Lucas drifted into unconsciousness again.
This time, it didn't feel like he's falling, but returning.
He stood barefoot in a place of void — walls pulsing with dim light. Ahead of him:
A faceless figure sat, chained in the dark, twitching.
Its body was infused with shifting, glowing glyphs — the same code patterns etched on the he armor he gave the strange man.
The prison walls around it shimmered with these same marks.
Just behind it: a blurred silhouette watched, still as stone. Lucas tried to focus, but their face didn't become clear.
The faceless figure jerked. Its head snapped up, staring straight at him.
It whispered but Lucas couldn't hear it clearly enough.
___
Lucas gasped as he jolted awake.
The chill bit first — air shivering around him.
Before him, the champion stood frozen mid-lunge, icicles blossoming from his limbs like vines. Guards were nowhere to be seen — they had retreated.
A shimmering blue status board pulsed in the air.
[Illegal skill acquired: FROSTBITE]
Lucas blinked at it, startled. His hands tingle. They were as cold as an iceberg.
He clenches a fist. A faint mist curls off his fingers.
"W-What the—"
The gem stone in his pocket was gone. He searches around frantically but only finds a faint blue scorch glitter in his pocket. Like it has just disappeared into thin air.
Lucas put the thought aside, there were bigger things to worry about. He hurried to Vex's collapsed form. The massive tank felt... oddly light.
He threw him over his shoulder. Then found Dain, unconscious. Then Nyra.
He carried them all on his back — like feathers. It didn't make sense, but nothing did anymore.
He bounded off the rooftop in a blur, legs cushioning the landing automatically. The strange physicality of his body felt more and more disconnected from his old reality.
Lucas stumbled upon an abandoned warehouse. overgrown and forgotten.
The back door is locked, he tries pushing it opening but it doesn't budge. In frustration, he pounds it.
BOOM! — the door exploded inward, wood and metal scattered.
"I didn't even hit it that hard…" He sighed and carefully laid his 'teammates' near the wall.
It was old and forgotten, with a choking odour signifying it hadn't been used in years. He searched the warehouse and found; Old clothes, dusty crates, broken chairs, a cracked basin, scattered medical kits
Found some sterile bandages, a dented kettle, some crude healing herbs in an old adventurer's satchel.
He tore cloth into strips, wets a towel, gently cleaned their wounds. Lucas tended to Dain's wrist, Vex's bruised ribs, Nyra's head gash.
They were breathing. Stable, but unconscious.
Lucas squatted down,staring at his tingling palms. The cold still hadn't gone.
He looks out a shattered window. The moonlight leaks in like a ghost, painting pale lines across the dust.
The place had gone silent again, the echo of crumbling stone long faded. Lucas sat alone beside the glow of the artifact embedded in his chest — faint, pulsing, like a dying ember.
He leaned back against the wall, his breath heavy.
"Is this it?" he whispered. "Is this where I end up?"
His thoughts drifted — to the flickering neon lights of his apartment, to the plastic-wrapped meals he'd lived on, to the countless hours he'd spent glued to his video game, chasing records to escape a world that never accepted him. He remembered the fights with his mom, the job interviews he flunked, the way friends stopped calling.
"What the hell was I thinking?"
He closed his eyes, bitterness tightening in his chest. "Darn you Nick. All asked for was a sandwich. A damn sandwich."
Bzzzzz…
A small fly zipped annoyingly past his ear.
"Seriously?" He swatted lazily at it.
It looped once, then landed right on the middle of his chest.
He slapped at it heavily—
Tap.
Suddenly, a digital tone rang out, and a faint blue glow appeared in front of him.
His eyes widened as he stood up almost immediately.
[Player: Lucas Kane]
[Level: 999,999,999]
[Class: F (Locked)]
[Skills: Pinky Torch, Flame Whip, Frostbite]
[Health: 100 / 100]
[Wanted: ✪✪]
Lucas froze. His palm pulsed with light. Then the numbers hit him, each more ridiculous than the last time.
