The Endless Server, Part 3: The First Glitch

The Endless Server, Part 3: The First Glitch

The Story Begins

The virtual evening in the lobby of the Endless Server was just ending. Blue bands of light flowed over the roofs of the starting zone, cosmetic-skin shops closed their holographic displays, and players vanished through gates that returned them to their own maps.

Nox stood beside the main fountain of pixel glass, checking the list of new quests. His blue neon jacket glowed a little brighter than usual because he had just upgraded his fast-decision badge.

“Zero normal quests,” he muttered. “Either the server is boring, or it’s planning something.”

“The first option is less likely,” MiraByte said. Her purple visor was pulled low over her eyes, and layers of the map raced across her tablet. “This server doesn’t know the word normal. Last time, it made us search for an exit that only appeared after we stopped competing for first place.”

SamZero leaned against a low railing panel. His white mask reflected the lobby lights, but he was looking neither at the fountain nor at the map. He was looking up, into the space above them.

Then every sound fell silent.

The lobby music cut off in the middle of a note. An advertising drone froze in midair. Even the fountain stopped falling; its drops hung like tiny crystals.

A system window opened above the fountain.

UNPLAYED TRACE DETECTED.

A second line appeared below it, but the letters formed slowly, as if someone were choosing them one by one.

THE LOBBY BOUNDARY AWAITS… AN HONEST ENTRY.

Then the window showed a direction. Not an arrow toward an ordinary gate, but a thin dashed line leading beyond the city’s last buildings, to where the map usually ended at a smooth gray wall.

Nox straightened. “Edge zone. Fine. Let’s go.”

“Fine is not the word,” MiraByte corrected him, switching her tablet to recording mode. “The system wrote honest entry. Not a code, not a level, not a player count. That’s a very strange kind of condition.”

“That voice was strange too,” SamZero added quietly.

The other two looked at him.

“Voice?” Nox asked. “It was just a message.”

“It wasn’t.” Samuel rubbed the edge of his headphones. “When the second line appeared, there was this click. Like the system was confirming something. But there was silence between the words. Not lag. More like… it didn’t know what to say next.”

MiraByte stopped typing for a moment. “The recording may have caught it.”

But Nox was already following the dashed line. “Great. We’ll figure it out on the way. If something’s waiting there, I don’t want it disappearing before we get there.”

They followed him. Behind them, the fountain began moving again, but the water no longer fell straight down. Its tiny lights turned toward the edge of the lobby, as if it too were showing the way.

At the city’s last street, the regular map ended. The advertising panels vanished, the floor lost its shine, and the buildings had unfinished windows where gray gridwork appeared instead of interiors. At the end stood an unnamed gate.

When Nox opened it, there was no dungeon or arena beyond it.

There was a street.

It looked like part of a digital city, only quieter. The houses were narrow and tall, covered in neon signs. One offered virtual bikes, another repaired avatar animations, and a third displayed ten identical golden trophies in its window. Thin streams of light ran through the pavement like paths on a circuit board.

When Things Start to Change

“This wasn’t here yesterday,” MiraByte said.

“We weren’t here yesterday,” Nox objected.

“That’s exactly why I said it wasn’t here.”

The boy smiled. “Is that your analytical logic?”

“It’s my precise logic.”

The street moved.

Not all at once. First, the sign above the bike shop changed. The words FAST RIDE broke into squares and reassembled as: ALWAYS FIRST?

Nox stopped.

A few meters farther on, the right turn disappeared. In its place, a passage opened beside a wall where a purple symbol appeared, resembling Mira’s visor. Beneath it glowed: PROOF IS NOT THE WHOLE STORY.

MiraByte frowned. “Okay. This isn’t random terrain generation.”

Samuel noticed the final change. Beside a bench made of transparent panels, a small arrow lit up, pointing into a narrow side street. Above it, letters appeared one by one.

DID YOU NOTICE?

SamZero said nothing. He only pointed at the arrow.

“The map remembers our decisions,” MiraByte said slowly. “Not only the big ones the server records in the results. It remembers the way we make them too.”

“So the street is judging me?” Nox looked at the sign above the shop. “Great. Next it’ll leave me a review.”

“Maybe it isn’t judging you. Maybe it’s giving something back.”

The sentence hung between them. Then a soft crackling sounded in the distance, like a skin that was taking too long to load.

A figure appeared at the crossroads.

