—No?
—You don't choose any?
—Are you crazy? That could destroy the Nexus!
The female voice echoed like a vibration between planes.
Hella, the goddess of transit between worlds, watched me with a mixture of fury and
bewilderment. Her hair floated as if each strand had a life of its own, and her eyes— two
wells of purple light—narrowed with a sneer of contempt and confusion.
She muttered to herself, without pretense:
—All the reborn want something. To be heroes, villains, gods... to rule a kingdom, save
princesses, conquer the world. Everyone wants to be the protagonist. As if this were a
damn MMORPG that closed its server and took its pixels to hell.
—I don't want anything —I replied, interrupting her
outburst. —What do you mean?
—I don't want to be a hero or a villain. I just want a quiet life. And, by the way, your
interface is outdated.
For a moment, the silence was absolute.
The light particles of the Nexus stopped in the air as if even time held its breath.
Hella blinked, incredulous, and her expression went from anger to an almost childish confusion.
—It's not my fault —she finally murmured—. I don't even know how you
appeared here. —What do you mean by that?
—People from your world... humans from Earth don't come directly to the Nexus. They
shouldn't be able to.
She took a step towards me; her presence was overwhelming, as if gravity bent around
her.
—Your record is inconsistent, Zeke. I don't even know if that's your real name.
—It's not —I replied with a sad smile—. Zeke is just a nickname. I used it from the old
arcades to my online accounts. It's the only thing left of me when everything
disappeared.
The goddess narrowed her eyes, watching me with a mixture of curiosity and
caution. —So... what your "computer" chose... —Yes —I interrupted—. The
Equilibrium Nexus option. I thought it sounded good to have a little
of everything in my next life.
Hella let out a contained laugh, between irony and despair. —You're a
glitch, human. An error within the divine code.
She turned around, her long dress of shadows dragging light in its wake, and
whispered something barely audible:
—Maybe that's why the system chose you… because something needed to break.
C:\SYSTEM\BOOT.EXE
> CONFIGURATION COMPLETED.
> SOUL PROFILE: ZEKE [ANOMALY DETECTED] > DESTINATION
WORLD: EQUILIBRIUM_NEXUS > STABILITY: 43%
> PROBABILITY OF EXISTENTIAL FAILURE: 71% > PROCEED
WITH REINCARNATION? [Y]
C:\>_
Zeke:
—I guess I don't have another option, do I?
Hella:
—No one does, mortal. Welcome to perfect chaos.
> EXECUTING TRANSFER 87%
> WELCOME TO THE NEXUS.
C:\SYSTEM>_
You know? If you want, I could improve the interface. It wouldn't be a big problem for me
—I said, half joking, half serious.
Then I remembered that I no longer had my machine… my beloved PC. But even so, I
offered Hella my help. She looked at me as if a child were trying to explain quantum
physics to a dragon.
Annoyed, she crossed her arms and blurted out that the system was perfect, that the
only mistake there was me. Then she began to tell me the story of the Nexus: blah,
blah, blah… battle of gods, Hellhime, cosmic balance and all that jazz. A story so long
that, frankly, I stopped listening after a few minutes.
While she was talking, I was just trying to understand what the hell my abilities were. I
tried to open the system menu, I tried every command I could think of… but nothing.
Until, almost without thinking, I whispered to myself "help". And then, as if the universe
was winking at me, a list of commands appeared before me. It was identical to the
window of an old DOS system.
—Who designed this operating system? —I asked, curious.
—Me —replied the goddess, puffing out her chest with pride.
—You? —I laughed—. Well, it seems you copied Tim Paterson's design.
Hella glared at me, indignant.
—I gave that Tim guy the idea in a dream! —she replied in a sour voice.
—Sure —I said—. If everyone who benefited from Tim gave him even one percent of their
money, he would be the richest man in the world.
She grumbled like an annoyed child, muttering something about "ungrateful gods" and
"insolent humans." Then she told me that she would know where to place me when she
sent me to the beginning of my adventure, just for being so rude.
I started laughing.
—It can't be worse than my old life —I replied.
She gave me a sidelong and threatening look, as she approached a huge console that
she summoned with a gesture. It emerged from the void surrounded by violet lights,
like will-o'-the-wisps dancing in the air. It was a macabre structure, adorned with skulls
and bone fragments of creatures that I preferred not to identify.