Then it hit him — the blast from earlier, the wall of fire… and that strange chill that followed.
Those were skills.
Flame Whip and Frostbite?
"But… the class is still locked at F, that has to be like the lowest?" he said, voice hushed.
Suddenly, a mechanical clink echoed from the entrance shifting the air abit.
He turned sharply.
Perched on a jagged rock where the door once stood was a metallic bird, its wings lined with fine gears, glowing with a faint neon hue.
"What the hell."
Its beak clicked once. Then a strange, echoing voice filtered out of it:
"Where whispers weigh more than gold,
And warmth hides things the bold won't hold.
In flickers dim where secrets sleep,
The mark he left is buried deep."
It looked into Lucas eyes subtly before fluttered upward, scattering bits of dust, and vanished slowly into the dark.
"Wait," Lucas shouted. "The mark who left?"
Lucas stared after it as it flew away, breath caught in his throat.
"…What the hell is happening?"
Lucas blinked, his vision slowly adjusting to the dim light of the abandoned warehouse. The air smelled of damp wood and rusted metal, a far cry from the sterile, neon-lit world he once knew. His chest still ached where the artifact had fused with his sternum, a constant, pulsing reminder that none of this was a dream.
Nyra groaned beside him, her rabbit ears twitching weakly as she tried to push herself up. Lucas quickly moved to help her, sliding an arm behind her back to steady her as she leaned against the cracked wall. Her breathing was shallow, her fingers trembling slightly as she pressed them to her temple.
Nyra's face drained. "Only one person leaves marks like that," she whispered, her voice was hoarse but certain. "…Voidmark."
Lucas felt a flicker of excitement and relief. For awhile, he thought she wouldn't regain consciousness.
A low, pained growl came from the other side of the room. Vex was stirring, his silver-furred arms twitching as he pushed himself up onto his elbows. His golden yellow eyes snapped open, immediately locking onto Lucas with a glare that could have melted steel.
"You," he spat, his voice rough with lingering pain and anger.
Lucas instinctively raised his hands, palms out. "You guys were out cold. I… I carried you here. Found some bandages and herbs in that old satchel over there and tried to patch you up as best I could."
Vex's lip curled, revealing sharpened canines. He looked like he wanted to argue, but Nyra cut in before he could.
"I think what he's trying to say..." she said, her voice firmer now, "is thankyou." She nodded to the makeshift bandages on Dain's shattered hands.
Vex scoffed, rolling his eyes as he turned his attention to Dain's unconscious form. The stone-knuckled brawler was still out cold, his breathing shallow but steady.
"We need a damn vial," Vex muttered, pressing a hand to his bruised ribs. "Something strong enough to wake him up. We can't just leave him like this."
Lucas nodded, though he had no idea where they'd even find a healing potion now. His thoughts were interrupted as he remembered the strange mechanical bird and its cryptic message.
"That bird thing," he started, glancing at Nyra. "It said… uh… 'Where whispers weigh more than gold, and warmth hides things the bold won't hold'... Umm—"
"'In flickers dim where secrets sleep, the mark he left is buried deep.'"
"Yeah, that's it."
"That's Voidmark's pattern," she murmured, more to herself than to them. "I hear he always talks like that. In riddles. Like he's afraid the System would hear him if he spoke plainly."
Lucas felt a flicker of excitement. "It's like an NPC hint! I played this game once where—"
SLAM!
Vex's fist crashed into the wooden floor beside him, the impact sending a small cloud of dust into the air.
"This isn't a game, you idiot!" Vex snarled, his voice raw with fury. "We almost died back there because of you! Dain might still die if we don't get him help, and you're sitting here talking about games?"
Lucas flinched, his shoulders hunching slightly. "I… I'm sorry," he muttered, looking down at his hands again.
A tense silence settled over them, broken only by Dain's ragged breathing.
Then—
Lucas felt something in his pocket. A slight crinkle of paper. Frowning, he reached in and pulled out a small, leather-bound book. It was slim, barely the size of his palm, with a strange, almost metallic sheen to its cover.
