Born from Darkness (Sterek)

Stiles' POV

The Trace was less like walking and more like remembering how to move in a dream you half-recognized. Every step felt like it rewrote the ground beneath our feet. Every breath echoed with lines of unseen code, ancient runes written in pulsing light, whispers from the backend of the universe itself.

This place—it wasn't just inside me.

It was me.

Not metaphorically. Not symbolically.

Literally.

A shifting architecture of choices made and unmade. Paths I never walked. Moments I buried. Futures I tried not to look directly in the eye.

And right now, Derek Hale was holding my hand through all of it.

"You okay?" he asked, quiet. Like he didn't want to disrupt the hum of the world around us.

I nodded. "Yeah. Just... processing. Or being processed. It's kind of mutual."

He gave a low, half-suppressed huff. "That's the most Stiles sentence I've ever heard."

"Well." I smirked despite myself. "I aim to stay on brand."

We passed beneath a spire of tangled light—like a memory tree warped through a modem—and it flickered to reveal flashes of Beacon Hills: my mom's hospital room, the high school bleachers, Derek's loft bathed in morning gold. Some were real. Some were almost real. My mouth went dry as I realized I could feel the pull of each timeline like gravity wells.

Some of these weren't just possibilities. They were invitations.

Derek saw it too. "It's trying to tempt you."

I looked at him. "Not just me. You too. It knows what you want."

His jaw clenched slightly. "It's not stronger than what's real."

That... did something to me.

And I didn't have time to unpack what, because ahead, the terrain collapsed.

A wave of static devoured the skyline, pixels folding like dying stars. And in its wake rose a door.

No walls. No foundation. Just a door standing upright in the middle of the void, pulsing with glyphlight and carved with spiraling symbols that made my skin crawl.

This was it.

The Root.

The heart of the Monarch's logic system.

The place where the Code had started to write me into its equation.

"Stay close," I said.

Derek didn't let go of my hand.

I reached for the door—

And it opened itself.

Inside was—

—nothing.

But not the blank kind of nothing.

The kind that was full of potential.

It felt like being inside a server room built from memory and myth. Like the back of a god's mind. A cathedral of humming power.

In the center hovered a terminal.

Not a desk. Not a screen.

A concept of a terminal, rendered through thought and weight. The moment I stepped closer, it lit up with data. My data.