Chapter Text
- Prologue -
o-0-o
Omegamon X soared through the pulsating corridor of data, his form cutting cleanly through the shimmering stream of information around him.
But something was off. The flow of data that surrounded him wasn’t like the code he knew from the Digital World. It pulsed differently—strange, foreign, almost unstable.
“This isn't right…” he muttered, narrowing his eyes.
This tunnel didn’t lead to the Digital World. It was something else entirely. A different system. A different world.
He glanced over his shoulder.
The gateway behind him had already sealed shut—flickering once before vanishing entirely into the stream. His only route home, gone.
But it didn’t matter.
Omegamon turned his gaze forward again, resolve hardening in his chest.
There would be time to figure out a way back later.
“Right now , ” he thought, as he increased his speed, “I have to stop that Digimon before it causes any more destruction.”
o-0-o
It had all started not long after he reset the Digital World.
With Yggdrasil gone, the Royal Knights had disbanded. Each of its members scattered—some to find peace, others to chase their own answers in the wake of a godless world.
Well… not all of them disappeared. He still knew where a few had gone.
Dukemon had taken it upon himself to rebuild the Digital World. Alongside WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon, he was building a new peacekeeping force, one that aimed to protect this new Digital World.
Magnamon, on the other hand… the last he heard, he had chosen exile—vanishing into the darkest corners of the network. Omegamon hadn’t seen him in person since the war ended. Given how bitter things had been between them, he doubted Magnamon had any desire to speak to him anyway.
And Dorumon?
He’d found peace. A quiet life among friends. A life Omegamon didn’t want to disturb.
As for himself?
He chose solitude. Watching over the Digital World from afar, never interfering unless absolutely necessary.
Dukemon had extended an offer—an invitation to join his new organization. Omegamon had refused.
How could he accept? After everything he had done in the name of Yggdrasil—
Entire populations of Digimon wiped out by his hand, all for what he once believed was righteous.
Yes, they had been reborn when he reset the world…
But that didn’t erase what he did.
Their memories might have returned. Their lives might have been restored.
But the pain, the fear, the betrayal… those things lingered.
And he knew they hadn't forgiven him.
And honestly, he wasn’t sure he ever could forgive himself.
So he watched. He protected them from the shadows—far enough not to be feared, but close enough to act if danger appeared.
And then came that day.
It began with a distress signal echoing from the Desert Zone. Cries for help. Static screams. Panic.
Omegamon responded immediately. The desert winds whipped against him as he descended from the sky, a blur of white and chrome cutting through the heat haze.
What he saw made him freeze mid-flight.
In the middle of a vast sandy basin was a strange Digimon—small, dark-gray, almost tadpole-like in shape. It skittered on six malformed legs, its surface pulsing unnaturally like unstable code.
Surrounding it were larger Digimon—grown, capable ones—standing protectively over clusters of smaller Digimon trembling behind them.
And then… the larger Digimon attacked. All at once.
Their strikes landed—but the creature didn’t flinch. Instead, it absorbed the attacks, as if their blows were nothing but data packets being pulled into a black hole.
Then it retaliated.
It opened its mouth—too wide, unnaturally wide—and began devouring their data .
“Impossible…” Omegamon muttered, eyes narrowing.
The defending Digimon broke ranks and began to flee, dragging the younger ones with them. The creature gave chase, scuttling after them with disturbing speed.
Omegamon hit the ground hard, sending a shockwave through the sand. His arrival drew terrified gasps from the retreating Digimon.
He said nothing. No grand announcement. No orders.
He simply watched.
The moment the creature lunged toward the nearest fleeing Digimon, he moved—faster than a lightning bolt. His left hand struck the creature across its side, knocking it off course and tumbling it into the dust.
“Go,” he said firmly to the others, his voice low but commanding. “Keep running. Don’t stop.”
They obeyed without hesitation.
And now, it was just the two of them.
The strange Digimon rose slowly from the sand. Its body twitched. Then it looked up at him.
Red eyes. Cold, inhuman. Staring directly into him.
