Page 63 of GlitchBorn Heart

My anger, confusion, fear, it allows it to build. It bursts out of me before I can even protest. Suddenly there’s a beach and a sunset. Our little cottage by the sea glitches in and out like bad reception. Then sand, warped and metallic, sprouting out of the floor. The more I panic, the more the system responds, spitting random fragments from DreamNet into my reality.

I fall to my knees with a glimmer of hope. In all the chaos of finding myself here, I completely forgot to reach for my magic.

At first, I think it’s a mistake.

Something tugs on me through the static, like a thread being pulled too tight. The grid responds before I consciously do anything. Light bends. Code shivers. Somewhere far above, images of my dreams recalibrate.

I freeze.

For once, I’m not reactive. I reached for my magic, and it answered. My magic isn’t gone. It isn’t muted or trapped. It’s diffused. Everywhere. Threaded through the architecture of this place like veins under my skin.

I lift my hand, and the grid reacts obediently. “Stars,” I whisper, awe slipping into my voice. “You’re listening to me.”

I close my eyes and focus, not on my emotions, but on my intent. The way Ash feels vibrations, the way Eli always said the system hums constantly like it’s alive if you stop and listen.

I lean into it, and the world opens. The walls ripple, and for the first time, I notice something odd. A seam, like fabric with silky threads extending toward me.

I stop breathing.

The harder I focus, the clearer it becomes: Lines woven together, loops and knots holding the grid in place. I reach for them, not with my hands, but with whatever spark has been itching inside me since the night my life shattered. The threads respond, move, they answer. I pull one.

DreamNet is suddenly not a destination but a door I’ve always been standing in front of. I step through effortlessly, and the gray static peels back like a curtain. Color rushes in, sound floods my senses, dreamscapes layered together like overlapping clouds.

I’m inside. Free.

My laugh bubbles out before I can stop it. I turn, test the boundaries, and because curiosity has always been my fatal flaw, I push further. I pull another thread.

GameNet answers.

Gamified code, full of rules and reward loops, slips past me. I slide through easily, rewriting the code as I go. NPCs stutter, a leaderboard flickers and resets, but players continue gaming all around me.

I didn’t break it. I edited it.

My pulse spikes. “What else can I do?” I mumble to myself.

The answer comes in the form of a thousand blinking threads. I pull and see windows containing corporate newsfeeds, holo-ads plastered across Oneiro City’s streets. I can see through the eyes of drones, as I drift along with them upward, until the city itself feels small beneath me.

I touch one of the corporate headline feeds. It glitches. A smiling AI anchor flickers, then freezes, mouth open, eyes hollow. The slogan beneath her fractures, letters scrambling before reforming into one of my thoughts.

...THE CORPORATION DECIDES WHO GETS TO DREAM...

I gasp.

Below, holo-billboards stutter. A luxury ad dissolves, replaced by a wash of amber-and-gold light that forms a sunset over an ocean, the waves pulsing in time with my heartbeat. For three whole seconds, the city sees what I want it to see, not what it was meant to.

Silence, but then that familiar mechanical voice cuts in.

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS

Around me, alarms begin to ring, and the fail-safes kick in. The feeds snap back to normal, and the ads resume. The lies continue to be spread out over the city like a plague.

But I know now. I can go anywhere.

I can slip between systems like a ghost in the circuitry. I can whisper into machines Kael built to obey only him. I can tug at the seams of a city that thinks it’s untouchable.

And the most terrifying part?

This isn’t an accident fueled by emotion. This is intentional.