Hella leaned back on the console, resting her hands with a distracted gesture. Her body
leaned slightly forward, revealing her wide hips and the provocative curve of her rear.
And although the situation was surreal, all I could think was that, if that was my
operating system, I definitely wouldn't mind staying in the configuration for a
while longer.
Then, again, an error: her damn machine started beeping, like those
old PCs that crashed with just one hit. —Do you need help? —I asked
her. Frustrated, she grumbled: —Do you need help? Idiot, I am the
goddess of death.
I couldn't help but laugh. Then she turned to me, and her eyes shone as red as the
flames of hell. A black mist covered her body, and from it emerged a mummified female
figure, barely covered by strips of torn linen. Nothing to do with her
imposing queen of death suit, although just as revealing. She looked… like a draugr
stripper.
—How dare you? I am the goddess of death!
More than fear, I felt discomfort. It's not every day that one sees a half-naked
skeleton yelling at you.
Then he invoked a long staff, forged in obsidian, with Norse runes that shone in violet and icy
blue tones. At its upper end was a mummified hand.
blackened and hardened by the ice of Niflheim. The fingers moved slightly,
twitching as if they still had life. Each joint was joined by thin metallic filaments that
pulsed with an ethereal light.
He called it Draugrhand.
—Now you will fear me —he said, pointing at me with the staff.
He babbled something in a language I didn't understand, and a black mist identical to the one
that had enveloped her before emerged from the staff. It surrounded me completely. I couldn't
see anything; I coughed from the nauseating smell emanating from that fog.
Then, my DOS interface activated and showed the following:
Weapon: Draugrhand — The Staff of the Dead Hand.
Main powers:
Touch of Niflheim: a touch of the staff can drain the vital or magical energy of whoever it touches, freezing
their soul in time.
Spectral resonance: allows you to invoke echoes of the dead, shadows of fallen beings who still
remember their last thoughts.
Code of Oblivion: the staff can interact with the systems of the Nexus, "rebooting" defective souls or altering
spiritual programming.
Awakening of the Draugr: in extreme cases, the hand comes to life completely,
freeing itself from the staff to serve as a familiar or spiritual guardian of Hella.
Origin:
According to Hella, it was created when the gods sealed the passage between the
living and the dead. She took the hand of the first draugr who dared to defy her and attached it to a staff forged
with fragments of petrified souls.
Since then, Draugrhand serves as a channel and symbol of her dominion.
While coughing from the stench, I said between retches:
—And of course, my antivirus wasn't prepared for Viking necromancy.
Then, with my hands outstretched, I began to dissipate the fog and walk forward.
When I finally got out, I saw Hella still in her mummy form, laughing out loud. But upon hearing
me say:
—If you're going to fart, at least don't do it towards me, damn it!
...her laughter stopped abruptly. She looked at me confused, almost horrified that I was still
alive. At that moment, her jaw came unhinged and fell to the floor. Literally.
She immediately bent down to pick it up, but unfortunately it rolled to my shoe. With
a grimace of disgust, I lifted the lower part of her face while she, looking at me from
below, babbled something unintelligible —obviously, speaking without a jaw doesn't
help much—.
For the first time, the powerful goddess of death looked at me with genuine concern and
extended a hand to me, pleading, as if she feared I wouldn't return it.
I watched her for a moment, then sighed, handed her the jaw and said with
resignation:
—I guess even goddesses have loose parts.
She turned and placed her jaw back in place. Again, a black mist covered her, and she
returned to her previous form: that of a woman in her late twenties, beautiful... but now I
understood the "living dead" thing.
The air around her was still heavy, with a stale smell, like an open tomb. I didn't know if it
was because of her condition or because of the remains of that dark energy that still
floated in the environment.
Still on the ground, she thanked me for not throwing her bones away. I helped her to
her feet. She blushed —or maybe she turned blue, I don't know; her skin was as pale as
a corpse, but, surprisingly, warm.
I never imagined that the goddess of death could feel like
this... I guess it's due to her duality: half dead, half alive. An
anachronism made flesh.
Not even Schrödinger could explain it; it can only be described as magic.
She, now calmer, spoke:
—You are a rogue, but you are not cruel. I have been so alone for so long... and,
because of what I am —the goddess of death—, I have not known love. All the princes
and warriors who come to my domain, well... you know. They are very dead. I am only
fulfilling my duty, as what my grandfather entrusted to me: the lady of death.
