CHAPTER 67: THE RECONSTRUCTED ACADEMY

Jay’s POV

"So... you’re telling me we’re back at the academy," I said, staring at the oddly familiar—but fundamentally wrong—school grounds.

"Kind of," Alicia answered, frowning at a floating system shard rotating slowly in her palm. "It’s like the system reassembled everything from corrupted memory files and leftover code fragments. We’re inside a restored instance, not the original reality."

"Cool," I said, stuffing my hands into my pockets. "So basically... we’re in fanfiction of our own lives?"

"No," Rei muttered beside me, scanning the floating classrooms and pixelated leaves. "It’s worse. This is a patchwork of every possible version of the academy. Every decision, every failure, every loop. Blended."

[Reality Thread: Reconstructed Academy v3.0]

[Stability Rating: 67%]

[Warning: Presence of Outside Observer still detected.]

The system notifications were more polite than usual. Maybe because it wasn’t in control anymore.

A bell rang somewhere—soft and distorted. Students with blank eyes walked like NPCs stuck in idle mode. Glitches twitched along their outlines, resetting their facial expressions every few seconds.

"Most of these people aren’t real," Alicia said, sadness slipping into her voice.

"Does that include us?" I asked, only half joking.

Rei looked at me. "Depends on what we choose next."

______

Rei’s POV

I could feel the Observer like a thorn in the fabric of this world. Watching. Recording. Not interfering—yet. But its attention was no longer passive. It had noticed something it hadn’t accounted for.

Us.

The glitch in its grand equation.

Jay seemed calm, but his system thread pulsed differently now. Ever since Null-Jay appeared, some parts of him had changed. Alicia’s stabilizing presence helped, but his thoughts—fractured, kaleidoscopic—rippled beneath the surface.

And mine?

I still didn’t know who I had been before the resets. But I knew one thing: I wouldn’t let this synthetic academy overwrite me again.

We had to find the core of this reconstruction. The nexus point.

The moment we could rewrite it for good.

______

Alicia’s POV

The air was too quiet.

Even with Jay making offhanded jokes and Rei dissecting reality like a puzzle, I felt the tension vibrating underneath everything.

Like a string stretched too tight.

I glanced at the cracked digital clocktower. There were six hours left before something happened. I didn’t know how I knew that—but I was sure.

Whatever event was being loaded, it would either wipe this simulation clean... or force another reset.

"Jay. Rei. We split up," I said. "Three paths, one destination."

Jay raised an eyebrow. "You’re pulling the classic ’trio split up to find the truth’ move?"

"It’s a pattern for a reason," I replied.

Rei nodded. "Let’s find what’s real in this place."

Jay turned, gave us a lazy two-finger salute, and walked toward the academy’s distorted west wing.

[Quest Fragment: Echoes of the Real]

[Jay - West Wing: Memory Loop Archive]

[Rei - Underground Records]

[Alicia - Clocktower Summit]

As I stepped toward the stairwell of the fractured clocktower, I whispered under my breath:

"Whoever’s still watching... get ready."

_____________________

Jay’s POV

The west wing of the academy was... wrong.

It looked familiar—same chipped tiles, same classroom doors slightly ajar—but the hallway stretched too far, bent too sharply, and pulsed faintly like a breathing thing. Every third step, the walls glitched, replaced by flickers of different timelines: summer festivals that never happened, classmates I never met, teachers who had long since glitched out of memory.

[Memory Loop Archive: Sector 7G]

[Thread Alignment Detected: Jay Arkwell]

[Access Level: Fragmented / Locked]

"So I’m special enough to trigger access, but not special enough to open the door?" I muttered.

The hallway ended in a door marked "3:16", which blinked between a normal classroom sign and blood-red glyphs in system script.

When I touched the doorknob, it burned cold.

The world blinked.

And I wasn’t in the hallway anymore.

I was back... in my first day at the academy.

But something was off.

Everyone smiled too widely. My uniform was pristine. The teacher spoke, but no sound came out. My desk was floating.

"Nope," I said, turning to walk out.

But I couldn’t.

[Loop Initialized]

[Would You Like to Repeat First Encounter?]

"Oh no," I muttered. "You’re trying to loop me through scripted trauma, aren’t you?"

I saw her. A girl from class 1-D. One I remembered—because she died during the first Special Exam.

