Dust motes danced lazy spirals in the single shaft of weak afternoon light slicing through the grimy apartment window. They were the only things moving with any semblance of grace in the cramped space.
Outside, the relentless, indifferent hum of traffic in 2027 – the electric whine of vehicles, the deeper thrum of transport buses, and the occasional, jarring blare of a horn- provided a dissonant soundtrack to the suffocating silence within.
Rowan hadn't bothered with the lights. The accumulated dust on every surface seemed to absorb what little illumination the smog-filtered sun offered, rendering the corners in shades of grey and resignation.
He sat before the monitor, its glow reflecting dully in his unblinking eyes. His hands rested on the keyboard, fingers slightly curled, utterly still. It had been three hours, maybe four – time had lost its crisp edges, blurring into a smear of static nothingness – since the message had arrived. The little notification ping, once a Pavlovian trigger for fleeting digital connection, had instead delivered the final blow.
'Hey man, news isn't good. Doctors gave me weeks. It's Stage 4, spread everywhere. Just wanted to say… thanks for the games. Was good knowing ya, Zephyr.'
Zephyr. A phantom name for a phantom existence. He hadn't felt like 'Zephyr', swift and free, in years. He hadn't felt like anything in years. Kai, his only friend, if you could call someone you only knew through crackling headsets and shared virtual battlefields a friend – was dying.
Cancer. Efficient and mundane in its sheer, devastating finality. Just like the virus that had stolen his parents seven years ago, when he was thirteen, the world still felt like it might, eventually, make sense. It had been swift then, too.
Fever, fatigue, silence. Leaving him adrift in the well-meaning but ultimately inadequate care of his young aunt and uncle, themselves reeling from the loss of the uncle's brother, his father.
He remembered their awkward hugs, their attempts at cheerful normalcy that felt like sandpaper on his raw grief. He remembered the arrival of their daughter a couple of years later – his cousin, pink and healthy and oblivious, a screaming embodiment of the life, the family, the future that had been ripped away from him. He knew the resentment that coiled cold and sick in his gut whenever he saw her happy, laughing, was wrong, monstrous even. But knowing didn't stop the feeling. It just added guilt to the emptiness.
The emptiness. That was the real constant. Schoolwork had blurred, andthe promising talent for painting his mother had patiently nurtured, the feel of the brush on canvas, the vibrant colours she'd loved, all became impossible, tainted by her absence.
Games became the only refuge. Not for fun, not for challenge, but for the blessed numbness. Hours sinking into sprawling RPGs and complex strategy sims. Losing himself in intricate systems, optimizing virtual empires, grinding levels for characters that felt more real, more purposeful, than he did. Until even that paled.
All of this until Kai's message.
The chair creaked as Rowan finally pushed away from the desk. The stale air, unwashed laundry, week-old takeout containers, and the cloying scent of dust, were thick, and stagnant.
"Kai..." The name was a dry rasp, lost as soon as it left his lips. "Damn it all."
Rowan stood up, joints protesting with faint clicks. His reflection in the dark monitor screen was a pale smudge, hollow-eyed, indistinct. A ghost haunting its own discarded shell. The existential query that had been circling his thoughts for months, maybe years, settled with chilling finality.
What's the point?
Not a cry for help. Not a philosophical debate. A simple, logical assessment returning: Error. Value not found.
If given a chance, he would have described his life as a rounding error in the grand calculation. His removal wouldn't disrupt the equation. A brief sadness for his aunt and uncle, perhaps, which would be quickly papered over by the demands of their own lives, their own real child. Then some paperwork, maybe an emptied room and then? Nothing. Oblivion.
Well to him, it sounded… peaceful.
The balcony door, streaked with grime, reflected the dull sky. Twenty stories. A swift, certain erasure. An end to the aching silence that screamed inside him. An end to the noise of a world he no longer belonged to.
Rowan slid the door open with a grating sound, the neglected track complaining. The city air, heavy with exhaust, spices from a distant street vendor, and the indefinable miasma of millions living too close together, rushed in. It didn't feel fresh. It felt suffocating in a different way. He stepped out onto the narrow concrete, the peeling paint rough under his bare feet. The rusty railing felt cold, gritty, and undeniably real in a way nothing else had for a long time.
Below, the traffic flowed like sluggish arteries, headlights already beginning to pierce the late afternoon haze. Tiny figures scurried on the pavements. Ants. All busy, all going somewhere, all part of something. He felt a dizzying disconnect, a profound sense of otherness.
"Don't belong," he whispered in affirmation, the admission barely stirring the air.
He gripped the railing, knuckles white for a moment before the effort felt pointless. He closed his eyes, shutting out the overwhelming, indifferent world. He took one last, shallow breath, tasting the city's metallic tang. He thought of Kai, of his parents' fading faces, of the gaping void within. He pictured release. Silence. He leaned forward—
Wrong.
The expected lurch of gravity, the rush of wind – it never came. Instead, the world unravelled.
"What the hell?!" The startled curse was swallowed by a sensation far stranger than falling. The railing beneath his hands didn't feel solid; it felt like sand trickling through his fingers, losing cohesion. The roar of the city fractured, dissolving into discordant static. The concrete underfoot became ephemeral, its texture turning to mist. Looking through slitted eyes, he saw the buildings across the street waver, their solid lines blurring, colours bleeding like watercolour in rain. Reality's weave was coming undone.