It was taller than Samuel and shorter than Nox. A translucent hoodie draped around its shoulders, shifting between pale blue and almost white. Its face was not completely fixed. At times it resembled a smooth mask; then a hint of eyes flickered across it, but never lingered long enough to remember.

There was no name above the avatar.

Nox immediately raised his hand to the quick-actions menu. “Unknown avatar in a closed zone. I can flag it and send a report to the system.”

MiraByte was already scanning its profile. But on her tablet, only three blank fields appeared.

NAME: —

SCORE: —

HISTORY: —

Below them blinked an error they had never seen before.

CATEGORY UNAVAILABLE.

“It has no profile,” she said. “Not even a temporary one. That makes no sense.”

The avatar did not move. It stood to one side near the corner, as if it wanted to leave the crossroads clear. Then it tilted its head.

“Unknown avatar in a closed zone,” it repeated.

Its voice was not metallic. It sounded almost like Nox’s, but a fraction of a second slower. And there was something strange in it: not the decisiveness Nox had shown moments ago, but uncertainty it was trying to hide.

Nox lowered his hand.

Echo, though they did not know its name yet, turned toward Mira.

“That makes no sense,” it said in her voice.

The sentence sounded different now. MiraByte had said it sharply because she wanted clarity. The avatar repeated it carefully, almost sadly, as if it truly wished things did make sense.

Samuel held his breath.

When the translucent figure turned toward him, he expected it to repeat something from his last words. Instead, it said softly, “Did you notice?”

In exactly his tone. Not loudly. Not as a challenge. More like a question someone asks when they are not sure anyone heard it.

“He’s not just copying words,” Samuel said.

Nox took half a step forward. “Then what? Is he reading our sound traces?”

“Maybe,” MiraByte said. “But without a profile, he shouldn’t even have access to basic interactions. The system should automatically move him out of the map.”

An Important Moment

The avatar spoke again. “Out of the map.”

This time it trembled on the final word. The pale blue of its hoodie turned gray for a moment.

Nox frowned. “Okay. We don’t know what it is. That doesn’t automatically make it a friend.”

“And it doesn’t automatically make it a threat either,” MiraByte replied.

“We don’t need to argue. We block it, leave by a safe route, and let the system handle the rest.”

He pointed toward the wide street behind them. A green line appeared there, marked SAFE RETURN. But when Nox tried to step forward, his foot struck an invisible wall.

A system window sprang up so quickly that all of them jerked their heads back.

PROGRESS HALTED.

CONDITION: HONEST ENTRY.

“Of course,” MiraByte sighed. “A glitch in the rules. The map isn’t moving according to the route; it’s moving according to what we say.”

Nox tried to go around the wall on the left. Then on the right. He picked up a pixel-stone and tossed it over the green line. The stone flew across, but his avatar could not.

“That’s not a mechanic,” he said irritably. “That’s a pathetic personality test.”

“Maybe the server reads decisions, not just scores,” MiraByte reminded him. “This fits far too well.”

“So what does it want? For us to tell it our secrets?”

No one answered. The street waited around them. The shop windows gradually darkened, and the streams of light in the pavement stopped at their feet.

Echo watched them. It looked neither pleased nor dangerous. It looked confused, as if it did not understand why everything had stopped.

MiraByte stepped to the nearest panel and studied the tiny marks along its edge. “Maybe any truthful sentence will work. Not a command. Not a tactic. Something personal.”

“You first,” Nox said.

The girl shot him a look through her purple visor. “Of course. I always love testing new rules on my own dignity.”

She fell silent. Then she sighed, more quietly than the others were meant to hear.

“I hate it when I don’t have enough evidence,” she said. “Then I feel that if I make a mistake, it won’t just be a mistake. It’ll be my fault because I decided too soon.”

At that moment, a narrow crack opened in the wall behind her. Recessed panels slid aside and revealed a new side path. It was not wide, but it was passable.

MiraByte remained still. “So yes. It works.”

Echo repeated her sentence. The first words sounded almost exactly like her voice. But it slowed on the final part, and its face cleared for a moment. An expression appeared there that was neither a smile nor fear. It was an attempt to understand.

Nox looked at the open path. “Fine. We have a way through. We take it.”

But as he stepped forward, the path instantly narrowed to a strip barely as wide as his shoulders. The system added another line.

INSUFFICIENT ENTRY.

“Are you serious?” Nox turned around. “We already gave it truth.”

“Maybe not yours,” Samuel said.

The air went silent. It was an offline silence, uncomfortable even without chat or notifications.