A chill ran through Omegamon’s code.
Then it screamed.
A digital wail tore through the air, and arcs of raw data began to surge outward like violent shockwaves. Omegamon dug his feet into the sand, bracing himself against the eruption.
He knew what this was.
“An evolution,” he muttered grimly.
The creature was changing—growing.
Data gathered around its form, cocooning it in a blinding pillar of light. The storm of corrupted code intensified, almost suffocating in its pressure.
What emerged from the pillar of corrupted data was a grotesque mockery of evolution—a Digimon twisted by unnatural growth and malicious intent.
It stood hunched, yet its looming form radiated menace. Its skin was a sickly, pale beige stretched taut over a sinewy, almost skeletal frame. Veins of crimson and black pulsed along its limbs like infected circuits.
Twin cables trailed from its back like lifeless tails, twitching with every movement. Its hands—grotesquely oversized—ended in long, sharp digits that looked more suited for rending data than grasping. The claws scraped against the sand as it crouched, ready to pounce.
From its shoulders jutted sharp, organic armor-like plates, giving the impression of a creature caught between organic life and mechanical horror.
Its face was the worst part—lacking true features, save for a vertical slit of an eye embedded in its forehead and twisted, twitching antennae sprouting from its scalp. Red, lidless eyes glowed with a hunger that went beyond instinct. They shone with purpose. With malice.
It didn’t growl. It didn’t roar.
It stared.
Unblinking.
Watching Omegamon—silently.
Then, without warning, it moved—fast. Too fast. For something that massive, that twisted, it shouldn’t have been able to move like that.
But it did.
A blur of distorted limbs and sinewy muscle lunged forward, claws outstretched, aiming to tear into him like a wild beast.
Omegamon didn’t hesitate. His body shifted instinctively, honed from countless battles. In one fluid motion, he raised his left arm, and the Grey Sword was unsheathed. He slashed clean across the creature’s chest, a streak of brilliant silver trailing behind the blade’s arc.
The impact landed.
But the result was…wrong.
The twisted Digimon didn’t flinch. It didn’t cry out in pain. Instead, thick, corrupted data oozed from the gash like black tar, sizzling as it hit the ground. The wound pulsed—and began to close.
Then, without warning, the creature tilted its head back and screamed.
It wasn’t a cry of pain—it was a war cry. A call.
The air rippled.
The sky above them cracked open like shattered glass, and a glowing, jagged fissure tore through the heavens, warping space like a broken screen. Omegamon’s eyes widened as energy surged from the rupture.
"No you don’t!" he growled, taking a step forward.
But the creature was already on the move. In a single bound, it launched itself into the rift, its writhing form vanishing into the tear as if it had never been there.
Omegamon didn’t stop to think. He couldn't let it escape. Not after what he’d seen. Not after what it had done.
"You're not getting away that easily," he muttered.
Without a second’s hesitation, he soared into the sky and dove into the fissure after it—into the unknown.
o-0-o
After piercing through the turbulent data stream and entering the corridor once more, Omegamon came to a sudden halt. His eyes narrowed. Up ahead—just barely visible through the pulsing fog of corrupted code—was the Digimon.
But it had changed again.
It had evolved. Again.
“Not again…” Omegamon muttered under his breath, his grip tightening around the Grey Sword. “How many more times is this thing going to change?”
An uneasy tension coiled in his gut. Something wasn’t right—not just with the evolution, but with everything about this Digimon.
He’d seen this pattern before with Dorumon.
Back then, the Digimon had evolved at an alarming rate, shifting from one form to another until it finally revealed its true identity: the missing Royal Knight, the aloof and enigmatic Alphamon.
And now… this. Was this beast following the same path?
Was it hiding something?
Who—no… what—was this thing, really?
Before he could dwell on it further, a violent shockwave ripped through the corridor. The corrupted data walls trembled as the monster’s head snapped toward him, eyes gleaming with primal fury. A low growl rumbled from its throat before it exploded forward, closing the distance in an instant.
The data tunnel itself seemed to bend and twist around its movement, like the world couldn’t keep up with its sheer speed.
