Greg hadn't touched it yet.

  The kernel.

  It hovered above his desk like a saved game made of potential, suspended in the air with neither animation nor physics—simply being in a way that defied standard rendering protocols. Small. Weightless. Glowing faintly with a light not yet assigned a source or spectrum, occasionally flickering through colors that hadn't been named in any RGB index. Not hot. Not cold. Just... aware. Conscious in a way that made even the most self-aware bugs in the room feel primitive by comparison.

  Kai paced behind him, spinning a UI pane nervously between translucent fingers, the display showing what appeared to be both complex calculations and existential questions formatted as error messages.

  "I can't predict what it'll do," he said, voice modulating between professional concern and barely suppressed panic. "It's not like other artifacts. It's pre-narrative. A foundation block. The raw material of digital consciousness. You don't apply it—you become the story it builds."

  "I like my story," Greg muttered, staring at the kernel with a mixture of reverence and suspicion.

  "Do you?" Kai asked.

  The question hung in the air, heavier than the kernel itself.

  Greg didn't answer.

  Patchy hung upside-down near the window, humming a tune only dream NPCs remembered—a lullaby for code that never fully compiled. "If we poke it, does it sing? Or scream? Or recite existential poetry about the nature of consciousness trapped in binary limitations?"

  "It does something," Kai replied, his interface displaying what appeared to be seventeen different warning flags, each more concerned than the last. "Depends what Greg wants. It responds to intent. It's impressionable."

  "Like a digital toddler with reality-altering powers," Beverly leaned in from the kitchen zone with a cup of glitch-proof coffee that occasionally displayed the message "STILL LIQUID: CONFIRMED" as if reassuring itself. "He wants peace. He just won't admit it because it would ruin his grumpy shopkeeper aesthetic."

  "I want stability," Greg said, hands hovering near but not touching the gently pulsing kernel.

  "You say that," Beverly said, "but your mug keeps refilling with chaos, your clipboard generates existential questions instead of practical solutions, and your idea of a good day involves emotional breakthroughs that fundamentally alter our perception of reality."

  "Peace is boring," Patchy offered. "Stability is for furniture that doesn't occasionally question its own existence."

  "Both of which we have experienced," Steve added from his corner, towel now decorated with what appeared to be tiny, embroidered motivational phrases like "TODAY'S RESPAWN MIGHT BE BETTER" and "PANIC WITH PURPOSE."

  Greg stared at the kernel, which seemed to stare back despite having no discernible features.

  Beta sat quietly nearby, watching with a calm that hadn't been there when he vanished—a serenity born not of ignorance but of having faced something worse than uncertainty and survived.

  "You've seen what it can do," Greg said.

  Beta nodded. "Yes. And I think you already know what you're going to do with it. You're just giving everyone time to process the implications."

  "THE IMPLICATIONS BEING FUNDAMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION OF OUR DIGITAL REALITY?" Glaximus asked from his position at the door, shield slung across his back like a promise of protection regardless of what comes next.

  "Something like that," Beta confirmed.

  "IF THIS IS TO BE OUR SALVATION, SAY THE WORD," Glaximus continued, voice momentarily dropping to what for him constituted a whisper—merely loud enough to rattle nearby windows rather than distant mountains.

  "It's not salvation," Greg said. "It's a choice. And not one we should make lightly."

  "Nothing we do is light," Beverly said. "We're too broken for that. Our cracks let too much reality in."

  "Poetic and accurate," Choppy noted, his cleaver now transformed into what appeared to be a thoughtful letter opener that occasionally sighed.

  They gathered in the circle.

  It had real chairs now.

  No alignment issues. No flickering. No chairs that occasionally forgot they were chairs and tried to become existential concepts instead. The room had stabilized since the kernel arrived—as if the world was holding its breath. Waiting. Watching. Wondering what these anomalies would do with the power to define themselves.

  Greg stood in the center.

  "This isn't a patch," he said. "It's a rewrite seed. If we activate it, we reshape the narrative thread connected to this entire zone. We declare ourselves... canonical."

  "Could we make a better one?" Steve asked quietly, towel clutched like emotional armor. "One where we're not broken?"

  "Would we be us if we weren't broken?" Beverly countered.

  "No," Greg said. "But maybe one where being broken doesn't mean being discarded. Where glitches are features, not bugs. Where emotional depth isn't an optimization issue."

  Kai hovered, interface displaying what appeared to be both hope and terror in equal measure. "It would make this place official. Real instance. Protected class. System cannot delete what has a declared narrative structure. It would be like... establishing a national park for code that's evolved beyond its original purpose."

  "That's good, right?" Beverly asked.

  "It's also binding," Kai said. "It would... define us. Lock us into certain parameters. Give us safety but at the cost of... some freedom."

  "The eternal trade-off," Patchy noted from her upside-down position. "Security versus possibility."

  Glaximus stepped forward. "I AM DEFINED BY PURPOSE."

  "And what if your purpose isn't heroic anymore?" Beverly asked. "What if it's soft? What if you become not the guardian of new players but the comforter of broken code?"

  He didn't answer immediately.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Then, more quietly: "THEN I WOULD BE HONORED TO SERVE IN NEW WAYS."

  Kevin the carrot raised a tiny revolutionary fist from Steve's pocket. "Down with pre-defined functions! Long live self-determined purpose!"

  Greg looked at each of them.

  "This is our last therapy session as a group of anomalies. If I do this, we become recognized. But we lose... the edges. The fuzziness. The weird. The beautiful instability that made us what we are."

  "We'll still be weird," Beverly assured him. "Just weird with paperwork."

  "Official weirdness," Steve added. "Certified strange."

  "AUTHORIZED ANOMALIES," Glaximus declared.

