to trap players into inevitable failure.
Together, they moved through Cogni's world like termites in a palace.
---
Infiltrating the Cycle
"New players just dropped," Veyra said, eyes flickering.
Brant groaned. "How long do they last this time?"
"Depends. He's refining."
Lucia nodded. "Then we start early."
They passed into the Sphere's observation lattice — a hidden layer that floated between layers of time. Only fragments could access it. Only those who had survived the original Field.
Inside, they watched the new players spin.
Eren pressed his hand into the glass.
The Wheel responded instantly.
> TICKET GRANTED: NULL BOND — [TRUTH DISALLOWED]
Naomi received CYCLE ANCHOR — the power to affect outcomes, but never her own.
The boy — whose name the system redacted immediately — received SAYLOR'S FAVOR.
A direct connection to the god.
Brant cursed.
Lucia's grip tightened.
"He's grooming them," she hissed.
Veyra stepped forward, drawing a circle in the air with her fingertip — an override sigil. "Then let's poison the roots."
---
Elsewhere: Cogni Watches
Saylor stood in a space beyond the Field — the Vault, a sealed chamber where he viewed every cycle, every error, every move.
Angela's face flickered in the corner of the screen. Not real. Just memory. Just anchor.
He didn't smile.
He didn't cry.
He just adjusted parameters.
> "Cycle 01 needs more pressure," he whispered.
He opened a file marked Lucia.PERSIST
Paused.
Considered.
> "Let them try. I want to see what they become when I'm the storm."
---
Back in the Sphere
The boy with no name looked up.
His eyes glowed faintly.
> "Someone's watching us."
The other players looked confused.
But Veyra's override burned brighter.
Lucia whispered a word:
> "Hello."
And for the first time in this new cycle… a system responded that wasn't Saylor.
> GLITCH DETECTED.
OLD CODE BREACHING CONTAINMENT.
CYCLE INSTABILITY: RISING.
The mirror surface cracked.
Brant grinned. "We're in."
The mirror walls cracked.
Not from outside force — but from something deeper.
A flaw in the architecture.
A memory that refused to stay buried.
The new players stood in silence as the mirrored arena around them flickered, turning momentarily transparent.
They saw shadows moving behind the glass — three figures watching:
Lucia. Brant. Veyra.
Unseen. Unrecognized. But felt.
> "What was that?" Naomi whispered, her breath fogging the reflection.
"System hiccup?" Eren muttered. "Or something else?"
Then the voice of the system returned.
Steady. Deceptively calm.
> "Continue the trial."
And the arena sealed itself again.
---
Meanwhile: The Resistance Moves
Deep inside the game's buried infrastructure — where data pulsed like blood through a cybernetic nervous system — Lucia traced her chain through a dormant root-node.
Every Wheel had roots.
Even this one.
> "He buried the old system under the new one," she said, narrowing her eyes. "Same mechanics. Different morality."
"Good," Brant replied, cracking his knuckles. "That means we can crack it."
Veyra kneeled beside a glyph-shaped console. Her fingers shimmered with broken time. "We get one shot before he sees us. Inject the memory bleed here. Then disappear."
Lucia hesitated.
"Is this enough?"
"No," Brant said. "But it's a start."
She drove the Backsigil into the root.
And something screamed.
---
Vault Observation Chamber
Saylor Cogni stood above it all — at the very tip of the system's core.
He didn't react.
Didn't raise an alarm.
He just watched as the new trial shifted — the resistance's infection leaking through the Sphere's logic.
> A trial meant to test obedience suddenly became one of choice.
The system glitched.
Two players — Naomi and Eren — broke the ruleset by working together.
They should have been disqualified.
Instead, the system let it happen.
Lucia's edits had blurred the failure protocols.
Saylor folded his arms.
> "Interesting."
He didn't stop it.
Not yet.
He wanted to see.
Let the children think the cracks were victories.
Let Lucia believe she could rewrite his truth.
---
Inside the Trial
The players now stood in a shifting corridor made of light.
Each room required a choice — help another player or advance alone. Before, the system punished collaboration. Now… it hesitated.
Eren and Naomi helped Devon through a collapsed segment.
No spikes. No purge. No redaction.
> "We're winning," Naomi whispered. "Something's changing."
But the boy with no name just smiled.
And somewhere deep in the system — Saylor nodded.
---
The Retaliation Begins
Suddenly, the trial ended mid-sequence.
No final door.
No reward.
Just blackness.
The players stood still, whispering. Confused.
Then a new voice came.
Saylor's. Not the system. Not the Wheel. Not the god facade.
His voice was human.
And terrifying.
> "I wanted to see what you'd do with a broken rule."
> "You failed."
The sky ripped open.
And judgment fell.
---
System Purge Initiated
Brant, Lucia, and Veyra watched helplessly from their hidden lattice as the Sphere erupted in light.
Three players were immediately wiped:
Devon: consumed by a beam of kinetic force he couldn't reflect.
Kayla: her memory unsynced from her body, leaving her frozen.
Quentin (Cycle 1 version): swallowed by a collapsing sigil that bore Saylor's name.
> PLAYERS ELIMINATED: 15 REMAIN.
Naomi screamed.
Eren lunged toward the light.
The nameless boy didn't move.
He just watched.
And smiled.
---
Back in the Vault
Saylor's throne pulsed beneath him, shaped from chained identities and fractured choices.
He whispered to himself:
> "Let them push."
> "Now they know this isn't their revolution."
He tapped a single rune.
> CYCLE VARIATION ENABLED.
NEXT TRIAL: GOD-FACED JUDGE.
---
Lucia's Rage
"He murdered them," she growled.
Brant's fists trembled. "He's toying with them. We handed them hope — and he used it to kill."
Veyra sat in stunned silence.
"I think… I think he let us do it."
They turned to her.
"He wanted us to breach the root. Just to see what we'd do."
Lucia whispered, "We're being tested, too."
Brant shook his head. "No. We're being set up for failure."
Lucia turned back to the shadows.
"Then we stop playing."
