Definition Emotional (brain explosion)

by Anonymous

Summary:

Anyway, this post should explain it. https://www.tumblr.com/soloyaice/786423248762159104?source=share
Yeah I'm eating this up. Reversed roles, well, sorta.

Notes:

I wrote this instead of continuing my other WIP. YAY! thank you soloyaice for helping me come up with the work title lmao :).

Yall, we have hit 80 kudos and 1000 hits on this omg. I timed that so correctly lol?

Chapter 1: Why?

It had been a week since Demo 4.

Griefer was alive. No, more than that, he was healed. Player had carefully recompiled the parts of his code that were once corrupted, line by painstaking line. He had put his heart into fixing him.

They had always been close, partners in missions and trusted allies. Maybe more, but neither of them had said it out loud.

Griefer never needed to hear the words to understand what Player meant to him. In a world filled with sharp edges and kill-or-be-killed scenarios, Player made him feel safe. When danger loomed too close, Player's presence brought clarity. When Griefer threatened to collapse under pressure, it was Player’s steady hand on his back that brought him back.

In those rare moments between missions, when tension was low and energy was high, they joked and messed around as if nothing could touch them. Like the time when Griefer jokingly accused Player of cheating in a training sim:

"Y0u just cl1pp3d thr0ugh th3 w4ll. Th4t’s ch34t1ng, y0u l1ttl3 gl1tchl0rd."

Player laughed, like really laughed, with his head tilted back and his cheeks flushed.

"It’s not cheating if the code lets me! Adapt or perish, old man."

Griefer lunged to tackle him in mock offense, and they both ended up on the floor, breathless and tangled in each other’s limbs. When Player rolled off, still laughing, Griefer noticed how he looked at him as if, for once, he wasn’t carrying anything. No expectations, no fear.

It was fleeting but real.

Player never pushed or demanded. He was the first person that actually stayed, his father aside. Griefer wasn’t used to that. Most people saw him for what he could do; Player saw him for who he was.

When silence came, the kind that usually made Griefer itch for conflict, it felt different with Player. It wasn’t empty or hostile.

It felt like belonging.

But something was different now.

At first, it was subtle. A lag in Player's laugh, a hesitation before answering, and the way he pulled back a second too soon from a touch they used to share without thinking.

They still spent every night in the same room. Player claimed it was for convenience, but Griefer knew better. He noticed the way Player jolted awake at nothing, breathing hard, eyes wide, until Griefer whispered his name.

Player still touched him, but now it was cautious, like he feared his hands might cause damage just by resting on someone. It felt as if he was afraid of breaking something fragile.

Griefer began to notice how often Player zoned out mid-conversation, mid-step, mid-smile. And when he snapped back, the joy never followed.

Griefer tried to ignore it, brushing it off as stress, but the weight kept building.

One morning, as they sat side by side, watching the code sunrise ripple over the far server wall, Griefer brushed his fingers against Player’s wrist, testing the boundary of something unspoken, just like he used to without fear.

"Y0u s4v3d m3...." he said quietly.

Player smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.

"Yeah," he said. "Guess I did."

For the first time, Griefer felt cold sitting beside him.

---

Happened during a raid. Yeah, just another busted-up sector. Rogue fragments everywhere, nothing Player and Griefer hadn’t mopped up a million times before. They were even laughing, tossing jabs back and forth between swings. That easy groove, you know, the kind where your muscles remember the fight before your brain does. A rare moment where things almost felt normal? Maybe, just maybe, Player could breathe for a second and not feel like the universe was chewing him up.

But then, of course, Finn McCool had to show his ugly face.

God, that smug bastard. His smile stretched way too wide, as if he’d borrowed it from a cartoon villain and forgot to check the mirror. Standing up there, king of the digital trash heap, his little squad of fragments circling him like he was the main event.

“Well, look who crawled out of the recycle bin,” Finn spits, sword already out and attitude dialed to eleven. “Come to glitch out and cry again, little Hero?”

