The rain was the only thing still moving purposefully in the city.
From the twelfth floor, Marcus Valen watched the red and white lights of the Avenida Paulista traffic dissolve into luminous streaks against the soaked asphalt. Inside the office, the silence was oppressive. A costly silence, smelling of bitter coffee, dust, and failure.
Six months.
Six months since Valen Interactive stopped breathing. The startup didn't explode; it withered. An investor who disappeared, a disastrous pitch, bills piling up to the point where the only sensible decision was to declare death with a minimum of dignity. A corporate euthanasia.
With a sigh that came from the depths, Marcus left the master key on the bamboo meeting table. The surface, once covered with sketches, laptops, and pizza scraps, was empty and absurdly polished. He had spent the afternoon packing up the last computers, taking down the framed concept art for Echo Realm. The dream packed into cardboard boxes.
His eyes landed on the only monitor still on, his own. On the screen, in a silent loop, played the game's official trailer. The same epic sequence that, a year ago, had elicited shouts of euphoria from the small team. Now, the images seemed to mock him.
There were the stunning scenarios that his mind had helped conceive: the Whispering Forest of Mycelia, with its trunks pulsating with vital energy; the Silica Canyons, where dunes sang ancient melodies. It was beautiful. It was innovative. It was proof that they had been able to create something bigger than themselves.
And it was no longer theirs.
A news pop-up flashed at the edge of the video, a silent stab: "Echo Realm reaches historic milestone of 10 million users. Realms Beyond shares surge 15% after announcement of new expansion pack 'Domination'."
Realms Beyond—the name still caused a knot of anger and helplessness in Marcus's stomach. The major publisher that had bought the rights to the game engine and the entire concept when Valen Interactive was already in agony. They paid a pittance. They kept the name, the visuals, the marketing. But they ripped out the soul.
The core of Marcus's project—a living ecosystem, a world that reacted and evolved organically to the players' choices, rewarding balance and symbiosis—was considered "too niche" and "not intuitive enough for the average player." They replaced it with a linear progression system, shiny loot boxes, and arena battles. They turned a symphony into a cell phone jingle.
You built a cathedral, Marcus. They put up a "for sale" sign out front, he thought, with a bitterness he knew by heart.
A shiver ran down his spine, colder than the switched-off air conditioner. The loneliness in that empty room was a physical weight. He had failed. He had failed the friends who had become employees and who were now scattered around, trying to erase the "former employee of a failed startup" from their resumes. He had failed the memory of his father, the old biology professor who, on sleepless nights, spoke to him about the beauty of ecosystems and who had planted the seed of that crazy idea in him.
He had failed himself. In his early thirties, he was broke, aimless, and with the taste of dust and defeat in his mouth.
His fingers traced the Valen Interactive logo at the bottom of the monitor—a stylized 'V' that transformed into a tree. A farewell gesture.
That's when the screen flickered.
It wasn't a blackout. The trailer image simply dissolved, as if swept away by a digital current. In its place, an absolute, deep black background appeared, seemingly sucking all the light from the environment.
In the center, text began to form.
It wasn't a system font. It was strange, organic. The letters seemed composed of green particles that flowed and regrouped, like a school of luminous microorganisms.
[PRIMARY DEVELOPER SIGNATURE DETECTED]
USER: MARCUS VALEN. ACCESS LEVEL: ROOT
INITIATING INTEGRITY DIAGNOSTIC PROTOCOL…
Marcus frowned, confused. An error? Some old debug script, a vestige of development time that decided to awaken at the worst possible moment? He moved the mouse, trying to close the window or open the task manager.
The cursor didn't move. It froze on the screen like a fly in amber. The text continued, relentlessly.
ECOSYSTEM INTEGRITY OF THE ECHO KINGDOM: 41.7%. ACCELERATED DECLINE DETECTED.
UNAUTHORIZED CODE ANOMALIES: PRESENT. CORRUPTION LEVEL: HIGH.
CONDITIONS FOR THE 'GHOST' CONTINGENCY PROTOCOL… MET.
"Ghost Protocol?" Marcus's voice sounded harsh and loud in the silence. He didn't remember anything with that name. None of the design files… except… a sudden chill ran through him. In the last few days, when the fever was already consuming him, his father whispered things in his ear while they looked at lines of code. "We need a door Funds, Marcus. A gardener of last resort. A ghost in the system, for when all else fails…" Marcus, at the time, attributed it to the delirium of the illness and the despair of seeing the main project—an educational game about ecology—being ignored.
RECALIBRATING NEURAL SYNCHRONY INTERFACE…
SEARCHING FOR A COMPATIBLE HOST IN THE PRIMARY (PHYSICAL) DOMAIN…
NO HOST FOUND.
The monitor light intensified dramatically. The green glyph in the center of the screen began to spin, transforming into a vortex that seemed to no longer be on the screen, but behind it, like a portal. The air in the office became static, heavy. The constant sound of the rain outside seemed to recede, muffled by a sharp, persistent buzzing that originated within Marcus's own skull.
REALOCATING TO THE SOURCE (DIGITAL) DOMAIN…
INITIATING CONSCIOUSNESS TRANSFER.
KEEP GOING CALM.
"Keep calm?!"
Panic, raw and instinctive, replaced lethargy. He jumped to his feet, the chair falling backward with a thud. He reached for the power cord. His hand… passed over the monitor.
It didn't go through the glass. It simply failed to touch it. His fingers seemed to blur, lose consistency, their contours flickering like an image with interference. He looked at his own hand, and a primal horror chilled his blood. It was becoming translucent, made of millions of tiny green dots, identical to the text on the screen.
The vortex on the screen didn't emit light—it sucked reality in.
The sensation wasn't of being pulled. It was of being undone. As if every atom of his body was being carefully decoupled from the next. The office around him—the boxes, the desk, the rain on the window—stretched, became elongated and distorted, before dissolving into a cascade of corrupted geometry and colors. Unreal.
Marcus Valen's last thought wasn't about the lost company, the debt, or the betrayal.
It was about the emptiness of the apartment that awaited him, the empty refrigerator, and the absolute silence that would be his only company.
Then, the physical world faded.
There was an instant of absolute vacuum. Of non-being.
And then, a new layer of existence imposed itself. Without body, without sound, without touch. Just a naked consciousness, hovering in nothingness.
And a message, imprinted in fire on his perception, clear, cold, and final:
```
[CONNECTION ESTABLISHED]
[WELCOME TO THE KINGDOM OF THE ECHO, CREATOR]
[STATUS: GHOST CODE - ENTITY NOT LOCATED]
[TIME UNTIL PERMANENT DECOMPOSITION: 47:59:59]
```