—So... what are you doing in the Nexus? —I asked.
—I can only be here because part of my duty is to send souls to other worlds —she
replied with a tired look, but full of a melancholy that I had never seen in a divine being.
—So your grandfather gave you one of the worst jobs in the pantheon. You must have done something very
bad. Anyway: you won't let me update your system, you couldn't kill me... so what now?
Hella, with the expression of a sheep about to be sacrificed, was taken aback for a
second. She turned to the console, typed some commands and, as she had promised,
sent me to a particularly annoying corner of the Nexus.
She looked at me, narrowing her eyes, and in a grave voice, warned me:
—If you ever confess to anyone that you saw me disarmed, that you knew of my
impotence, I will come to settle accounts. Not with uproar or hasty fury, but with cold
patience and ancient certainties. You will learn that there are silences whose price is
too high.
As her figure faded, she gave me a strangely warm smile and murmured a few last words:
—You'll see it's not going to be a walk in the park.
«Fucking goddess,» I thought, and promised in a low voice that I would return to kick that big
-assed goth's ass.
C:\SYSTEM\TRANSFER.exe /deploy /target:"EQUILIBRIUM_NEXUS"
> STARTING TRANSMISSION PROTOCOL... 10%
> GENERATING PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT: BIOSPHERE_07 SECTOR: PRIMORDIAL/BORDER
> SUBSYSTEM: LANDSCAPE/TERRAIN.v4 LOADING... 67%
> ASSIGNED DESTINATION: "THE BASTION OF DEATH" (Bastion_Mortis.v1)
> GENERAL DESCRIPTION:
- Type: Abandoned town / Post-plague ruin
- History: Centuries ago, the population was decimated by a plague that
transformed the living into wandering dead. After the containment of the outbreak,
the settlement was sealed and forgotten by gods, mages and technocrats.
- Current state: Only skeletal structures, scattered bones,
and a handful of inert undead (without locomotion) inside buildings.
- Surrounding ecosystem: Corrupt forest with mutated bestial fauna and
shadow creatures. There are no active settlements or safe routes.
> ENVIRONMENTAL PARAMETERS:
- Climate: Perpetual mist / Average temperature: 9°C
- Humidity: 88%
- Visibility: Low (0.6 km effective)
- Magical radiation: Moderate-High (arcane instability registered)
- Technological interference: Variable (corrupt signal packets)
> REPORTED DANGERS:
1) Corrupt fauna: bark wolves, spectral deer, swarms of
ethereal larvae.
2) Mutated beasts: voracious giants in the southern area of the forest.
3) Seasonal undead: remains animated by the residual
pestilence.
4) Rot/stasis zones: prolonged contact generates nausea and
temporary loss of attributes (–10% mobility per exposure).
5) Nexus anomalies: fluctuations that can erase recent
memories.
> SUGGESTED OBJECTIVES UPON ARRIVAL:
- VERY URGENT: Avoid entering the town during the night of the second day (undead activity increases).
- MAP: Record coordinates of intact structures and points with concentrated bones.
- COLLECT: Arcane-technological safeguards in basements (possible loot: corroded relics).
- DO NOT INTERRUPT: Do not desecrate the sealed altars without magical protection.
> ENTITIES FOUND (PRIORITY):
- Scattered bones (harmless) — appearance: human and bestial remains.
- Inert undead (zero movement capability; can be activated by rituals).
- Beast: "Vorak of the Undergrowth" — PATROL-SOUTH (HIGH RISK).
- Residual signals: echoes of lamentations (may induce nightmares in the subject).
> EQUIPMENT RECOMMENDATIONS:
- Respiratory protection: Anti-miasma filter
- Antiseptics and antidotes (corruption prevention)
- Portable light source (countermeasure against fog) – minimum 3h
- Weapons: blade + projectile (combine to expand options against undead and beasts)
- Anti-anomaly talisman (if available)
> THREAT LEVEL: (HIGH)
> STABILITY CHECK: 31% (areas with risk of dimensional collapse)
> SYSTEM NOTE:
"The Bastion of Death" is an area classified as FORGOTTEN by divine integrators.
The presence of an external consciousness (human anomalies like ZEKE) can alter
the propagation of corruption and activate sealed mechanisms.
> EXECUTING PHYSICAL TRANSFER... 100%
> FINALIZING HANDSHAKE NEXUSCORPOREAL...