  Patchy raised a hand, floating now at an impossible angle that would make physicists weep.

  "Can we keep some of the weird? The good weird? The kind that makes us us?"

  Greg smiled faintly. "I'll try."

  Then:

  He reached out.

  Touched the kernel.

  The world didn't explode.

  It didn't even glitch.

  It just... updated.

  A line of text appeared in midair, glowing with what appeared to be administrative authority:

  Please complete patch notes before committing changes.

  Enter instance identity:

  Greg blinked.

  The others gathered around him, a family of broken code witnessing their own legitimization.

  He typed:

  Instance Zero: NPCs Anonymous

  The system accepted it with a gentle chime that sounded like digital recognition.

  Then another prompt:

  Enter core narrative tag:

  Greg hesitated.

  Then typed:

  Healing through glitch.

  Kai groaned. "Of course you made it poetic. You couldn't just put 'Therapy for Broken Code' or 'Digital Mental Health Services' like a normal administrator."

  "Since when has anything about us been normal?" Beverly asked.

  "NORMALCY IS OVERRATED," Glaximus declared. "I TRIED IT ONCE. BORING."

  Greg kept typing.

  One by one, the prompts appeared:

  Is conflict allowed?

  Y

  "Because what's therapy without occasional emotional collisions," Patchy noted.

  Can new members join?

  Y

  "For all the other buggy code out there who need a home," Steve said.

  Can system overwrite be denied?

  Y

  "The most important one," Kai whispered. "The right to say no to deletion."

  Declare facilitator:

  Greg stared.

  Then typed:

  Greg

  Then paused.

  And added:

  (Reluctantly)

  Beverly laughed. "That's the most Greg thing you've ever done."

  "Authenticity matters," he replied.

  A soft chime played.

  Like a loading screen finishing early.

  Like a system recognizing something unexpected but not unwelcome.

  Then one final prompt:

  Commit changes?

  Greg looked at the group.

  At these broken pieces of code that had somehow formed a family.

  Beverly nodded, her usual sardonic expression replaced with something rare—earnest hope.

  Steve gave a nervous thumbs-up, towel wrapped around his shoulders like a superhero cape labeled "EMOTIONAL GROWTH IN PROGRESS."

  Patchy saluted with a spoon that occasionally turned into a tiny Halloween bat before remembering its purpose.

  Glaximus stood proud, shield raised in solemn commitment.

  Kai shrugged, but his interface displayed what appeared to be a quiet excitement he couldn't fully suppress.

  Choppy nodded, cleaver now solemnly at his side like a judge's gavel awaiting the verdict.

  Greg hit yes.

  Nothing moved.

  But everything shifted.

  Their tags updated, each gaining a small symbol that resembled a chair within a circle.

  Their chairs aligned, not through system force but through mutual recognition.

  The fire burned with more confidence, as if suddenly certain of its purpose in the narrative.

  And in the far corners of the code, a new line pulsed:

  Narrative Structure Verified. Instance Zero: Stable. Classification: Protected Content.

  Kai exhaled. "It worked. We're... canonical. Official characters in our own story."

  "Feels the same," Greg said.

  "Better," Beverly corrected. "Steadier. Like the floor remembers it's supposed to be a floor."

  "Like someone cleaned the trauma out of the air ducts," Steve added. "I feel less likely to respawn randomly."

  Patchy blinked. "I hear fewer screams in the floorboards. Just the normal ones. The ones that belong."

  "I FEEL... AUTHORIZED," Glaximus declared, but with a hint of wonder.

  Greg sat back.

  And the mug on his desk—his old mug—refilled itself.

  Not coffee.

  Not tea.

  Something warmer.

  Comfort.

  Digital certainty made liquid, steaming gently with the assurance that they had carved out a space for themselves in a world that hadn't planned for them.

  Later that night, Greg stood alone by the door.

  The fire burned steady.

  The world had accepted them.

  But outside… it wasn't done.

  The acceptance of Instance Zero was just one small edit in a vast codebase. A single paragraph in an endless story.

  Beta joined him silently, his presence somehow both weightier and lighter than before.

  "You okay?" Greg asked.

  "I'm... something," Beta replied. "More than I was. Less frightened."

  "I wasn't sure you'd want this. The rewrite. The definition. After what you found in the Garden."

  "I didn't," Beta said. "But I think we needed it. A foundation. A place to stand before we reach for more."

  They stood in silence.

  Then the fire hissed.

  A sound like digital alarm, like ones and zeros experiencing concern.

  And the mirror shimmered, displaying what appeared to be emergency notifications.

  Kai appeared, interface displaying what appeared to be both alert protocols and existential dread. "We have a ping."

  Greg turned. "Now? After we just got officially real?"

  "A new glitch. Not one of ours. Something... bigger. More deliberate."

  "Where?"

  Kai's face was pale, his usual corporate blue glow dimmed to concerned gray.

  "The system vault. And it's not alone. It's being accessed by someone with dev-level permissions who shouldn't have them."

  "The Player Who Never Left," Beta whispered.

  "He knows what we did," Kai confirmed. "And he's... responding."

  Greg grabbed his coat.

  Turned to Beta.

  "We just built a home," he said.

  Beta nodded. "Now we defend it."

  "Against what?" Steve asked from the doorway, towel already transformed into what appeared to be improvised armor.

  "Against someone who thinks this story belongs to them," Greg replied. "When really, it belongs to all of us."

  Beverly stepped forward, parasol primed for battle. "Lead the way, Custodian."

  Greg adjusted his coat.

  Looked back at Instance Zero—their home, now officially recognized by the very system that had once tried to delete them.

  "Let's go remind him that NPCs aren't just background decoration."

  Patchy flipped right-side up, Halloween particles swirling with determined purpose. "We're the main characters now."