Nox folded his arms. “What do you expect from me?”

MiraByte said nothing. Samuel watched the streams of light near the ground.

At last, Denis lowered his gaze. For the first time since entering the zone, he did not look like someone with a plan already prepared in his head.

“Okay,” he said. “I don’t want to block it just because it’s unknown.”

The path did not move.

What Comes Next

“That’s true,” he added quickly, “but probably not the truth the server wants.”

He took a deep breath.

“I hate not knowing what will happen. When I don’t have control, I feel as if everyone is waiting for me to mess it up. That’s why I rush. If I decide first, at least it looks as though I know what I’m doing.”

The green line of safe return vanished. In its place, the street unfolded two more blocks ahead. The buildings moved aside, the pavement reassembled itself, and lights came on above the new path.

Nox frowned, but he did not look angry. He looked more startled that the map had responded so simply.

Echo repeated, “At least it looks as though I know what I’m doing.”

Its voice now held more than Denis’s uncertainty. Something thin and quiet, something of its own, appeared in it. As if the avatar had recognized itself in that sentence, in something it could not yet name.

Samuel noticed. He also noticed that the cyan light around Echo had changed most during Mira’s confession and now during Denis’s words. When they spoke about doubt, the color shifted from cold blue to a gentler, almost green shade. When Nox spoke about blocking, the light only flickered.

“Wait,” Samuel said.

Nox was already about to continue, but this time he stopped.

The youngest member of the team pointed at Echo. “He doesn’t change with every sentence. Only when someone says they’re afraid, or when they’re unsure. With the others, he only repeats them. With these… it’s like he’s trying to feel them.”

MiraByte turned fully toward the avatar. “That would explain the delay in emotion. He can copy the words immediately. But the meaning catches up later.”

“Meaning?” Echo asked.

Samuel nodded. “Yes. What’s between the words.”

The avatar tilted its head. “Between the words.”

“Something like… when you say you’re fine, but you aren’t,” Samuel explained. Then he stopped, because he knew exactly what he meant.

The street did not move. But the system displayed no demand in response to his words. A small white dot pulsed on the pavement before him.

Samuel stared at it. Then he finally said aloud what had been bothering him for some time.

“Sometimes it bothers me when I notice something and don’t say it right away. Because I feel like you’ll keep dealing with your own things, and I’ll just be the younger one standing beside you. And then it’s too late.”

It was not loud. That was exactly why it sounded stronger.

Nox’s expression softened. MiraByte slowly lowered her hand from the tablet.

The final stretch of the map opened before them. It was more than a road. At its end, a platform appeared at the lobby boundary, and beyond it lay a new direction marked by an unknown symbol.

Echo stepped closer to Samuel.

“And then it’s too late,” it repeated.

This time, its voice was not Samuel’s. It had a tone of its own. Still more uncertain than a human voice, still a little broken, but its own.

MiraByte looked sharply at her tablet. “I caught it. The voice trace detached from its original source. It shouldn’t be able to do that.”

“So it’s a glitch?” Nox asked.

“I don’t know. It’s evidence, but incomplete.” She looked at Echo. “And for the first time, that doesn’t bother me as much as usual.”

The End of the Story

A new system window lit up on the platform. This time it was small and came without the usual sharp sound.

UNKNOWN SUBJECT DETECTED.

Nox reached for the quick action. Beside BLOCK, a REPORT option appeared. Both icons glowed red.

Echo watched them. Its light dimmed.

“Out of the map?” it asked.

It was only a short sentence. Even so, Samuel heard that strange sliver of fear the avatar had placed between the words.

Nox’s hand remained in the air. Then he slowly lowered it.

“We’ll wait,” he said. “At least until we know more. This time, I won’t decide alone.”

MiraByte nodded and saved the map recording, the system responses, and Echo’s voice trace. “We’ll give it a chance to speak. But we’ll be careful. Those things don’t cancel each other out.”

Samuel turned to the avatar. “Can you say who you are?”

Echo did not move for a long time. Its face rippled between outlines, but then clear eyes appeared for a second.

“I…” it began.

A system window suddenly flashed above them.

PROFILE: NOT FOUND.

The second line formed more slowly than any before it.

STATUS: NOT EMPTY.

No one moved.

Beyond the lobby boundary, a new path lit up, thin as a line on a map. Echo stood between them and that direction, not quite part of the team, but no longer entirely outside it either.

Then it looked at them and said very quietly:

“Not empty… does that mean stay?”