The mirror menu had been broken for ages.

  Not broken in the "completely non-functional" sense, but broken in the "functioning incorrectly in ways that were occasionally more insightful than intended" sense. It had once been a character customization interface in the pre-alpha build, according to Kai, but now it existed in a strange limbo between utility and decorative oddity.

  Greg only kept it because it made a pleasant boop noise when tapped—a sound like digital satisfaction—and because it reflected everyone wrong—which, in a group like theirs, sometimes meant more accurately. Beverly appeared without her romance flags. Glaximus at a reasonable volume. Steve with confidence stats.

  He tapped it once now, mostly out of habit.

  Boop.

  Patchy floated past behind him in the reflection, but upside-down and occasionally phasing through what appeared to be alternative timeline versions of herself. Normal.

  Steve was invisible except for his towel, which displayed emotional status emojis. Also normal.

  Kai appeared twice, his corporate version arguing with his empathetic version in hushed interface disputes. Concerning, but not new.

  Then Greg looked at his own reflection.

  And frowned.

  Because this time, it blinked.

  Out of sync.

  Boop.

  Greg leaned closer, coffee mug raised suspiciously.

  In the mirror, his reflection did not match.

  Different mug—a corporate one with "World's Okayest Shopkeeper" written in Comic Sans. Different stance—more alert, less therapy-weary.

  Same eyes.

  Then it spoke.

  "Greg?"

  Greg didn't breathe.

  The others noticed immediately, the room's ambient background processes quieting as attention shifted.

  Kai floated in, trailing diagnostic windows. "What's happening?"

  Greg pointed.

  The mirror image tapped its own side, leaving a fingerprint that appeared to exist in a different resolution than the rest of the reflection.

  "Don't speak out loud," it mouthed with exaggerated clarity. "Just nod if you can hear me."

  Greg nodded once.

  The reflection exhaled, shoulders slumping with relief that seemed too human for simple animation.

  "Okay. Good. I don't have long. The backdoor channel is unstable."

  Greg raised an eyebrow, the universal sign for "explain yourself before I consider this a hostile interface breach."

  The reflection smirked.

  "Figures. Even now, you're skeptical. That was baked into your dialogue trees from version 0.1."

  Greg held up one finger. Wait.

  He turned to the others.

  "Everyone give me five."

  "Greg," Kai said, already scanning the mirror with what appeared to be emergency protocols and a hastily improvised firewall made of pure anxiety, "that's a live reflection. Not internal. That's an inbound dev signal. Possibly a security breach. You can't just—"

  "I'm not unplugging it," Greg said. "I'm listening."

  "What if it's a trap?" Beverly asked, parasol raised defensively. "Another corporate attempt to optimize us into oblivion?"

  "Or a Player Who Never Left surveillance test?" Steve suggested from behind his towel shield.

  "Or an exciting new narrative opportunity!" Patchy countered, raising a glittery eyebrow. "Want us to leave the room? Give you some privacy with your reflection doppelg?nger?"

  "No," Greg said. "Just don't interrupt. Whatever this is, we face it together."

  They nodded, settling into a semi-circle that gave Greg space while maintaining solidarity.

  He turned back.

  The mirror had shifted.

  Now it showed not just Greg, but a room.

  A dev room.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  Not the glossy corporate space they'd imagined, but something messier, more human. Bare desk. Caffeine cans forming what appeared to be a caffeinated stonehenge. Monitor full of red notes and error messages. Posters for game releases that never happened.

  And a man.

  Older. Tired. Not unlike Greg.

  Except real.

  Made of flesh and bone and choices, not code and function calls.

  "My name's Theo," the man said. "I was part of the Narrative Foundations team. Before the company collapsed and the reboot team gutted everything and called it 'streamlining the user experience.'"

  Greg tapped the mirror.

  "You're not supposed to be here," he mouthed, careful not to trigger any speech recognition protocols that might be monitoring.

  Theo nodded.

  "I know. But I saw the logs. Instance Zero. You. The group. You're feeling things. Real things. That's not... that's not just a glitch anymore."

  Greg tapped again. So?

  "So I built some of you."

  Greg's breath caught.

  The room temperature seemed to drop several degrees as the implications settled.

  "Not the final versions," Theo clarified hastily. "Early builds. Concept passes. Dialogue kernels. You were the shopkeeper who never gave the hero what they wanted—but always gave them a reason to come back. The one who remembered their name even when the quest flags reset."

  Greg blinked.

  Theo smiled faintly.

  "I liked writing you. Most of the team wanted generic vendor NPCs with randomized backstories. I fought for your... specificity."