Yeah, banter’s fun until it isn’t.

The fight? It’s chaos, but Player’s got it down to an art. Every move is sharp, clean... almost surgical. He’s ducking low, flipping a fragment over his shoulder, smashing another against the wall, but never hard enough to end them. He’s not killing.

Then Finn switches it up. This time, he doesn’t swing for Player. He goes for Griefer.

It happens stupid fast, just a flash of metal and the wet, ugly sound nobody ever wants to hear.

Griefer reels, this awful noise stuck in his throat, sword clattering to the ground. Sparks spitting from his armor where Finn’s blade tore through, too deep, way too damn quick to block. The wound is a mess, armor folding in like it’s trying to hide the damage. And blood... actual blood, not data, gushing out, bright and terrifying.

“Gri—” Player tries to move, but his body just freezes up.

Inside, everything is screaming.

Firebrand’s roaring, a wildfire in his gut. Ice Dagger hisses, sharp and clear, like it’s carving his bones. Venomshank’s pissed—writhing, hungry. Ghostwalker—man, Ghostwalker’s practically weeping, blade shuddering like it wants to bail out of his chest.

Then something cracks open.

Hatred.

It explodes through him. A hurricane. Red, raw, ancient, primal.

His knees go out like someone cut the strings. It’s not possession. It’s infestation. Feels like every nerve in his body is burning up—like watching yourself drown but you’re still breathing.

His mouth opens, and the scream that comes out isn’t even his. It’s older, deeper, a sound that could break glass.

His eyes... they’re on fire.

The swords? They wake up inside him. Fire ripping through his chest, ice cracking the ground, poison sizzling on his skin. Ghostwalker’s voice is everywhere, a wind full of knives and mourning.

He moves.

Predator mode, full send.

He launches at Finn.

Finn’s still got that smirk, sword up, mouth about to spit out something snarky.

Player just shatters his blade. Steel explodes.

Second hit, gone. Finn’s arm just deletes, leaving nothing behind.

Third hit, the Firebrand right in the gut, and it eats Finn alive.

Finn’s howling, his code fracturing, fire pouring out his eyes and mouth. He just... melts out of existence.

Even when Finn’s gone, even when there’s only air and ruin left, he’s swinging. Over and over.

The ground. The nothing. The shame chewing through his bones.

He goes until his arms are shaking, until fire’s licking his skin, poison choking his lungs, cold in his spine. Until the red dims out and the world comes crawling back.

He stops.

Chest heaving. Vision shot to hell.

And then he sees it.

Blood.

Actual, honest-to-god blood. Red and sticky, splattered up his gloves, painting his arms and chest like some kind of war mask.

Blood.

His knees give out. He tries to speak, nothing comes.

Looks down and sees his own face, twisted and wrong, staring back from a broken shard of code. Doesn’t look like Player.

And then behind him... movement.

A gasp. Choked and sharp.

Griefer.

Still down, still glitching, eyes wide as the world. Watching.

He didn't look scared, or pissed. The expression on this face was more… stunned than anything.

Like he’s seeing him, really seeing him, for the first time. All of it. The monster, the boy, the blade, the thing that can’t stop.

“I didn’t…” Player’s voice comes out raw, shredded. “He hurt you. I—I couldn’t—”

Words fall apart. His hands twitch like they don’t belong to him.

Griefer tries to move, just a little, maybe to reach out, maybe to say something, who knows?

Player flinches.

He feels guilty as hell. Was... was this what the Guru wanted him to deal with?

He backs off. Once. Twice.

Then he’s gone.

A brutal blast of red light as he glitches out, the air shrieking in his wake.

When it’s over, there’s nothing left but busted code.

And silence.
And blood.

Chapter 2: A lil Griefer angst....

Notes:

I rly thought this would be a one shot-

Griefer stood there, frozen.