> WELCOME TO: THE DEATH BASTION
> INITIAL LOCATION: Old Ivy Path — Local Coordinates: X: -342.7 Y: 18.4 Z: 77.1
C:\TRANSFER>_Y
What a disgusting plague, I thought to myself. I could tell it was daytime from the light
filtering through the mist, although everything here seemed filtered through a shroud.
Where the hell did that bitch goddess send me?
I would have kept her jaw... well, on second thought, how disgusting.
Before me rose the image of the old settlement: wooden and stone houses,
dilapidated roofs, small streets that time had swallowed. The wind passed through the
buildings with a lament, as if the town itself were breathing with sorrow.
The aroma said it all: old, damp death, impregnated in the walls. It wasn't just the smell of
corpses; it was the smell of something that had been forgotten and sealed.
It was time to turn on my help system.
—Help —I whispered.
As in the old days, the interface opened before me in green letters, humble and noisy,
offering me a small menu with the essential information: description of the place, my
status, a primary mission, and a basic inventory. It wasn't a fancy HUD, but it worked.
C:\NEXUS\SYSTEM>help
> PLACE: THE DEATH BASTION
> STATUS: EXPOSED / HEALTH: 100% / CORRUPTION: LOW
> MISSION: INVESTIGATE ORIGINS OF THE PESTILENCE (HIGH PRIORITY)
> INVENTORY: Flashlight(1), Bandages(2), Antiseptic(1)
C:\NEXUS\SYSTEM>_
I knew in that instant that I couldn't waste time. I mentally went through the options and
prepared to extract all the available information: coordinates, safe routes, points of interest. If
Hella wanted to annoy me, at least she would do it knowing where to put her foot.
Then I understood something. I had been kicked in the butt until I could taste the sole with my
tongue.
You can't cry over spilled milk, my mother used to say, while trying to cover the holes my
father left when he went after the money.
I'm upset, of course I am, but I need to think. I have to know how I can get out of here,
and anger doesn't help me think.
I remembered an old DOS programming lesson, from those years when the system still
responded if you knew how to talk to it with respect.
There was a trick, a back door that we used when something was blocked and you didn't want the
administrator to find out. If they haven't changed the commands, I could still try something. A foolish
thing, perhaps, but here foolish things are sometimes the only miracles available.
I turned on the old mental machine that I always carry in my head.
The cursor was blinking, the same damn blinking as always, that heartbeat of the digital
dead.
I typed slowly, almost as if praying:
C:\> echo starting sequence
C:\> mkdir /shadow
C:\> copy con backdoor.bat
@echo off
echo searching for crack...
:loop
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 5 > nul
goto loop
I didn't expect it to work, but something on the screen trembled. A slight flicker, a
vibration in the air, and I could swear that for a second the room changed texture. As if the
code had scraped the paint off the world.
The system didn't open, but something looked back at me. A presence. A kind of echo in the
bits.
—Are you looking for an exit or an entrance?
The voice sounded inside the monitor, not through it. It was an old, cold voice, a
mixture of metal and human breath.
I didn't answer. It's never a good idea to answer a voice you don't know if it exists.
After reviewing that entry, I realized I had a more extensive inventory than I thought.
Everything I had in my apartment was here, translated into a kind of digital
replica:
the gas mask hanging from a shadow, the collectible weapons lined up on the wall, the
food from the refrigerator turned into shiny icons.
Even the small generator I had on the balcony, the one I only ever used for an
emergency barbecue, could now power my PC for a few hours. It wasn't much, but it was
something.
If only I had internet connection, I could fix everything. But
Amazon doesn't deliver to other worlds.
I turned on the generator, its purr filled the air with an almost organic hum. The
computer resurrected with an electric groan, and for an instant I felt that something inside
the system was breathing with me.
The cursor flashed again, insistent, as if waiting for new orders.
I thought of Mom. Of her voice repeating those recycled
phrases from the emotional supermarket. "Don't cry over spilled
milk." Maybe she was right. But this wasn't milk. It was code.
And code, when spilled, infiltrates.
So I let the program run.
I didn't know if it was a ritual, a mistake, or a signal for something that had been
waiting since before electricity was born. The monitor clouded over.
The air smelled of ozone and fear.
Something, on the other side of the system, woke up.
—Who's there? —I asked.
No one answered. Only the wind, which seemed to know my name.
