Chapter 1: The Blue Screen of Death
The fluorescent lights hummed their dying song above Gara Smith's head, casting sickly shadows across his cluttered desk. Empty coffee cups formed a defensive perimeter around his workstation, their rings staining papers nobody would ever read. The IT support ticket queue blinked angrily on one monitor while his personal laptop displayed something far more important: Elden Ring's death screen, frozen on attempt forty-seven against the Tree Sentinel.
His Xbox controller lay slack in his palm, warm from hours of frustrated gripping. The golden knight on horseback had trampled him again, and again, and again. Each death felt like a personal insult from the game's developers, a cosmic joke he couldn't crack.
"Stupid bloody horse," he muttered, rubbing eyes that burned from screen glare. The office around him had emptied hours ago—his coworkers smart enough to leave when their shifts ended. But Gara stayed, as always, because home was just another place to be alone with his failures.
His head felt heavy. The kind of heavy that came from surviving on energy drinks and spite for three days straight. Maybe he should call it quits. Maybe he should—
The world dissolved.
Golden grass tickled his face.
Gara's eyes snapped open to a sky that shouldn't exist—blue as a child's drawing, unmarked by pollution or clouds. He lurched upright, his company polo damp with dew, cargo shorts somehow still creased from sitting too long. His body screamed with the kind of deep ache that followed car accidents or falls down stairs.
"What the hell?"
The words died in his throat. Stone ruins rose before him, Gothic and impossible, draped in morning light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Statues of warriors lined a path toward a chapel that belonged in medieval Europe, not outside his office building in downtown Portland.
A voice spoke—feminine, ethereal, carrying weight that made his bones vibrate.
"Rise, Tarnished."
Gara scrambled to his feet, head whipping around to find the speaker. Empty ruins. Empty sky. Just him and the growing certainty that something had gone catastrophically wrong.
"This isn't real." His voice cracked like a teenager's. "This is some kind of... stress hallucination. Or a coma dream. Or—"
Movement in his peripheral vision cut him off. Something massive descended the chapel steps, and Gara's blood turned to ice water.
The Grafted Scion.
He knew that name, knew those twisted limbs and golden armor, knew the way it moved with predatory grace despite its patchwork form. But knowing it as pixels and polygons was nothing like seeing it in flesh—eight feet of grafted nightmares, extra arms sprouting from impossible angles, a crown of thorns wreathed in gold.
"No." The word came out as a whimper. "No, no, no. This isn't—"
The thing looked at him. Not at some player avatar, not through a screen, but directly at him. Its eyes held intelligence, malice, and something worse—hunger.
Gara's legs moved before his mind caught up, stumbling backward over roots and stones. His hands found nothing—no controller, no keyboard, no pause button to stop the horror bearing down on him. Just flesh and terror and the absolute wrongness of being here.
The Scion lunged.
Claws pierced his chest with surgical precision, punching through ribs like they were cardboard. Pain exploded through him—not the distant ache of game damage, but real agony that lit every nerve on fire. He could feel his ribs cracking, could taste copper flooding his mouth, could hear the wet sounds of his body failing.
"This isn't real this can't be real this is just a game this is—"
His thoughts scattered as blood filled his lungs. The world grayed at the edges, sound fading to a distant roar. He was drowning in himself, choking on his own life, and somewhere in the fading light he saw the Scion's face watching him die with detached curiosity.
Then nothing.
Then—
Gara gasped, jerking upright at a campfire that definitely hadn't been there before. Golden light danced around a stone monument carved with symbols that hurt to look at directly. His chest was whole, his clothes clean, his body unmarked by claws that had definitely, absolutely, killed him.
The pain lingered—phantom agony that insisted his ribs were still shattered, his throat still torn. But his hands found smooth skin, steady heartbeat, working lungs.
"Again."
The voice came from the monument itself, or maybe from the light, or maybe from inside his head. Not a suggestion. A command.
Gara touched his chest where claws had punched through. Nothing. No wounds, no scars, no evidence of death except the memories burned into his brain. He could still taste his own blood, could still feel the moment his heart stopped beating.
"I died. I actually died. And now I'm..."
Alive. Whole. Standing at what looked exactly like a Site of Grace from Elden Ring.
"I've lost my mind," he whispered to the empty ruins. "Complete psychotic break. That's the only explanation."
But the grass felt real under his fingers. The cool morning air tasted real in his lungs. The distant sound of something large moving through the chapel above felt real enough to make him flinch.
His notebook had somehow survived whatever impossible thing had happened to him. The small blue journal he'd kept for years, filled with grocery lists and phone numbers and half-finished thoughts, now felt like the only anchor to sanity in a world gone mad.
Gara's hands shook as he pulled out a pen that had no business working after what he'd been through. The first words came slowly, scratched in handwriting that looked like a child's.
Death #1: Grafted Scion. Chest cavity crushed. 3/10 - would not recommend.
He stared at what he'd written. The absurdity of it hit him like a physical blow—rating his own death like a Yelp review, as if dying was just another customer service experience gone wrong.
A laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep and broken. Then another. Then he was doubled over, cackling like a madman while tears streamed down his face. The sound echoed off stone walls, hollow and desperate and completely inappropriate for someone who'd just been murdered.
"I rated my death," he gasped between sobs. "I actually rated my own death. What's wrong with me?"
But even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. Nothing was wrong with him. Everything was wrong with the world, and humor was the only defense he had left.
The Site of Grace pulsed gently, its golden light somehow conveying patience. Waiting for him to make a choice.
Gara looked toward the chapel where the Scion waited. Then at his shaking hands. Then at the notebook that had become his lifeline to sanity.
"Okay." His voice steadied slightly. "Tutorial boss. Supposed to lose the first time. But what if..." He tested his grip on the pen, then slipped the notebook into his pocket. "What if I'm not supposed to stay dead?"
He stood on unsteady legs, muscle memory from countless gaming sessions warring with survival instincts that screamed at him to run. But running wouldn't answer the questions burning in his skull. Running wouldn't explain why he was wearing cargo shorts in what looked like Dark Souls' angrier cousin.
"Okay, you grafted bastard," he muttered, starting up the path. "Round two."
The Scion waited at the chapel doors like it had all the time in the world.
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