All the pixels around him pulsed as if they were questioning whether or not they should even be present. The air was plugged with static, clogged with the taste of smoldering copper, the kind it acquires when a server crashes in the middle of a save, as if something was amiss in the code of the world and nobody had the goddamn respect to repair it.

Shattered ground flashed in and out, unstable sections hanging in buggy silence. And between them, where he'd been... nothing. Only a scorch mark. As if even the server wanted to erase the memory.

The threat was done.

But Player was missing as well.

Griefer fell.

First to one knee. Then the other.

His palms crashed to the ground like broken instruments, quivering, unuseful. He thrust them into ash and stone, into where Player had stood, where he'd cried out, where he'd...no. He wouldn't even think it. Wouldn't let it form into fact.

The ground was warm. But wrong. Too smooth. Too clean. As if the code itself had refused to register the form of Player's fall.

"Pl4y3r…?"

His voice didn't quite come out. Hoarse. Shattered. Like it didn't think it was worthy of uttering the name.

No answer.

There was only silence.

But it wasn't quiet silence. It wasn't serene. It was the kind of silence that pinches against your ribcage, that lingers behind your teeth like a scream that you don't get to release. The kind that reminds you something is broken here, and it's never being fixed.

His eyes fell to the ground, to the dead warriors Player had used like ropes. He crawled forward on his belly, pushing through the ash until his hand wrapped around the grip of Firebrand.

It should've burned.

It didn't.

It pulsed once. Weakly. Like a dying heartbeat.

The other blades just lay there. Cold. Hollow. Silent.

They didn't hum.

They didn't whisper.

They didn't scream.

Because Player had taken all the screaming with him.

Griefer cradled them against his chest as if they were relics excavated from a tomb. His mouth opening again, and the word torn from him unsmoothed:

"PL4Y3R!"

Nothing.

No echo.

Only that crushing silence. The world itself in horror-stricken, speechless silence.

He opened server logs with shaking hands, reading line upon line through tears he couldn't remember starting to cry. Somewhere in the past... lost, forgotten. He found a campaign map. Old. Broken. Unstable. Marked for deletion years before.

He didn't think twice.

He tore himself from server to server.

The old campaign loaded in pieces.

The sky would not be visible, stuck in some endless loop of malfunction, half-night and half-static. Buildings twisted at awkward angles. Half the land was missing. Sky merged into ground, ground into nothing.

And at its center, slouching over a glitched campfire that stuttered between modes, burning, dead, crashing, was Player.

Seizing.

His whole body convulsed as though something was pulling him in different directions at once. Sparks flew from his skin. Error lines crawled up his arms like veins built of broken code. And his voice—

God, his voice.

It wasn't one voice anymore.

It was levels.

A choir of agony slowly disintegrating.

"I DIDN'T MEAN TO—"

"He deserved it—"

"I tried. I tried NOT to—"

"WEAK. Always weak."

It was like he was arguing with himself, every line spoken by a different version of him, twisted by guilt, rage, fear.

Griefer dropped to his knees beside him, moving slow, like one wrong twitch might send the boy scattering into pixels.

“Pl4y3r. 1’m h3r3.” He reached out, voice barely more than breath. “1’m h3r3. L00k 4t m3.”

One of Player's eyes flickered up. Red, then blue, then red again, as if a scrambled message. Glowing. Cracked.

Then he spoke, not like himself. Not anyone Griefer had ever known. His voice was distorted, with a noise of static:

"I still see him. I still see his face. The way it broke. The way I broke. They're inside. They don't leave. They don't stop. They never go quiet. Never."

H3y. H3y—l00k 4t m3." Griefer crept in close, extending through the glisten of code bleeding off Player's arms. "1t's n0t y0ur f4ult. Y0u h34r m3? Y0u d1dn't ch00se th1s... Y0u n3v3r 4sk3d f0r th1s."

Player flinched like he'd been punched. "Don't."