He flipped it open.
The pages were blank—except for one. A single line of hastily scrawled writing, the ink still slightly wet:
"Hurry. The portal is closing."
Nyra's breath hitched. She leaned forward, her fingers brushing the edge of the book.
"ALinkink," she whispered. "These things… they're rare. Cost thousands of gold coins, you can't even get it in the black market. You buy them in pairs—whatever you write in one appears in the other, no matter how far apart they are."
She looked up at Lucas, her dark eyes wide. "Only one person I know would send a message like this."
Vex let out a sharp, bitter laugh. "Voidmark," he sneered. "That crazy bastard who thought the System was lying to us. Went around shouting about 'another world' like a lunatic. Probably got himself erased for it."
Lucas bit his tongue, forcing himself not to react.
Nyra's grip tightened on the edge of the book. "If this is really from him… if he's alive… and if that portal is real—"
"No," Vex snapped, cutting her off. "We're not chasing after some dead man's delusions. We get Dain a vial, we find Pella, and we leave this idiot behind. Housing System bait is suicide."
Nyra hesitated, her ears flattening against her skull. The warehouse felt colder suddenly, the shadows stretching longer across the floor.
"Someone's coming." Lucas whispered.
They quickly covered up Dain with a tarp and hid behind the door Lucas had blown blown off.
"You sure they're here, boss?" one of the five guards said as they walked in.
"Check behind that junk," the one with a feathered helmet ordered.
They scattered the piles of junk all of the place, almost discovering Dain.
"Let's go, they're not here. Station men around their hideout 24/7. I want them found."
Lucas exhaled slowly, his breath fogging in the chilly air of the abandoned warehouse. The adrenaline from their escape had just worn off, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion as they crept out.
Outside, the last remnants of daylight had faded, plunging the slums into an uneasy twilight. The distant murmur of the lower city's nightlife drifted through the broken windows—shouts of merchants closing shop, the faint hum of enchanted streetlamps flickering to life and most especially—the marching of the armored guards.
Nyra shifted beside him, wincing as she adjusted her position against the wall. Her rabbit ears twitched at every distant sound, her fingers absently tracing the edge of the Linkink's leather cover.
"We can't stay here forever," she murmured, uncovering Dain.
Vex grunted from where he sat, his sharp eyes scanning the dim corners of the warehouse as if expecting knights to materialize from the shadows. "No shit. But we can't move until Dain can walk."
Lucas crept toward one of the shattered windows, careful to stay hidden in the gloom. Peering out, he could see the maze of narrow alleyways and leaning shacks that made up the lower city's slums.
A squad of armored guards marched in formation down a distant thoroughfare, their polished breastplates glinting under the lamplight. At their center, a hulking Champion led the way, his faceless helm turning methodically from side to side as if scanning for prey. The sight sent a cold prickle down Lucas's spine.
"They're still searching," he whispered, ducking back.
Nyra's ears flattened. "They won't stop. Not until they've scrubbed every inch of this district."
Vex bared his teeth. "Then we lay low for now. Leave at first light."
Lucas glanced at the Linkink in Nyra's hands. The message—"Hurry. Theportal is closing."—burned in his mind. But with Dain unconscious and the streets crawling with enforcers, they were trapped.
Nyra caught his look. "If Voidmark's alive… if he's really found a way out…" She trailed off, her grip tightening on the book.
Vex's voice was a growl. "You're still considering this?"
"If Voidmark was right, and there's a world we can go to without the System bothering us... Won't you wanna go, Vex?"
A tense silence settled over them. Outside, the guards' footsteps faded into the distance, but the threat lingered like a storm on the horizon.
Lucas sank back against the wall, the artifact in his chest pulsing softly. Somewhere in the city, a clocktower chimed—a deep, resonant toll that seemed to shake the very air.
They had until dawn to decide: risk everything for Voidmark's portal, or play it safe and pray the System didn't find them first.