The sky blinked.
Lucien didn't move. He stood still, staring at the chat log, his heartbeat matching the rhythm of an unexpected line:
[User: Cryxie] last login: 5m ago.
The sea below the cliffs was strangely calm. The clouds above paused for a moment, then stopped moving altogether. It felt like time hung in the air.
He took a step.
The world came back to life.
Somewhere behind the cathedral, he heard a sound—a soft clink of armor. It wasn't AI-generated but the movement of another player. Lucien drew his sword, not as a threat but as a reflex, a habit ingrained in him. The blade appeared, but the reflection in it looked wrong: his avatar seemed five levels lower. It was as if the server couldn't decide which version of him belonged there.
He turned the corner.
There she was.
Cryxie. Same armor. Same silhouette—half-shadow, half-light. Her cloak was frayed at the edges, and her hood was down. No other player ever stood like her: weight on one foot, daggers sheathed, head tilted as though she were pondering whether to laugh.
She stood in the old arena courtyard, surrounded by broken training dummies, most of which floated a few inches above the ground like abandoned souls.
Lucien said nothing.
She didn't turn, but she spoke through local chat, typing instead of using voice:
Cryxie: "Back from the dead, or just late to your own funeral?"
Lucien smirked for a brief moment in real life before it faded.
"I got curious."
Cryxie: "You always show up late.
The world's ending, and now you walk out of the crypt?"
"I thought we buried this place."
Cryxie: "You buried it. I stayed."
She turned to face him.
Her model hadn't aged, of course. But something had changed. The skin shader under her eyes had glitched, almost like smudged eyeliner. The glitch gave her avatar a kind of worn elegance, as if the code itself had been shedding tears.
Lucien walked toward her, slowly and cautiously.
"Why are you here, Quinn?"
"Don't call me that," she replied, using her real voice over the proximity mic. It was tired and crisp, as if she hadn't spoken to anyone in days.
"You're still using the name."
"I'm not here for nostalgia, Lucien."
The way she pronounced his name—flat, like a corrupted memory file—hurt more than he expected.
"There's something wrong with the world," he said.
"I know."
"The logout's gone. My HUD's half-broken. And someone—something—just called me Orpheus."
She blinked.
Then she typed:
Cryxie: "Of course it did. That's what you are, isn't it? Back to drag someone out of hell."
Lucien's voice faltered for a moment. "You think that's why I'm here?"
"I don't think," she said. "I know better."
She stepped closer, and for a brief moment, he felt it—the old bond, like a line of code between them that was never fully erased. A shared variable. Something still alive.
Then the air around them rippled—not visually, but emotionally. It felt like the game recognized their closeness, their shared past, and reached deeper into its code to recreate the moment before it all fell apart.
The training dummies began to move. Each one flickered into images of past players from their guild.
Dead players. Deleted accounts.
Familiar names.
"ArkenVale has logged in."
"Lunest has logged in."
"BlackRift has logged in."
"Theseus has logged in." "Eurydice has logged in."
Lucien and Cryxie both stared at the same name.
Eurydice.
Neither had ever played under that name. But the world thought someone had. Or wanted someone to. Or remembered someone who should have.
Lucien's voice was low and dry.
"That name wasn't on the server. Not ever."
Cryxie typed:
Cryxie: "It is now."
A shadow passed overhead.
Long and slow, a massive shape loomed in the distance. The system trembled beneath them. The dummies all froze in T-pose, their faces flickering between player models and stone statues.
Then the system displayed a single phrase—glitched and repeating in system font across every open interface:
DO NOT LOOK BACK
DO NOT LOOK BACK
DO NOT LOOK BACK
Cryxie stepped closer.
"This isn't nostalgia, Lucien. It's a myth engine. It's rewriting us."
He whispered, "Then what does it want?"
She looked him in the eye.
"A tragedy."