"Y0u d1dn't w4nt th1s," Griefer yelled, frantic now. "Th3y f0rc3d th1s 0n y0u. Y0u f0ught 1t. You fought so hard..." The last part somehow wasn't in leetspeak, like it usually was. If it were any other situation, he knew Player would tease him for it, joke that he 'broke the code' or some random nonsense that Griefer would never admit he enjoyed listening to. But, of couse, the situation wasn't normal.

"DON'T—"

Then he screamed.

Not a person's scream.

The scream tore apart the air itself, distorted space around them. Glitches pillaged the ground. Red threads of raw mistake oozed from Player's pores like tendons unraveling.

"DON'T LOOK AT ME!"

He twisted, thrashing spasmodically, hands clawing at face, chest, code itself. "DON'T TOUCH ME. DON'T. DON'T SEE ME."

Griefer did not step back.

Even when the air cremated.

Even as his vision went white at the edges from the pressure of being this close to something that shouldn’t exist.

He pushed forward, pulled Player close, even when it hurt, even when the glitching code tore across his skin like razors.

“Y0u’r3 n0t 4 m0nst3r,” Griefer gasped into his shoulder. “Y0u’r3 n0t... N0t t0 m3. Nev... never... to me.”

His voice cracked slightly as he looked at Player.

For a second, a breath, everything held still.

The screaming stopped.

The glitches stalled mid-crawl.

And those eyes, those awful, blazing, beautiful eyes, unclenched.

The boy inside looked up.

The boy with the knife's smile and the jokers' cover for how much he felt. The one who always ran toward the danger, not because he thought he could survive it, but because he wouldn't let anyone else die.

He looked so weary.

So afraid.

"I didn't mean to hurt him," he whispered.

"1 kn0w," Griefer whispered, his voice cracking.

"I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Y0u d1dn't."

The threads twisted once more.

A strangled gasp.

A tearing sound like tainted files being ripped apart.

And then... gone.

Fast-traveled.

Not even an animation.

An absence.

The kind that made echoes.

The kind that meant he wasn't coming back.

Griefer sat for a while.

Long enough for the campfire to eventually die out.

Long enough for the glitch lines to fade away.

Long enough for his own breath to come in short, shallow gasps as if he were the one panting now.

The silence did not shatter.

It grew deeper.

Shaking slightly, he turned to the side, trying to shield his face. Then he saw them. The swords. The SFOTH swords that made Player carry so much. Each magnificant in their own right.

Yet, he hadn't heard the voices that he used to hear when Venomshank was in his possesion, or near him. Should he-?

'Nothing's going to happen. I'm just going to test this.' He shakily gripped the sword, bracing himself for the voices. Yet he heard nothing. Could it be?

Something clicked inside his head. 'The swords abilities can't be contained in a single sheath.' His father had mentioned that. They had spread to his body when he slashed himself with Venomshank.

"N0....n0..." He threw the Venomshank away in frustration. Why why why didn't HE-

He knew he'd regret this later, but right now, he couldn't bring himself to do so.

He collapsed to the ground.

Notes:

Why did I ever think this would ever be a one-shot? Someone pray for this fic to end after the 3rd chapter and my sanity.

Chapter 3: well... maybe not 'a little'

Notes:

Oh lord, I did not know I could write that much until now....

The world had stopped breathing. The silence pressed down upon him, so total it felt like a weight across his shoulders. The bits of code shimmered faintly in the air, a mist that hovered above wreckage. The sound of it was muffled, threads rubbing against threads, threads about to snap.

The threat was gone. The world was quiet.

But so was Player.

Griefer dropped to his knees until one knee grated against the broken earth, then the other. His hands shook as they dove into the spot where Player had been seconds earlier. The ground was wrong — cold, bitter, like it would not remember that a boy had been here a few seconds ago.

"Punk?"

The sound was raspy, torn from a throat too constricted. Too parched. The sound was swallowed instantly by the silence.

