The sky looked the same.
Birds still flew. People still walked.
But something in the world had shifted—Sable felt it.
Ever since returning, he'd experienced… anomalies. When he looked in mirrors, his reflection would lag by a half-second. Traffic lights seemed to blink in strange patterns, like Morse code. And the worst? His dreams still rendered in Eidolon graphics—hyper-realistic, high-definition agony, as if he never left.
---
He sat in his dim apartment, blinds shut, the only light being the blue glow of the notification panel from the debrief system. Rei had messaged again:
> Rei: "I'm seeing things too. Glitches. Static in real life. We need to meet."
Sable didn't reply immediately. He was staring at a scar on his palm—one he didn't have before Eidolon. A perfect, symmetrical shape, like a data glyph.
"This world is real… right?"
"Then why do I still feel like I'm in-game?"
---
When they met, Rei looked worse than he did. Pale. Wired. Paranoid.
> "The others are dropping," she whispered, avoiding eye contact. "Three of our group are comatose. One is missing. It's happening fast."
> "The Residual?" Sable asked.
> "It's not just code. It's hunting."
"One of us brought it back."
Their suspicion turned to the files from the game—the kill logs, the debug messages, and most terrifying of all, the death echoes. Those who had died in-game now left behind distorted, lingering voices. Like ghosts trapped between two realities.
Sable and Rei began tracking anomalies using location data from the VR servers. That's when they discovered a horrifying pattern: every major glitch or reported attack was occurring near people who never died in Eidolon.
Survivors.
Someone—or something—was finishing the game manually.
---
That night, Sable's phone rang. Unknown ID.
He answered without thinking.
A metallic voice whispered:
> "You didn't log out. You only crossed layers."
"The next layer is permanent."
Click.
Then silence.
---
Elsewhere, a player who was presumed dead twitched in his hospital bed. Eyes still closed. Heart monitor flatlining. But the body—smiled.
Somewhere inside his blood, digital veins flickered—tiny sparks of unreal code trying to overwrite a human soul.
---
To Be Continued...