She walked past me, untouched, unaware, alive.

I clenched my fists.

"I’m not playing along."

[Denial Detected. Loop Stability: Falling.]

The world warped again—classroom turning sideways, chairs floating, windows fracturing into static. And then—

A voice, faint and electronic.

"Jay Arkwell. You have deviated."

"Oh, you noticed?" I smirked.

A humanoid figure flickered into view—half-system, half-silhouette. Not the Observer. A Subroutine. A defense.

"You weren’t meant to survive this far," it said.

"Story of my life."

It lunged.

I dodged, barely, and slammed my palm into the nearest desk. System HUD flared around me.

[Ability Activated: Dreamfork — Rewrite Loop]

[System Resistance Detected. Override Success: 61%]

I twisted the memory.

Suddenly, I wasn’t in my own loop anymore. I was in Rei’s.

A corrupted lecture hall. A burning tree. Someone screaming. Alicia’s voice. Then—

[DREAMFORK FRAGMENT: NULL-JAY SYNC POINT LOCATED]

I stumbled backward, gasping.

I’d touched something real. Something outside the simulation.

Before I could speak, the Subroutine reformed behind me.

[Last Warning: Remove Self or Be Terminated]

"Try me," I muttered. "I’ve been terminated a dozen times."

I opened the desk drawer at my feet.

Inside was a note.

"JAY — THIS IS THE FORK. CHOOSE. — R"

And two keys: one gold, one rusted black.

The system glitched.

[Choice: SAVE / DELETE]

I looked up at the Subroutine.

I looked down at the keys.

"Not yet," I whispered.

Then I grabbed both.

__________________

Rei’s POV

I didn’t remember falling.

Only landing.

The ground below me was warm stone—ancient, cracked, etched with layered runes that shimmered as I stood. Above me, the simulation had collapsed like a peeling canvas. Whatever illusion the academy had been projecting was gone.

This place was beneath the illusion.

The true underbelly of the academy: The Underground Records.

"Welcome back," whispered a voice. It wasn’t real—not in the way people are real—but something deeper, more tethered. Like a recording looped through emotion.

[Synapse Access: Approved]

[Core Archive Alignment: Rei Kazuma – Partial Match Detected]

[WARNING: Memories may fracture]

"Fracture?" I muttered. "That’s new."

As I moved deeper into the chamber, I passed remnants of failed systems—broken avatars, half-rendered memory cores, and jagged mirror surfaces reflecting not myself but... a better version. A Rei who smiled more. Who wasn’t haunted. Who didn’t glitch when he tried to remember his own childhood.

At the far end stood a tall monolith.

It pulsed with a broken rhythm, like a heartbeat with missing beats.

And at its base: a mirror.

No frame. Just a sheet of memory-glass glowing faintly violet. My reflection stared back—and blinked before I did.

"...You’re not me," I whispered.

[REPLICA: NULL-REI DETECTED]

[Data Corruption Level: 84%]

[Connection: Incomplete Loop]

[Would you like to SYNC?]

I reached out—and the mirror shattered into streams of data.

Then a voice, cold and clear:

"Why are you trying to fix a system that never wanted you?"

The voice belonged to me. Or someone who looked like me. But cleaner. Crueler. Almost... confident.

"Because someone has to," I said, stepping forward.

The copy sneered. "This archive isn’t here for your redemption arc. It’s here to bury you."

Suddenly, the floor twisted. Memory streams erupted from the walls like bleeding wires, replaying every mistake I’d made. My failures. The lives lost. The friends I couldn’t save. Jay’s hollow eyes when I betrayed him—twice.

I stumbled.

[Core Anchor Detected: Alicia Renvale]

[Hope Protocol: Flicker Level 1]

A faint golden light flickered to my right.

A single strand.

A thread of memory.

I grabbed it instinctively, and the Archive screamed.

"Too late," I muttered. "You buried me too shallow."

I twisted the thread—and suddenly I saw it all:

A door. Hidden in code. A gate that led not to destruction—but to a choice. A third path.

[Key Protocol Recognized]

[Ready to sync with Jay Arkwell – Memory Fork alignment possible]

I opened my eyes.

The other Rei was gone.

Only silence remained.

But in my hand glowed the golden thread—and in it, I saw Jay, reaching too.

We weren’t done.

Not yet.