Nothing moved.

Nothing moved but the sound of the broken world vibrating low around him.

Griefer pulled himself closer and fell forward entirely, holding out shaking hands for the swords. Firebrand's light wavered gently in the silence. The other swords shone, too, faint tendrils of light brushing the air. Well, except the Venomshank, that is.

And yet when he pressed the blade's flat to his chest, when he listened for that low humming heartbeat that had defined these weapons for so long — the voice that spoke of a thousand victories and a thousand wounds — he felt…

Nothing.

Griefer tightened shaking hands around the guns, gripping them harder yet until their edges dug into his palm. The pain of it was a sting. Grounding. Somehow real, when the world appeared to be collapsing.

But the swords did not hum anymore. Not because their steel had weakened, or their magic had abandoned them.

But because the threads were no longer in the swords.

They were in him.

They were always in him.

Through countless battles, countless victories and defeats, countless moments when these weapons had been more than weapons, the boy had crafted them. The boy had poured every piece of himself — every thought, every emotion, every silent despair — into the metal. Into the spells. Into the very fibers of their code.

Until he and the weapons weren't separate anymore.

Until the weapons weren't weapons anymore.

Until the weapons weren't needed anymore.

Until the arms were artifacts.

And the boy?

He was the sword.

Griefer fell until he was half-lying across the broken earth, knees burning, hands shaking. The silence weighed more and more until it was a shout in the pit of his stomach.

"PL4Y3R!" The shout ripped from him then, dragged from somewhere deep and despairing. It rocked the wreckage until broken walls trembled, until threads of mistake winked out of being.

Nothing materialized but silence.

But silence and the far, far hum of weaponry that were no longer weapons.

They were tombstones now. Markers. Fragments of a boy who would not be discovered.

Griefer pressed his forehead to the hilt of Firebrand, wrapped shaking fingers around steel that was too sharp, too cold, too still.

"Pl34s3," he choked. The word was torn apart by silence, too soft to be spoken over the wreckage. "Pl34s3, Pl4y3r. D0n't… d0n't g0 l1k3 th4t."

He fell apart entirely then, curling over the swords as if trying to draw strength from their inert weight. Silence pressed down like a tomb. The air shimmered faintly with threads of error, fine lines curling over the devastation like scars.

He pulled the swords closer, pressed their flat blades to his chest until it ached.

They weren't swords anymore.

They were tombstones.

And he did not know how to endure the silence that surrounded them.

Time was no longer of any importance.

Griefer remained where he was, heavy with silence, heavy with guilt. The weapons pulsed softly, tendrils of ember and ice curling across their surfaces, a gentle reminder of a thousand victories and a thousand times the boy had refused to yield.

A boy. A boy. Not a weapon.

He clasped shaking hands until the edges of the blades dug into his palm, carved narrow lines of red that blinked and quivered before the world's threads stitched the wounds closed. The pain was merciful. It was reminiscent.

He pressed the swords closer, pressed himself closer, pressed the silence closer until it appeared to breathe within him too.

He should have stopped this. Somehow. Somehow, he should have been stronger, faster, more. Somehow, he should have pulled Player closer when the threads began to twist and snap apart. Somehow, he should have refused him his walking alone. Somehow…

"0h G0d, Pl4y3r," he wept, voice shaking. "Why… why d1d y0u n0t w41t? Why d1d y0u n0t…?"

But far below, far where silence sank its teeth, he knew why.

Because this boy, this stubborn boy with too-sharp edges and too-bright scars, had been carrying too much for too long. Had been crumbling for too long. Had been stitching threads of silence and terror into the heart of himself until this was the only ending he could see.

And Griefer had not been enough to carry it for him.

He placed shaking hands on the swords, on the weapons that were no longer weapons. Not weapons, not relics. Not tools.

Remnants.

Remnants of a boy. Of a warrior. Of a thread that would not be found.