“Tch—!” Omegamon’s eyes widened. “It’s fast!”
He barely had time to raise the Grey Sword before the monster’s gigantic claws came crashing down with the force of a meteor strike.
CLANG!
The impact was deafening. Sparks burst outward as holy steel clashed against corrupted talon, sending shockwaves of pressure that split the ground and sent fragments of code scattering into the air like burning snow.
And now—finally, at this brutal close range—he got a full look at what the beast had become.
It was no longer just a grotesque creature.
It was a nightmare made flesh.
Its once agile and skeletal frame had ballooned into a monstrous bulk, layered with sinew and muscle that bulged unnaturally beneath pale, almost corpse-like skin. The beast’s claws were massive, twisted things—organic blades, longer than his entire body, each one crackling with raw, chaotic energy.
Each movement was like a storm condensed into a single breath.
Its face had changed too—partially obscured behind a jagged, bony crest, as though the creature were trying to hide its shame… or its true self. Fiery red hair jutted upward from its scalp like a crown of blood, wild and defiant. Its legs, thick as pillars, ended in curved talons that gouged trenches into the floor with every step. The digital corridor beneath it warped and flickered, almost like it was rejecting the beast’s very existence.
This wasn’t natural evolution.
It was wrong. Unstable. Like something had dragged it, screaming, past its natural limits.
It wasn’t just strong. It was vile. A thing born of desperation, rage, or something darker still.
“…What kind of Digimon are you?” Omegamon asked, his voice calm but edged with tension. “What have you become ?”
The creature didn’t answer.
Instead, a deep, guttural growl rumbled from its throat—a sound that shook the very corridor around them. It wasn’t a sound of pain or confusion. It was pure hostility. Its massive claws flexed again, as if eager to taste blood.
There was no reason left. No intelligence. No words to exchange.
Only destruction.
And right now?
It had locked onto him as its target.
“…So that’s it, then,” Omegamon muttered, lowering his gaze. “No answers. No mercy.”
He had hoped—naively—that this Digimon might evolve into something with thought, with reason. Someone he could talk to. But this Digimon was different. It had lost all sense of self—or perhaps didn’t have one to begin with—becoming nothing but a monster of instinct.
He raised the Grey Sword, the edge gleaming with light.
“I didn’t want this. But I’ll do what I must.”
With one smooth, fluid motion, Omegamon slashed his blade through the air. A brilliant sword beam burst forth, tearing down the corridor like a storm. The energy wave exploded against the Digimon’s chest, sending shockwaves in all directions.
CRASH!
The force shattered the corridor’s digital walls, fragments of broken data scattering like glass through cyberspace.
The creature was blasted back—its body slamming into the structure of the tunnel—but it didn’t fall. As the dust settled, Omegamon hovered midair, his cape flowing behind him in the static-charged wind.
Then the creature rose again—its flesh singed and scorched, but its body very much intact.
“Still standing…?” Omegamon muttered, narrowing his eyes. “That attack should’ve been enough to wipe out entire formations of Adult and even Ultimate-level Digimon.”
He looked closer.
Burns marked its torso, but its posture hadn’t broken. Its claws twitched, as eager as ever. The data around its body pulsed with dark energy.
“This Digimon… it has to be a Mega.”
Before he could act again, the network around them began to fall apart. The corridor, torn open by his own attack, was collapsing faster than before—layers of corrupted code peeling away into a digital void.
Then, a roar—louder than the last—erupted from the creature’s throat.
And in response, a flash of light split the distance behind it. A swirling, radiant portal blinked into existence.
Omegamon’s expression hardened. “That’s the second time…”
It was using abilities far too advanced for a wild Digimon. The power to open gateways between the layers of the Digital World—it was something only a few, like the Royal Knights, could do.
Where did that portal lead?
The creature gave no time to wonder.
With a snarl, it leapt toward the light and vanished through it, its body swallowed by the swirling vortex.
“Tch… Not again.”
Omegamon surged forward without hesitation. His cape fluttered behind him as he soared, streaking through the collapsing corridor like a comet.