Threads of light, sound, and matter – are pulled apart, disintegrating into infinite, swirling particles.
Fear, cold and primal, finally spiked through the apathy, but there was nothing to fight, nothing to hold onto. His own body felt like it was evaporating, losing definition, dissolving into the same fundamental dust as the crumbling city. Then, the particles extinguished themselves, plunging his awareness into an absolute black.
Silence. Utter, profound silence. No city hum. No wind. No heartbeat. No breath. Just… being. A disembodied point of consciousness adrift in a void deeper than space, colder than any vacuum. Timeless. Featureless.
Was this it? The oblivion he'd sought? It was… empty. But not peaceful. Expectant, somehow.
Then, a subtle shift. Not light, not yet, but a gathering. A sense of energy coalesced in the non-space before him. Faint lines, impossibly thin, sketched themselves in the dark, woven from light that seemed both ancient and new.
They flowed like quicksilver, forming intricate, complex patterns: circuits, constellations, arcane geometry, stabilizing into glowing runes that pulsed with soft, internal luminescence. He couldn't read them like text, yet somehow, their meaning resonated directly within his awareness.
The runes shifted and rearranged. A feeling of immense, impersonal power radiated from them – ancient, vast, utterly inhuman.
The statement was settled, cold and factual. Then, a pause. The void itself seemed to hold its breath. The initial runes dimmed slightly, drawing focus to the space below where new symbols blazed into existence, brighter, more vibrant, infused with an energy that felt different, less like processing, more like… pronouncement.
A low, resonant hum vibrated through his awareness, harmonizing with the incandescent promise forming before him:
Wishes? The concept struck his desolate consciousness like lightning striking a dead tree. It was so absurd, so cosmically incongruous with the moments preceding it, that a hysterical, soundless laugh erupted within him.
'What wishes? Oblivion? Is that the wish you grant?'
Cynicism warred with sheer, staggering disbelief. A hallucination brought on by oxygen deprivation? A final, cruel jest from a universe he'd tried to abandon?
But before the cold familiarity of despair could reassert its full grip, the void ripped open. Not a dissolution, but a violent birth. Sensation returned with the force of a physical blow.
Heat, like an open furnace, slammed into him from all directions. Light, actinic and absolute, burned through his awareness, forcing simulated eyelids shut. The acrid smell of ozone and superheated rock filled his senses. And gravity, raw and brutal, seized him, yanking him down, down, down—
WHAM!
He slammed onto a surface that yielded slightly then held firm, the impact forcing the air from lungs he hadn't realized he possessed again. Pain flared through his body, sharp, grounding, undeniable.
Rowan gasped, dragging in the air so hot it felt like sandpaper, thick with a fine grit that coated his tongue. He coughed violently, curling instinctively on his side.
"Ugh... ngh... Where...?" The words were choked, raw. He blinked, eyes streaming, forcing them open against a glare that felt like physical pressure.
Red. Orange-red sand stretched in endless, undulating dunes under a sky of the most intense, flawless, terrifying blue he had ever seen.
The sun, a malevolent white orb hanging impossibly high, beat down with vicious intensity. Heat radiated up from the sand, baking him from below as well as above. There was no shade. No feature. Just sand, sky, and a silence broken only by the faint whisper of wind over dunes and the blood pounding in his ears.
This wasn't Earth. This wasn't anywhere.
The runic interface shimmered back into existence, overlaid on the brutal panorama, simpler now, utilitarian.
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[ STATUS ]
Condition: Weakened (Details Locked)
Stamina: Depleted (Details Locked)
Environmental Hazard: Extreme Heat Detected. Vitality decreasing.
----------
Epoch's Forge. The name echoed. Those not-so-alien words; Weakened, Depleted, Vitality decreasing, practical threats demanding attention. It is something one would expect in a game.
But louder still, impossibly, were those other words, the glowing promise from the void.
'Where wishes come true.'
He pushed himself weakly onto his elbows, ignoring the protesting scream of abused muscles. The sand was scorching beneath his palms.
A lie. It had to be a lie. A manipulation. A test. Yet… the sheer fact of his existence here, now, after that… it defied explanation.
The memory of the void, the runes, the feeling behind that final pronouncement… it lodged itself in his mind, a stubborn, illogical seed. Could it be real? Could a place like this grant… what? What wish did he even have left, besides the one for an end that had been so strangely interrupted?
He didn't know. But for the first time in seven years, the crushing weight of certain meaninglessness was replaced by the sharp, terrifying edge of uncertainty.
As he knelt there, panting in the oppressive heat, the air beside him shimmered again. Not with runes this time, but with faint, dispersed sparks of white light, like static discharge catching fire. They gathered, and swirled hesitantly, coalescing into a small, compact mote of soft, pure light, about the size of his fist. It hovered inches above the sand, pulsing with a gentle, rhythmic beat, emitting a low, inquisitive hum that seemed to vibrate directly in his skull.
Spark. The name came unbidden.
He stared at the wisp, then at the deadly, indifferent landscape, then back at the flickering System prompt in his vision. The familiar cold despair was still there, a heavy anchor in his soul. But tethered to it now was something new, fragile, almost unwelcome: a burning, desperate need to understand. To test the lie. To see what happened next.
A single, cracked thought formed, directed perhaps at the System, perhaps at the Forge, perhaps at himself.
Prove it.