The mechanical alarms of The Ledger system rang endlessly inside Davin’s skull, screaming a System Overload warning that made his cranial nerves feel as though they were burning. Yet, the physical pain in his body was instantly ignored the moment he scrambled out of the underground cave, breaking through the collapsing ruins toward the earth's surface.

Once Davin stepped back onto the surface, the sight greeting him was no longer the idyllic village of Oakhaven with its pine scent and melodic bird songs. That world was melting before his very eyes.

The bright blue sky above had torn wide open. Giant spiderweb-shaped fissures stretched across the expanse, radiating a blinding blood-red light from the terrifyingly pulsing digital void behind them. Binary code letters and matrix lines raced rapidly through the air, replacing the soft white clouds.

Oakhaven was being torn apart in a visual spectacle that was as magnificent as it was horrifying.

The giant trees tens of meters tall where multi-tiered wooden houses hung began to crack at their trunks. Instead of turning into ordinary wood splinters, those trees dissolved into millions of glowing blue pixel dust particles carried away by the fierce wind. The wooden houses collapsed one by one, sucked into the abyss of nothingness that suddenly yawned wide in the middle of the village.

Davin stood unsteadily on the violently shaking ground. His breathing was ragged, his eyes locked on the total destruction of the artificial world.

Amidst the chaos, the villagers of Oakhaven—who had previously moved rigidly and expressionlessly through their daily routines—now ran in panic. Yet, their panic did not look like ordinary human fear. As the red particles from the sky touched their skin, the villagers’ bodies began to crack from toe to head.

Heart-wrenching screams pierced the dying valley air.

"What is happening...? Why does it hurt so much...?" screamed a middle-aged village woman as she stared at her own hands, which were slowly evaporating into light dust.

Davin clenched his fists tightly. His heart sank. The cold detachment he usually displayed as a Memory Architect was suddenly struck by a profound wave of empathy.

Only now did Davin comprehend the full truth. Oakhaven had never been a real village. This place was a large-scale, utterly failed memory experiment—a quarantine vessel for the consciousness echoes of people who perished in the cosmic disaster of their original world. For years, that consciousness was forced to live in an illusion of happiness, repeating the same day endlessly without realizing they were merely trapped wandering souls caught in an eternal loop of torment.

They were not soulless NPCs. They were forgotten victims imprisoned within a digital cage.

"The system... this system has corrupted us..." sobbed a young village man kneeling near Davin’s feet before his body shattered into shards of light and vanished, swallowed by the wind.

Davin could do nothing to save them. This destruction was the only way to free them from eternal suffering inside the broken cassette.

As the digital particle storm raged heavier, sweeping all remaining structures in Oakhaven into nothingness, a small figure broke through the dust fog before Davin.

It was Barnaby, the middle-aged village chief who had welcomed him with a warm smile on that first morning.

Now, half of Barnaby’s body had turned into blue light particles floating in the air. His face was pale, but for the first time since Davin set foot in this world, the expression in Barnaby’s eyes looked crystal clear, free from the programmed hollow gaze.

Barnaby stumbled closer to Davin, then grabbed Davin’s right hand, which still burned with the hourglass symbol of The Ledger. The grip felt cold, yet firm.

Davin stared at the village chief with held breath. "Barnaby..." he called out softly.

Barnaby smiled faintly, a genuine smile far warmer than the artificial one he had displayed earlier. His voice sounded raspy, nearly drowned out amid the roaring gale of digital destruction.

"Thank you, young man..." Barnaby whispered softly, gazing into Davin’s eyes with absolute relief. "Thank you for ending our nightmare..."

Before Davin could return the words, Barnaby’s entire body shattered into thousands of blue light fireflies that shot upward, piercing through the torn red sky and joining the vast flowing stream of cosmic data.

Davin’s hand grasped empty air.

Within seconds, the entire village of Oakhaven vanished without a trace. No more giant trees, no more wooden houses, no more green grass. What remained was merely an expanse of pale white, dead-silent void where Davin stood entirely alone atop nothingness.

The System Overload crisis in his body reached its peak. The symbol on the back of his hand radiated a blinding red light, and a new dimensional portal began to open before him, ready to drag him into the next chapter of suffering.