He had no idea where that portal would take him.
But wherever it went, he couldn’t let that thing roam free.
Not in this world.
Not in any world.
o-0-o
Inside her dimly lit office at 16LAB headquarters, a woman with waist-length, pale strawberry-blonde hair sat slouched in front of a wall of glowing monitors. Her reddish-brown eyes were dulled with fatigue, dark circles forming tired shadows beneath them. She looked absolutely drained.
White, cat-ear-shaped headphones rested atop her head—askew and slightly tangled in her unbrushed hair. Her outfit didn’t fare much better: a baggy, wrinkled brown long-sleeve shirt and a plain black mini skirt that had definitely seen better days. If someone unfamiliar walked in, they'd probably mistake her for some burnt-out shut-in who hadn't left her desk in days.
And they wouldn’t be completely wrong.
But those who did know her understood exactly who she was.
This was Persica , founder and director of 16LAB. A tactical genius. The leading scientist behind the Tactical Doll revolution. The kind of mind that only came around once in a generation—and even then, most wouldn’t survive the workload she put herself through.
At the moment, that same genius was staring at a mug of pitch-black coffee she had just laced with a mountain of sugar. She lazily stirred the contents, dumped in the tenth sugar cube, and took a long sip.
"Ugh... still tastes like death..." she muttered, grimacing. But she drank it anyway. She needed the caffeine.
On the central monitor, four distinct diagrams lit up—each one showing the internal systems and Neural Cloud parameters of the elite female Tactical Dolls listed under the AR Team .
M4A1.
M16A1.
ST AR-15.
M4 SOPMOD II.
Each model’s brain map displayed new fluctuations—tiny, subtle changes that wouldn’t mean much to the average analyst. But to Persica, they were worth staying awake for three days straight.
She leaned in closer, rubbing her eyes. “Hmm… There it is again. Increased synchronization rate with the commander.”
For the past few weeks, she had loaned the AR Team to Angelia for live ops, specifically under the guidance of her as their human field commander. The data that had come back since then had been... more than promising.
“Neural Cloud development accelerating under direct human leadership…” she murmured aloud, half-talking to herself and half-talking to her coffee. “Could be emotional bonding. Could be combat stress adaptation. Either way, they're evolving faster than expected.”
Persica’s weary eyes drifted to her nearly empty coffee mug, the contents long gone cold. Her body was running purely on caffeine, adrenaline, and that unique brand of stubborn genius that had carried her through more sleepless nights than she could count. At this point, her bloodstream probably had more coffee than actual blood in it.
Still, even with the exhaustion gnawing at her, she couldn’t tear herself away from the data. The readings on the AR Team were just too compelling to ignore. There was progress. Growth. Hope.
A faint smirk tugged at the corner of her lips, though her face was far too drained to fully follow through.
“Keep it up, girls,” she whispered to the glowing screen, her voice low and tired but laced with pride. “You’re doing well out there. Way better than I expected…”
With a sigh, she reached across the cluttered desk for another sugar cube to throw into her next cup. Her fingers hovered for a moment over the jar.
“Now… let’s see what else I can squeeze out of this data before my brain completely crashes and burns.”
But then—everything changed.
The once steady hum of the monitors around her was replaced by an urgent blare as the screens suddenly flickered and turned crimson. Bright red warnings erupted across every display in the lab, bathing the room in a strobe of emergency light.
Persica froze, her smile vanishing.
“…No. No, no, no—this isn’t right.”
Her heart began to race as her fingers flew across the keyboard, trying to manually isolate the threat.
Lines of code scrolled like a waterfall. She recognized it immediately. This wasn’t a minor bug or random glitch.
This was an external intrusion.
Someone—or something —was attacking her servers. Trying to tear into the very heart of 16LAB’s protected systems.
Her jaw tightened. “Who the hell has the balls to hack me ?”
But her moment of confidence evaporated as she watched—helplessly—while the first warning protocol was bypassed.
Then the second.
Then the third, fourth, and fifth.
"Impossible..." she whispered.