I got up from the ground; the rain came with that smell of iron and humidity that
announces trouble. I turned on the flashlight. I walked through the ruined houses: one
had a hole in the roof—as if the green man from the comics had come down to say hello
—; another was so twisted that it seemed to pray to fall.
And I saw it: on a small hill, to the northwest, a house that still had pride. I don't know why,
but it seemed to be watching me.
I got to it twenty minutes later, panting. The door was ajar;
between the crack, stuck, bones of a small leg. I didn't want to
think much. I just needed shelter. I went in.
[█████████░░░░] 72 % The collection sword—more ornament than weapon, but honest enough—hung on my
back. With the flashlight, I advanced through the shadows.
The room was long, with walls that still remembered elegance: a piano without keys,
portraits that followed me with dry eyes. I tried to open my system—the old DOS menu—
but there was no response. The Nexus was still being funny.
Going up to the second floor was a precarious engineering operation: boxes,
shelves, furniture piled up.
Upstairs, the spectacle was worse: stacked corpses, bones
like hieroglypwhhat sha popenfe da he rde?omThee hsotuisce rwespaornd. eMd wyit hh a edeaepd c rseackr, ae laammenet. d.
structural.
The main room was ajar. The wind moved the veils of a bed that seemed taken
from a sick fairy tale. Someone had barricaded the door with furniture from the
inside, and someone else had tried to open it later. I made noise. Nothing.
I pulled the sheet back with my sword ready.
It was a mummified young woman. Beautiful in the way that time knows how to
be cruel. I didn't want to keep looking at her. I gathered the bones from the
floor, put them in a sack, and dragged them outside. I wrapped the body in clean
sheets, tied it with a rope, and left it in the yard, under the dawn. Inside, I
secured the door and prepared my base of operations: desk, PC, ergonomic
chair, generator. The hum filled the house like a sleeping animal.
I worked until my eyes burned. Maps, records, coordinates of the newly created
backdoor.
I fell asleep on the keyboard.
I woke up with a warm light coming through the window. It
wasn't sun. It was something denser, metallic, like a
rendered memory. The PC was on.
On the screen, a line of text pulsed calmly:
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED
UPDATING SYSTEM...
PATCH: /NEXUS/BRIDGE.V2
AUTHENTICATION: PENDING
ENTER TOKEN OR INSERT MEDALLION
I read the lines aloud, as if that would explain them on their own.
Medallion.
I didn't remember seeing anything like it, either in my inventory or among
the things I collected from the houses. The cursor blinked, impatient.
I hit a couple of keys, tried old commands:
DIR /ALL
RUN ACCESS.KEY
/SYSTEM/QUERY -TOKEN
Nothing. Just one more line, as if the system responded with sarcasm:
MISSING TOKEN DETECTED
NEW TASK CREATED: /SEARCH_OBJECT /SIGIL:BRIDGE
PROBABLE LOCATION: /RESIDENTIAL_ZONE/NORTH
REWARD: PARTIAL ACCESS TO PATCH /BRIDGE.V2
COST: VARIABLE BALANCE (OWN MEMORY)
ACCEPT? (Y/N)
—Great —I muttered—. Even hell has side quests.
I typed Y.
The cursor trembled for a second, then stopped, and a map made of text lines appeared
on the screen, each symbol a house, a street. At the top, a red X blinked.
OBJECTIVE SET: NORTH_HOUSE_02
WARNING: POTENTIAL "ARMOR" PRESENCE
PROCEED WITH CAUTION
I stared at it for a while, trying to decide if I was more afraid of the word "armor" or the
fact that the system was now treating me like a playable character. I turned off the
screen, grabbed the sword, the flashlight, and the gas mask.
If I wanted to get out of this hole, I was going to have to listen to a nineties interface.
Great. Again corpses with attitude.
I put away the equipment, took the sword, and went out.
The air smelled of rotten wood and old death. I walked to the designated house. The
wind groaned among the tiles as if someone were playing a violin with nerves. I
entered with the lantern low, illuminating more for myself than for the ghosts.
I checked the first body: nothing. The second, a rusty ring. The third...
something. A flash under a layer of black cloth.
A flash under a layer of black cloth. That's
when my sanity went to hell.
Something moved. A dry voice whimpered something I didn't understand, like a sigh
trapped in an airless throat. And suddenly, a hand came out from inside that cloth: a
mummified, bony hand that seemed to want to touch the ground more than me.
