Cyclic Decode
The skyline flickered, not with light, but with corruption—pixels bleeding into static, geometry twisting in upon itself like a Möbius strip unraveling mid-execution. The air vibrated, thick with the scent of something burning, something ancient dissolving into the electric hum of a dying system. Buildings did not stand so much as they trembled, their edges smearing between states—erect, collapsed, absent—blinking in and out of existence as if the code underpinning their structure had been left unfinished.
Beneath my feet, the streets folded over themselves, looping into endless corridors that should not exist. Directions lost their meaning. Right became left, forward became backward, the world a recursive path leading only deeper into itself. The sidewalks crumbled, not into dust, but into raw data—floating symbols, half-formed instructions, lines of abandoned syntax bleeding from the cracks in reality.
Somewhere nearby, a terminal sputtered to life, its screen bursting into a cascade of corrupted text. ??代▊??屍?囂???⧫⧫⧫??囁Ω The characters twitched and pulsed, shifting between legibility and madness, as if struggling against their own encoding. I watched as words I could not read formed and unformed, the letters stretching, splitting, multiplying in ways that had no place in human language. ERROR: UNSUPPORTED CHARACTER SET. ENCODING FAILED.
The world was breaking, but not into chaos—into something structured, something rewritten. Mojibake ran through the veins of the city, crawling up glass windows and bleeding across every electronic display. Street signs became unreadable sigils, twisting into grotesque amalgamations of forgotten alphabets. Billboards broadcast nonsense, their messages corrupted into symbols that pulsed with the wrong kind of intent. Δ̷͓̱̹̼̞̰͖̍̊̓̿͗̌͠A̵̪͕͔͎͑͐̈͒̈́͆͝͠W̶̨̹̳̥͚̹̔̊̌͑̐̊͘A̶̡̨̯̖͎̮͕̮̞̭̅̒͑̆́͝K̴̩̳̥̰̞̻͉͑̓͛͊̓̀͝͝Ê̴͖̩͖̝͈̰̰͈̹̼͗̎̎̂.
And behind it all, behind the shattered seams, the code pulsed. The system had not simply failed. It had been overwritten.
I felt it before I saw it—something vast, something stretching between the fractures, its form not of flesh but of logic, recursive and infinite. It was not a creature, not a presence, but a function unraveling itself, tendrils of malformed syntax curling through the gaps in the collapsing world. It spoke in errors, in the stutter of corrupted execution, in the raw machine language of something too large to be contained by human perception. The void flickered, its edges lined with unreadable processes, the very concept of structure breaking down into nested loops of something beyond time.
I turned to run, but the street no longer led anywhere. My path dissolved into syntax errors, my reflection in the fractured glass replaced by a shifting mass of unrendered variables. The world was not ending. It was becoming something else. And I was nothing but deprecated code, an unsupported format in a new system where I did not belong.
SYSTEM RESET IN PROGRESS.
I tried to scream, but the sound broke apart in my throat, shattered into unreadable symbols. The new world did not have space for words. Only execution. Only recursion. Only the endless, unreadable logic of something vast awakening behind the veil.
And then—
█̷̢̜̫̖͔͕̮̙͚̤̹͎̯̒̎̒̈͆͛͂̅̔̚͠ͅͅͅŖ̶̪̯̲͎͈͙͇̮͙̝̪̩͕̗̬̘̞͋͛͂͆̌͂̏̽̀̃͘̚̚͘̕͝Ů̷̡̢̡̢̢̺̞̼͙͇̮͎̝͈̦̜̰̟͎̲͉͊̓͌̑̿̍͊̒̽͊̑̽̚͜͠͝͠Ņ̵̛̯̠͈͙̯͕͎͖̖̝̹͙̹͖̩̻̰̖͎͕͋̇͗̏̄̈̿̽͂̏͑̈́̀̕͘͘͘͜?̷̡̛̪̥̰̪̙̟̦̝̬̞̖̲̝͙̲̙̠͉̤̳͖̰͎̖͇̗̮͇̜̱͓̬͒͛̏͊̊̎̀͂̀̅̿̅̂̚͘͜͠͝͝͠?̷̧̡̧̥̺̼͉͚̤̖̮͉̰͔̯̱̲̲̺̞͉͖͖̻͉̰͙̘̻̖̼̖̖̦̳͕̠̱̖͈͖̯͓̽̾̀̂̊̍̏͂̓̏̎̈́̓͘͘̕͘͝͝?̶̢̨̳̰̠̤̪̪͕̼͚̲͎͕͙͕̦̞̘͇͖̲̪͎̝̼̺̻͉͚̠̖̺̠̜͚̞͎̓̇̀̍̎̊̎̽̂͛̏͑̈́͑̈́́̇͘̕̕͠͝͝͠