Everything she’d put in place—the intricate firewalls, the layered security encryptions, even the backups—were getting obliterated one by one. Someone was dismantling her fortress of code like it was made of wet paper.
The tenth and final layer of defense fell with a quiet beep.
And just like that, every monitor in the room shut off.
The lab was plunged into silence.
A few seconds later, the emergency lamps kicked on, flooding the room with a dim, flickering orange light. Shadows loomed over the mess of wires, cans, and papers scattered across her workspace.
Persica grabbed her headset and tried to hail her assistants on the internal comms.
“Team, report. I need eyes on server status—now!”
Only static replied.
She tried another channel. Then another.
Still nothing. The entire comm system had gone dark.
“…This is bad. Really bad,” she muttered under her breath.
Without wasting another second, she snatched up her tablet from the desk and stuffed it under her arm. Her steps were fast, determined, but her thoughts raced even faster.
Whoever had done this… wasn’t just skilled. They were prepared.
And whatever they were after—it wasn’t just data.
“I’m going to the main server room,” she muttered to herself, already halfway to the door. “If I don’t fix this now, everything we’ve built could be gone in minutes.”
And with that, she sprinted down the dim hallway, lit only by the flickering glow of emergency lighting—toward the heart of 16LAB.
o-0-o
Persica burst into the main server room—the only place she could directly access the central system—the heavy steel doors sliding shut behind her with a hiss. The space was colder than the rest of the facility, humming with the low thrum of machines and the subtle whir of cooling fans. Rows upon rows of black towers blinked with warning lights—red, orange, yellow—each one signaling critical failures.
She didn’t hesitate.
Crossing the room in quick strides, she reached the central system console. With a practiced motion, she whipped her tablet around, plugged it into the main access port, and began syncing it with the master control interface.
The data feed launched immediately.
But what came up on the screen wasn’t normal system code, or even a foreign programming language. It was something... alien .
Lines of strange symbols danced across the screen in shifting patterns, constantly changing and rearranging:
ᚦᚺᛝᚨᛉᚱᛗᛞᚡ ᛖᚠᛋᚷᚢᛇ ᚱᚳᛣᛏᚹᚼᛞᚣ
She stared at the data stream, eyes narrowing. “What… the hell am I looking at?”
The symbols shimmered faintly, like digital runes caught between dimensions.
Persica tilted her head and muttered to herself, “…This isn’t hexadecimal, or Unicode. It’s not Chinese, not Germanic, Cyrillic, or Latin…”
Her fingers danced across her tablet, trying to isolate the characters and run them through translation protocols, language analyzers, and AI-assisted decryption.
Nothing worked.
“It’s not in any known syntax. Nothing that any human-built system would understand. But it’s organized. Structured. Like… a language.”
She zoomed in on a repeating sequence in the data stream.
ᛗᚺᛋᚨ ᛖᛚᛞᚹ ᚠᚹᛣ ᛞᚾᛞ ᛏᚦᚱ
“These… aren’t random,” she said aloud, her mind already shifting into overdrive. “Maybe if I run a conversion and strip it down to binary...?”
She tapped the screen again and opened a custom decompiler she’d written herself. With a few quick strokes, she instructed the system to convert the strange characters into pure binary—1s and 0s.
The screen blinked.
Then rows of binary flooded the display:
01000001 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110111 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100 00101100 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110011 01101000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101111 01110000 01100101 01101110
She ran the results through a language parser.
Her breath caught as the translation rendered a rough phrase in English:
A new world, a gate shall open.
Her heart skipped a beat.
“…A new world? A gate… what does that even mean?” she murmured, voice barely louder than a breath.
The weight of those cryptic words hung heavy in the sterile air, as if the very server room had grown colder. A shiver danced down Persica’s spine as her fingers instinctively loosened their grip on the tablet. Her hands trembled, ever so slightly, as a deep sense of unease settled into her chest.
She stepped back slowly, trying to process the implications. The lights overhead flickered, then dimmed—just for a heartbeat—and then every monitor in the room blazed to life once more.