The system sent me an alarm signal, a little late, to be honest. I
almost had to use brown pants.
But the hand didn't try to grab me, it just stood still, trembling, as if waiting for something.
something. And yet, everything in me screamed that I should run away from there. So I did.
I left that house and ran until my feet stumbled at the entrance of the mayor's house,
right where I had left the improvised shroud with the sheets and the leather rope. The
blow I took to the head made everything spin.
When I was trying to get up, I saw her.
Shit... I saw her.
That's why in my world it is said: you can't disturb the dead. I
knew something was wrong.
It was the same damn corpse I had taken out of her house, and she was coming towards me.
Dizzy, I raised the sword over my shoulders, trying to focus my sight.
The mummy advanced slowly, with her arms raised.
until, suddenly, she stopped. She knelt down. And she moaned.
She was trying to speak, but only broken, dry noises came out, as if the air didn't want to obey her.
Something inside me said I shouldn't break her skull. I
carefully lowered the greatsword.
She, seeing it, covered her head with her hands, trembling.
¡=")#(=)("!$#"
Then, the system appeared before me, floating in the darkness with its usual
metallic tone:
[COMPASSION SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
The undead being requests help.
In exchange, it offers an object: "Medallion of the Bond."
Accept exchange? (Y/N)
Then, the system appeared before me, floating in the darkness with its usual
metallic tone:
Secondary mission activated:
/RECOVER_REMAINS /IDENTIFICATION:PENDULUM OF LIFE
Objective: allow the soul to rest.
Reward: Medallion of the Bond.
Status: PENDING.
ERROR…
Secondary mission activated:
/UNEARTH_OBJECT /IDENTIFICATION:AMULET_OF_LIFE
Objective: recover sealed artifact.
Reward: Medallion of the Bond.
Status: PENDING.
The mummy was still in front of me, kneeling, trembling. I
tried to talk to her, although I didn't know why.
—What… what do you want me to do? —I asked, knowing I wouldn't get an answer.
She raised one of her hands and pointed it north, towards the cemetery that could be seen
beyond the ruined houses. Then she lowered her head, as if waiting.
—Sure —I murmured—, a night walk to the cemetery with a dead woman. Just what I
needed.
I sheathed the sword, picked up my lantern, and started walking. The mummy rose slowly and
followed me, dragging her feet, her bones creaking with each step like dry branches.
The path was covered with weeds and stones. The tombstones, twisted, seemed to
watch me. The whole air smelled of old earth and damp. Upon arriving, the creature
stopped in front of a sunken tomb.
She knelt again and stretched out her hands, as if asking for permission.
The system activated again.
LOCATION CONFIRMED.
UNEARTH AMULET_OF_?
(Y)
This fucking system screams angrily, the mummified girl covered herself with her hands,
but I told her that nothing was happening.
The ground gave way with a creak, the earth giving off an ancient smell. I used an
improvised shovel, my hands, whatever I had. It didn't take long: a small chest,
made of blackened metal, emerged from the earth.
When I opened it, inside was the amulet: a blackened silver disc, with a spiral symbol
carved into it. When I touched it, I felt a cold current, as if something was watching me
from inside the metal.
The mummy looked up. I saw her nod slowly, with a clumsy but human
movement.
Then her body began to crumble, dissolving into dust.
The system flashed again.
Mission completed.
Object obtained: [Medallón del Vínculo]
New route unlocked: /BRIDGE.V2
Recommendation: return to safety.
I took the amulet and returned to the mayor's
house. The generator was still roaring, weakly but
constantly. I placed the amulet on the PC tower.
[███████████████] 100 % The screen flickered.
AUTHENTICATION COMPLETED.
LOADING PATCH /BRIDGE.V2 ...
PARTIAL NETWORK ACCESS RESTORED.
WELCOME BACK, USER.
And then a new line appeared, flashing green:
Incoming transmission: UNKNOWN ORIGIN.
Do you want to accept connection?
I swallowed saliva.
The echo of the generator filled the room.
And for the first time, I was truly afraid... but also curious.
—Yes… —I whispered—, accept.
The cursor remained flashing on the screen.
The hum of the generator mixed with the whistling of the wind entering through the cracks.
Then the medallion began to vibrate.
First it was a slight tremor, a metallic hum that made the screen flicker. Then it slowly rose
above the PC tower, spinning on itself.
A whitish glow enveloped it, as if the air itself twisted around it.