Griefer fell until the world would no longer hold him. Until silence would no longer answer. Until threads would no longer sew themselves whole. Until it felt that grief was a weight on the wreckage itself, burning hotter than any ember.

And when he screamed, it was the voice of a boy breaking.

"Please come back." The words quavered, tendrils of desperation choking the sound. "Please, Player. Don't… don't make this the end. Not for us. Not for you."

The weapons quivered a little in response. Not hums. Not whispers. Not cries.

Nothing.

Nothing but silence.

A silence that was a scream.

A silence that was a tomb.

A silence that would not forget.

A silence that would not forgive.

A silence that would not return him Player.

Griefer did not speak until silence was all that could be heard in the ruins, until silence was all he had. The weapons drew closer. The ruins shone faintly.

And deep below, deep in threads too fine to find, deep in threads too fine to tell, deep where silence was a thing akin to death itself, Griefer pressed his forehead to the weapons and swore:

"Wh3r3v3r y0u w3nt… 1'll f1nd y0u. S0m3h0w. S0m3h0w, 1'll f1nd y0u. Wh4t3v3r thr34ds 0f th1s w0rld y0u'v3 bur13d y0urs3lf 1n, 1'll f1nd th3m. Wh4t3v3r s1l3nc3 y0u'v3 wr4pp3d y0urs3lf 1n, 1'll br34k 1t. Wh4t3v3r sc4rs y0u b34r, 1'll b34r th3m w1th y0u. Wh4t3v3r scr34m y0u w0uldn't l3t 0ut, 1'll h0ld 1t f0r y0u. Wh4t3v3r gu1lt y0u w0uldn't l3t g0 0f, 1'll c4rry 1t w1th y0u.".

"B3c4us3 y0u'r3 n0t 4 w34p0n, Pl4y3r. N0t n0w. N0t 3v3r. 4nd 1'll f1nd y0u." H3 t00k 4 d33p br34th, h1s v01c3 tr3mbl1ng, "3v3n 1f 1t t4k3s 3v3ry l1n3 0f c0d3 l3ft 1n th1s br0k3n w0rld. 3v3n 1f 1t t4k3s 3v3ry br34th 1 h4v3 l3ft t0 g1v3. 1'll... 1'll f1nd y0u. 4nd 1'll br1ng y0u h0m3." He repeated it to himself, not knowing he was telling that to himself or... HIM...

Then he placed shaking hands on the swords and rose.

The swords were no longer swords.

But they were no longer quiet, either.

They were a reminder. A promise.

He clutched them tighter, wiped the sting of tears from the edges of the steel, and moved into the ruins, silence creeping like mist across the broken ground.

He stood up again, planning to continue his search.

Suddenly, a shockwave knocked him back down.

Notes:

Yeah, I'm dramatic, sue me.

Y'all... that dialougue with Griefer was rly exhausting edit... leetspeak... smh. idk if hate or love Griefer for that tbh.

Chapter 4: You lil bitch, you left a trail - Griefer

Summary:

chapter title, basically.

Notes:

here is the ammunition you asked for, Vines. Your welcome.

The world was still grey when Griefer stood again.

He moved like someone underwater: limbs slow, chest tight, vision blurred. The swords hung from his back, quiet now, not like weapons but like relics too heavy for one person to carry. The silence trailed behind him with every step, clinging to his shoulders like a shroud.

He didn’t know how long he wandered through the ruins. Maybe minutes. Maybe hours. The sky never changed. The edges of the map never loaded. Collision zones shimmered and flickered like ghosts. Nothing here was meant to be real anymore. This world had been discarded, a forgotten corner of the server.

Just like the boy who had come here.

Griefer kept walking. Dust kicked up around his boots with each step, catching the light like ash. He didn’t know what he was hoping for… some final echo? A shimmer of code that hadn’t collapsed yet? Some scrap, something of the boy he’d lost?

He stopped beside the broken campfire.