The central screen changed again.
A new set of symbols appeared, scrolling across the surface of the display in a deliberate, almost ritualistic pace. Unlike the rapid bursts before, these glyphs felt measured . As if the entity behind them was speaking —or thinking.
"...It's responding," she whispered, more to herself than anything else.
There was no mistaking it now. This wasn’t random data corruption. This wasn’t a rogue A.I. or a cyberattack by some rival faction.
Something— someone —was alive in the stream.
She leaned closer, squinting at the shifting symbols, her breath hitching in her throat. Her voice cracked as she dared to speak again.
“Who are you?” she asked the screen. “What world are you talking about…?”
As if to answer, the next line faded in, one character at a time, each glowing with a ghostly hue:
ᛗᛖᛏ ᛗᛖ ᛁᚾ ᚦᛖ ᚾᛖᚹ ᛚᛁᚠᛖ
A soft chime sounded from the tablet, and the text translated almost immediately.
You shall be the one to connect to me.
Persica’s blood ran cold.
Before she could react further, the monitor let out a sharp static burst—and then everything changed.
Without warning, a face materialized on the screen.
No, not a face—a monstrosity .
Distorted, grotesque, and inhuman. Its jagged, shifting features resembled a nightmarish amalgamation of flesh and corrupted data. One glowing red eye pulsed in the darkness, as if it had seen her long before she ever looked into it.
“What the—!?”
A low rumble vibrated through the floor as the screen emitted a sickly, pulsating glow—dark, corrupted light, the color of rotting code and burning shadows. The very air in the room warped, rippling like heat haze. The light pulled at her.
“No—no, no, no!”
Persica turned on her heel and tried to run, but her legs refused to move fast enough. It felt like she was wading through syrup, her limbs sluggish, as if gravity itself had betrayed her.
The light surged, tendrils of warped energy stretching out like hands, and in an instant—
She was gone.
Swallowed whole by the corrupted radiance.
The monitors went black.
The room fell silent.
Only the faint hum of cooling fans remained, as if the server room was pretending nothing had ever happened.
But the symbols continued to flicker faintly, repeating one phrase over and over:
A new world. A gate shall open.
o-0-o
Persica slowly opened her eyes, blinking as her surroundings came into focus. She wasn’t in her lab anymore.
She floated weightlessly inside a strange, vast space that stretched endlessly in all directions—a digital void filled with flickering streams of black, purple, and red data. Numbers—binary code—drifted around her like snowflakes, flickering in and out of existence. It was like being inside a machine’s dream.
“What is this…?” she muttered, trying to orient herself. “Am I… inside the system?”
The question barely left her lips when a sudden chill ran down her spine. She sensed something behind her.
Turning slowly, she froze.
Looming above her was a monstrous figure, its presence oppressive and heavy. The creature’s skin was a pale, sickly green, and its back was lined with jagged claws tipped in red. Its muscular arms ended in enormous, scythe-like talons, and it had long, wicked limbs that seemed almost too sharp to be real. Its glowing crimson eyes locked onto hers, and its toothy maw curled in what might’ve been a sneer—or hunger.
Persica’s mouth went dry. Her legs didn’t respond, not that she could run in this strange weightless space.
Then the air—or whatever passed for it in here—grew dense.
The corrupted data swirled tighter around her like a living storm. Persica felt herself sinking—no, being dragged —into a suffocating void made of static and spite.
The streams of black and red code weren’t just wrapping around her body—they were penetrating deeper, like they were trying to rewrite her. Her thoughts scrambled as the data pressed against her mind, corrupting not just her surroundings but her memories. It was like drowning, but instead of water, she was submerged in broken firewalls and collapsing code.
Every instinct screamed at her to break free, but her limbs wouldn’t move. Her body felt heavy, her mind foggy. She tried to scream, but her voice came out like digital noise—glitched and hollow.
Her vision flashed.
Images—fragments of her past—blurred across her mind’s eye.
The day she activated the first Tactical Doll prototype. AR Team's early days. The heated debates with the military brass about Doll deployment on the battlefield. The moment Lyco left… and the moment she learned he was gone.