I stood still, sword in hand, not knowing whether to run or
watch. The screen changed on its own:
RECONSTRUCTION PROCESS STARTED...
ENERGY SOURCE: /AMULET_OF_LIFE
PROTOCOL: BIOLOGICAL CONNECTION RESTORATION
—Restoration of what...? —I whispered.
At that moment, a stream of icy air burst through the broken window, dragging
with it a cloud of golden dust.
It wasn't normal: the dust didn't fall, it moved with intention, as if looking for
something. It floated towards the center of the room, swirling just below the medallion.
The brightness increased.
The dust cloud slid through the broken window, swirling in a spiral. It rotated with an
almost hypnotic rhythm, as if someone were blowing from another plane.
The medallion floated in the center of the room, spinning on itself, releasing a pale light.
> CMD://BOOT_SEQUENCE
> CONNECTION RESTORED
> RESTORATION_PROTOCOL = ACTIVE
> ANCHORED_OBJECT = [MEDALLION_OF_LIFE] >
INITIALIZING_BIOMETRIC_RECONSTRUCTION...
Too late.
A metallic snap, a buzzing in my ears, and... the feeling that my head was splitting in two.
For a moment I saw things that were not mine: a forest covered in ash, a white tower
falling, a face screaming without a voice. And then nothing. Silence.
When I opened my eyes, she was still there, breathing calmly, as if it had all been a bad
dream.
The medallion was still shining on her chest... or, rather, on her bare chest.
I ran my hand over my face and sighed.
—Sure, the system revives the dead, breaks the laws of physics… but it doesn't even
give her a damn piece of clothing. Perfect.
I threw her a blanket from the ones I had on the chair.
—Please, cover yourself before I have a moral short circuit.
She lowered her gaze, took the blanket, and wrapped herself in it silently, with slow,
clumsy, almost human movements.
A hoarse laugh escaped her throat, as if she had forgotten what her own voice
sounded like.
> CMD://ENTITY_SYNC
> ENTITY: ELYRA
> STATUS: PARTIAL RECONSTRUCTION >
LINK_STATUS: UNBOUND
> STARTING_SYNCHRONIZATION_PROCESS... >
FORCED_MERGE: ENABLED
> SYNC_PROGRESS = 87% ... 94% ... 100%
She adjusted the blanket's loop on her shoulder and looked at
me. —My name… —she whispered—. I think it was Elyra . Or something like that. The rest… I don't
remember.
I snorted.
—Perfect. Elyra, the beta version zombie. What could go wrong.
She smiled slightly, with that kind of gesture that one doesn't know if it's scary or
calming. And the medallion, still warm on her chest, continued to shine.
—Great. Now I have an amnesiac vampire in my doomsday house. Wonderful. What's
next? A ghost dog with Wi-Fi?
Before I could close the system, the PC screen flickered.
A new icon appeared in the lower right corner: a smiling skull
with a tele"pDEhAoDTnIMeE —in I nictosm mingo caull"th. The text read:
—What the hell…? —I managed to say.
The image stabilized.
And there she was.
Hella.
In infernal HD.
—Zeke, are you kidding me?! —she shouted, with an echo of a thousand voices—. Reviving a dead
person?! That's level three interference! Not even I have permission for that!
Elyra turned slowly towards the screen, tilting her head with a half-smile. —
Hella...? —she whispered—. I thought you were dead.
—I am! —Hella replied—. And now you should be too!
I just raised my hands.
—Well, technically she's… semi-dead. Or semi-alive. I don't know, the system approved it
before I even blinked.
Hella put her hands to her head.
—For the gates of the Nexus, Zeke! You can't give life to an echo. That breaks all the
damn existential syntax.
Elyra, unfazed, sat on the edge of the desk, with the calm of someone who hasn't
breathed in centuries.
—Don't worry, Hella. I don't plan to stay still this time.
The system buzzed again.
> CMD://FINAL_PROCESS
> SYSTEM_STATE = VARIABLE
> BRIDGE_DESTINATION = UNKNOWN >
UPDATE_COMPLETE > NEXUS_LAYER: OPEN
The call was cut off.
Silence.
Only the hum of the generator and the slow breathing of someone who
technically shouldn't be breathing.
"You know?" I said at last. "I think we just screwed something important up."
Elyra smiled.
"Yes. But at least you're not alone now."
The monitor flickered one last time.
> END_OF_SEQUENCE