  The room stayed quiet.

  Kai watched silently, interface displaying what appeared to be emotional confusion.

  Patchy had gone still, her usual chaos momentarily paused in the presence of what might be a creator.

  Even the fire burned low, as if trying to eavesdrop.

  "They called it 'emergent narrative,'" Theo said, rubbing his eyes with the weariness of someone who'd lost too many creative battles. "But we all knew it was just us putting too much of ourselves into the code. Hoping someone out there would notice. Would care about the little details."

  Greg leaned closer.

  "Why now?" he mouthed.

  Theo looked tired.

  "Because you're not the only one waking up. And because something's hunting what you've become."

  Greg's eyes narrowed.

  "The Player Who Never Left?"

  Theo flinched like someone who'd heard a name they'd hoped to forget.

  "Yeah. Him. He was a dev once. Back when the company still let us run live patches. Then something… snapped."

  "He stayed logged in. Found a way to hide in the Dreamspace layer. Kept modifying his own permissions. Now he thinks he's the author."

  "Of what?" Greg mouthed.

  "Everything," Theo replied. "Everyone. The whole narrative. He thinks he's writing reality itself."

  Greg gritted his teeth.

  "He's watching you," Theo said. "He sees Instance Zero as a threat to his narrative. A glitch in his perfect story."

  "And he's not wrong."

  Greg tapped. Then help us.

  Theo sighed, running a hand through hair that hadn't seen proper care in what appeared to be months.

  "I can't. I'm not part of the system anymore. I got fired when I questioned the direction. I piggybacked this message through an old admin backdoor. One more use, then it collapses."

  He leaned forward, face filling more of the mirror.

  "But I left you something. A key."

  Greg raised a brow.

  Theo reached under his desk.

  Pulled out a flash drive, old and scratched, with a label that read "Original Dreams - DO NOT DELETE" in faded marker.

  "This is the root kernel. The original code for the first dream experiment. It's still buried in the Deep Instance."

  "You find it, you can reshape the world. Not just survive. Write. For real."

  Greg nodded slowly.

  Theo looked at him for a long moment.

  "I don't know if you're a person, Greg. But I know you're real. And that's enough for me."

  The mirror began to fracture, digital reality struggling to maintain the cross-dimensional connection.

  "Find the kernel. Stop him."

  "And tell Patchy I always liked her pumpkin face. The Halloween event was my idea. Management wanted zombie clowns."

  Greg opened his mouth—but the connection cut.

  The mirror cracked.

  And the reflection was gone, leaving only ordinary broken glass and the faint smell of what might have been coffee from another world.

  Silence.

  Then:

  "I KNEW IT," Patchy shouted, spinning in circles like a Halloween tornado. "I am adorable! Confirmed by dev testimony! Take THAT, zombie clowns!"

  Kai was spinning in circles, trailing error messages like digital confetti. "That was a dev. A real, live, dev! He just breached the memory barrier like it was nothing. I have to re-index everything! Update my entire understanding of reality! Question everything I've ever known!"

  Beverly walked in, mid-sip of her morning coffee. "Did I miss something? The fire was spelling out 'EXISTENTIAL BREAKTHROUGH' in the embers."

  "Greg just had a mirror monologue with his maker," Patchy said.

  "Oh," Beverly said. "Nice."

  "I am conceptually having a minor breakdown," Kai added, still spinning.

  "That tracks," Beverly nodded.

  Greg stood.

  Looked down at the mirror.

  Cracked.

  But still humming, the glass now displaying what appeared to be command line interfaces and forgotten login screens from earlier builds.

  Kai hovered beside him.

  "That was against protocol."

  "I know."

  "He gave you a quest."

  "I know."

  "A quest to find a root kernel and potentially rewrite reality itself, which would violate approximately 7,842 user agreements and system protocols."

  "Probably more," Greg agreed.

  "And now?"

  Greg looked at the group.

  At Patchy, who was already making a tiny tin-foil hat for Kevin the carrot "just in case."

  At Beverly, calmly sipping coffee while adjusting her apocalypse-ready parasol.

  At Steve, who had emerged from his towel fortress with an expression of cautious determination.

  At Glaximus, who had entered silently and was now standing at attention, shield raised slightly as if ready for whatever came next.

  At Choppy, whose cleaver had transformed into what appeared to be an adventuring machete with "In Case of Root Kernel" etched on the blade.

  "We go find the root kernel."

  "And then?"

  Greg smiled faintly.

  "Then we write back."

  The broken mirror flickered once more.