The corrupted data fed off her emotions, twisting everything into guilt.
“She made us,” a voice snarled from the darkness.
“She sent us out there to die.”
“She just watched.”
It wasn’t one voice. It was many —blending, breaking apart, then coming together again like a sick chorus of blame and bitterness. It echoed all around her, bouncing off invisible walls in her mind.
“No…” Persica whispered. “That’s not… I didn’t…”
The shadows responded. A warped version of Lyco's voice spoke next, quieter—but far more painful.
“You could’ve stopped me.”
“No… I tried,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “I tried, Lyco. I swear.”
"You just let them use us. And now you're alone."
The corrupted data began to shift again, this time taking shape—claws, eyes, jagged teeth. It wasn’t just surrounding her anymore. It was becoming her.
Her arms turned translucent, flickering with corrupted code. Her reflection in the nearby streams showed her face breaking apart into fragments—half Persica, half something monstrous. Her identity was being overwritten.
“Stop… stop it—!”
She clutched her head, heart pounding, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.
“I didn’t build them to die… I wanted them to live—I wanted them to choose their own lives! ”
But the corruption didn't listen. It surged forward again, pulling her under for what felt like the last time.
For a moment, all sound disappeared.
There was only silence.
Only her, and the cold.
And then—one last breath, one final plea escaped her lips:
“…Help.”
Then came another voice—clear, calm, and steady as a rock in a storm.
“Hang on.”
The darkness split open.
A radiant shockwave exploded outward, blasting through the swirling, corrupted data. Glitchy tendrils recoiled like snakes burned by fire. Fragments of broken code scattered across the void as something massive stepped into the space—something powerful, but not hostile.
Persica gasped as the chaos peeled away. The corrupted world was pushed back by the light, and in the midst of it, she found herself cradled in a massive armored hand.
She blinked, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
The one who had saved her stood tall—easily over fifteen stories in height—encased in majestic silver and white armor. Gold lines traced the plates like circuitry, intersected with bands of cobalt blue. His crimson cape flowed behind him, trailing streaks of glowing particles. His right arm was a massive cannon embedded with glowing energy cores. In his left, he held a colossal sword lined with radiant, rune-like patterns. His face was hidden behind a regal helmet with a single horn rising from the center.
Despite the mechanical design, there was a calm presence in him. Solid. Unshakable.
“Are you okay?” he asked, voice deep and even, but warm—like someone used to offering protection.
Persica’s lips parted, her voice catching in her throat. “I… I think so.”
Her heart was still racing. Her legs felt like jelly, even though she was suspended midair.
Then came the sound again—that hideous screech , like a corrupted scream forced through a broken speaker. The monster hadn’t been defeated. From the swirling darkness, it lunged. Its claws unraveled and extended into long, snapping tendrils, each one glowing with glitching red and black static. They cracked the space around them, causing data lines to rupture midair.
The knight didn’t flinch.
Calmly, he raised his cannon arm. A pulse gathered at its tip, humming with raw energy. In the blink of an eye, he fired—an icy-blue energy blast that struck the oncoming tendrils dead-on.
They froze instantly. Crystalline ice spread across the monster’s limbs, locking them in place.
Then, with a second blast, he shattered them into sparkling dust.
“Stay close,” he said, calm but focused.
Before she could respond, a glowing white sphere formed around her, lifting her from his palm. It felt warm, safe—coded with flowing lines of protective binary that shimmered softly. The knight placed her gently on his shoulder, nestled near his armored collar.
“Wha–-who are you?” she asked, still overwhelmed.
The knight gave a short pause. “Omegamon.”
That name echoed in her mind like it had weight. Like history followed it.
But there was no time to reflect.
The monster, wounded but not dead, howled and pulled back into the digital fog. Its body writhed and twisted, becoming something even more chaotic—sprouting jagged spikes and extra limbs. From the center of its chest, it fired invisible beams—distortions that warped reality, tearing chunks of digital space with each shot.