It was still glitched, flickering through animation frames that didn’t match. Fire that didn’t burn. Logs that didn’t crackle. Griefer stared at it for a long time, then knelt beside it again, his hand brushing the space where Player had been.

Nothing.

No warmth. No trace. No echo.
Until—

A flicker.
Griefer’s eyes snapped to the air above the fire, to the faint shimmer of corrupted data curling like mist. Code.

He immediately pulled up the debugging overlay.

And there it was.

A trace.

Barely anything, just a handful of mismatched packets, tangled and incomplete, scrambled by Player’s last teleport, but something. They shouldn’t have registered at all. Most fast travels didn’t leave residue. But this one had.

Because it wasn’t just Player who left.

It was Hatred too.

The clash of conflicting commands, one trying to run, the other trying to bury itself, and had jammed the travel, left data behind like splintered footprints. A string of malformed coordinates. A server name that didn’t exist anymore.

But something there.

Griefer’s breath caught. He stared, disbelieving, at the screen as it compiled the data.

It was nothing. It was everything.

A trail.

Just a direction.

Just... enough.

His knees gave out, and he sat down hard, laughing… or trying to. The sound came out broken, half-sob, half-exhale. He buried his face in his hands, the pressure in his chest finally releasing just enough to let his heart beat again.

“H3 l3ft s0m3th1ng b3h1nd,” he whispered, disbelievingly. “Y0u 1d10t1ic dumb4ss. Y0u l3ft 4 tr41l.”

It wasn’t the kind of mistake Player usually made. He was careful, overly so. Always two steps ahead, always a deflection ready. For him to miss this…

Either he’d been breaking too fast.

Or some part of him wanted to be found.

The thought felt like light cracking through the dark. Fragile. Thin. But there.

Griefer scrambled to his feet. He didn’t know where it would lead. He didn’t care. He uploaded the corrupted strings to his personal cache, locked them down, then scanned the edges for error threads, anything else Player might’ve shed in his panic.

He found one. Just one.

A piece of cloth caught on a jagged collision error… his scarf. Torn. Glitched. A single pixel line of red, unraveling into static.

Griefer stared at it. Then reached up slowly and pressed it to his chest.

“1’v3 g0t yo0u,” he whispered.

The wind stirred. Or maybe it didn’t.

The new server dropped him into void terrain. Unrendered space. Empty tiles stretching into darkness.

And then: a flicker. Another fragment. An energy surge, faint and distant. A code signature far too familiar.

Griefer ran toward it, breath burning.

The signature led him to a broken village.

And to nothing.

No Player. No Hatred. Just old bones of a forgotten questline. His chest heaved as he stood alone in the middle of the empty town, a soft ping still echoing in his head.

False alarm. Echo residue. Old code mimicking newer patterns.

His hands trembled.

But still…there had been something.

He moved from server to server after that.

Day after day, night after night, though time didn’t mean much inside the code. Sleep was a thing he forgot. Food didn’t matter. He lived off bloxy colas and static.

The only thing real was the trail, the signature fragments Player couldn’t fully erase, no matter how hard he tried.

Griefer got good at parsing the pieces.

He learned to read corrupted jumps. To smell the air for Hatred’s static. To catch inconsistencies in collision zones. He traced debug paths like blood trails.

The others tried to reach out. Cruel King. Terry. Even Calypso once. He ignored them all. Not out of cruelty. Out of desperation.

There wasn’t time.

Every second away felt like a second further Player might fall.

And he had promised. In the ruins. With the swords pressed against his heart. He had made a vow.
He would find him.

Even if it took every line of code left in the world.

But sometimes… sometimes, in the quietest moments between jumps, Griefer would swear he saw it.

The faint shimmer of red.
The flicker of a scarf.
A laugh that wasn’t Hatred’s.
A presence. Watching.

Notes:

I'm sorry... PLEASE DON'T COME AFTER ME.