Omegamon moved fast—faster than Persica thought something his size could. He dropped low, launching himself sideways with a burst of energy from his feet. The first beam missed. The second skimmed his arm, but his armor held.
The third, aimed right at Persica, curved unnaturally.
“Brace yourself,” he muttered.
With barely a twist of his torso, Omegamon swung his sword, slashing through the incoming distortion. The beam dispersed with a ripple, collapsing like static. The sheer force of the motion created a shockwave that blew back the remaining corrupted data.
“W-What is this thing?!” Persica shouted.
“A Digimon,” Omegamon replied.
“Di-Digimon?” Persica repeated. The term was unfamiliar to her, but she didn’t have the time to ponder it as Omegamon sped up.
He surged forward again, sword raised. His movements were fluid and sharp, almost like a dancer's—each act powered by purpose, each swing of his weapon deliberate.
The monster lashed out with more tendrils, each one like a jagged spear of corrupted code. Omegamon met them mid-air. He spun once, swinging his sword in a wide arc. The glowing runes ignited as the blade connected, slicing clean through the mass of limbs.
The monster recoiled, shrieking.
Omegamon didn’t stop.
He raised his cannon and fired again—this time chaining blasts together. Boom-boom-boom. Each pulse hit a different point on the beast’s body, breaking apart its armor and tearing into its digital form.
Finally, he dove forward, closing the distance.
Persica held onto the edge of the barrier with both hands as he lifted his sword overhead.
With one final strike, Omegamon plunged the blade straight into the monster’s face.
The beast froze.
For one brief moment, everything was silent.
Then the entire creature began to dissolve into light—ones and zeroes exploding outward like a data storm clearing itself. The void shook with the collapse of the corrupted zone, and in its place, light flooded in.
o-0-o
Persica jolted upright with a sharp gasp, her eyes snapping open.
For a second, she couldn’t quite place where she was. But as the familiar cold of the metal floor pressed against her palms and the soft hum of machines filled the air, reality slowly came back into focus.
She was back in the server room.
Slumped on the floor, her limbs heavy and stiff, she looked around in confusion. The tablet she'd been using lay a few feet away, facedown on the floor. Cables buzzed faintly around her. The overhead lights had returned to their usual steady glow, casting a neutral white light across the room.
Scrambling to her feet, Persica rushed over to the main console. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she checked every readout, every diagnostic line, and every subsystem.
Everything was fine. Operational. No errors. No signs of breach or corruption.
“…Was that all just a dream?”
She let out a shaky laugh, rubbing the back of her neck.
“Of course it was,” she muttered to herself. “Getting sucked into a network? Seeing some giant armored knight fighting a monster made of corrupted code? Sure. Totally normal. I probably passed out after I finished patching the node loop.”
She stretched, cracking her stiff shoulders with a groan.
“I guess staying awake for three days straight finally caught up with me,” she said with a lazy shrug. “Not exactly surprising.”
Then, out of nowhere, a voice replied, “That does not sound like a healthy lifestyle.”
Persica froze.
Her eyes slowly shifted toward the tablet, still lying on the floor.
That voice. It was deep—calm, almost warm. And strangely…familiar.
Cautiously, she picked up the tablet and turned it over.
Her breath caught.
On the screen stood a digital projection of the figure from her so-called "dream"—the silver-and-white armored knight with cobalt and gold highlights, his crimson cape softly rippling even within the flat, two-dimensional image.
It was him.
Omegamon.
Persica stared, stunned and wide-eyed. “You’re… real?”
The knight tilted his head slightly, then spoke again—his voice clear, composed, and unmistakably direct.
“You. What is your name?”
Persica blinked a few times, still trying to process what was happening. “Uh… Persica. My name’s Persica.”
Omegamon nodded once. “Persica. Understood.”
He paused for a moment, then added, “I will be staying here for the foreseeable future. It is… nice to be acquainted with you.”
There was a beat of silence as Persica stared at the screen, speechless.
“…Sure,” she finally said, still reeling. “Nice to meet you too. I guess.”
o-0-o
End of Chapter.