The Fire Dragon roar—a sound that tore through the fabric of reality itself.
I rolled left as white-hot flames scorched the obsidian platform where I'd stood a heartbeat ago. The End's endless void stretched beneath us, purple particles drifting lazily into infinity.
Above me, Inferna circled. Thirty meters of crimson scales and burning hatred. Her eyes tracked my every movement, intelligent and ancient. We'd been doing this dance for two years.
"YOU CANNOT KILL ME, ETERNAL ONE," she roared. "I HAVE BURNED SINCE BEFORE YOUR GRANDFATHER'S GRANDFATHER."
I laughed. She wasn't wrong—technically.
"I don't have grandfathers," I called back, drawing my sword. The netherite blade hummed with enchantments, purple runes flickering along its edge. "But I have killed things older than you."
She dove.
I activated [Harden]. My armor became indestructible for ten precious seconds—just enough time to survive the impact. Her claws raked across my chestplate, and I felt the shock through my bones even through the enchantment.
The force knocked me backward, off the platform, into the void.
Again.
---
The void was strange in this world. Not instant death—more like a slow dissolution. Your body came apart, piece by piece, over hours. Plenty of time to think about your mistakes.
I'd fallen into the void fifty-two times over my thousand years. The first time, I'd panicked. Screamed. Begged. Cried. It had taken three days for me to die, and I remembered every second of that agony.
Now? I treated it like a minor inconvenience.
I spread my wings—the grafted elytra emerging from my back—and angled toward a distant end island. With [Flight], I could navigate the void. It drained my XP, but I had crystals for that.
"YOU CANNOT ESCAPE," Inferna's voice echoed across space. Dragons could do that—speak through the void itself. "THIS ENDS TODAY."
She was right. One way or another.
I pulled a crystal from my pack and crushed it. 50,000 XP flooded into me. More than enough for what I needed.
in front of me, the portal back to the Overworld waited. I could leave. Regroup. Fight another day, another century.
But I was tired of waiting.
I look toward the main island, where Inferna circled like a vulture.
Time to end this.
---
Year 0. Day 1.
I woke up to the sound of nothing.
No traffic. No voices. No hum of electricity. Just... silence and blue sky and grass that was too green, too perfect.
I looked down at myself. My hands were blocky—literally cube-shaped, with pixelated edges. But when I flexed my fingers, they moved like real flesh, felt like real muscle.
"What the hell?"
I reached for my phone. Nothing in my pocket. I reached for my wallet. Nothing. I was wearing the same clothes I'd had on yesterday—jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers—but everything else was gone.
I looked around. Green grass stretched in every direction, broken only by occasional trees that looked like they'd been rendered in low resolution. The sun was a perfect square in a perfectly blue sky.
"Minecraft," I whispered. "I'm in... Minecraft?"
I'd played the game. Everyone had. But this wasn't the Minecraft I knew—there was no hotbar at the bottom of my vision, no inventory screen waiting to be opened, no crosshair floating in front of me.
I reached for my back and felt something—a backpack. A real, physical backpack that hadn't been there before.
I pulled it off and opened it. Empty. Just fabric and space.
"Okay," I said aloud, trying to keep my voice steady. "Okay. I can figure this out. I can—"
The sun was setting.
I'd been so confused I hadn't noticed. The square sun was descending toward the square horizon, painting the sky in pixelated oranges and purples.
And in the distance, something groaned.
A low, rattling sound that I recognized instantly. I'd heard it a thousand times through speakers and headphones.
Zombie.
I ran.
---
I found a hill and dug.
My hands weren't effective tools—I had to claw at the dirt with my fingers, breaking it into small cubes that I could pick up and place elsewhere. It was exhausting, terrifying work, and the groaning was getting closer.
By the time the sun fully set, I'd managed to hollow out a small space inside the hill. I placed dirt blocks behind me, sealing myself in darkness.
The groaning was right outside now. I could hear it shuffling, sniffing, searching.
Then another sound. A hiss.
Skeleton.
I pressed my back against the dirt wall and tried not to breathe.
Something scratched at my barricade. I heard the thwip of an arrow hitting dirt.
Minutes passed but it feels like hours. The monsters didn't get tired. They didn't give up. They just kept circling, searching, waiting for me to make a mistake.
I didn't sleep that night. I couldn't. All I could do was sit in the darkness, listening to the sounds of things that wanted to kill me, and wonder if I'd ever see another sunrise.
When I heard the hiss of something burning, followed by that low, guttural groan a zombie makes as it catches fire, I almost cried.
I'd survived the first night.
---
I spent the next day learning.
The world worked like Minecraft—mostly. Trees dropped logs when I punched them long enough, though the rest of the canopy stayed defiantly afloat, mocking gravity. Stone shattered into cobblestone under my strikes, and animals wandered the landscape, peaceful and easily killed.
But there were differences. Big ones.
No inventory. Everything I collected went into my backpack, which had limited space. I couldn't carry stacks of 64 items—I could carry what physically fit.
Floating blocks. When I broke a tree, the logs fell to the ground like real objects. But when I placed dirt blocks in mid-air to seal my shelter, they stayed there, floating, defying gravity. Vanilla placed blocks floated. Dropped items fell. The world had two sets of physics.
No crafting menu. When I found a tree and wanted to make planks, I couldn't just open a grid and arrange items. I had to actually DO something—stack the logs, use a sharp stone to cut them, work at it until the wood split into usable pieces.
Everything was harder. Slower. More real.
By the end of day two, I had a wooden pickaxe (crudely fashioned), a small shelter (barely better than a hole), and a growing sense of dread.
I was trapped in a video game that didn't follow video game rules.
And I had no idea how to escape.
---
Night two. I died for the first time.
A creeper found me while I was gathering wood. I didn't hear it until it was too late—that characteristic hiss, the swelling, the flash of green.
The explosion threw me twenty feet. I felt my body break—ribs crushing, skin burning, bones snapping.
Then darkness.
Then light.
I woke up at the spot where I'd first appeared, the sun rising over the blocky horizon. My body was whole. My backpack was empty—all my tools gone.
But I was alive.
"I respawned," I said, staring at my hands. "I actually respawned."
In Minecraft, death was an inconvenience. You lost your stuff, you lost some XP, but you came back. You always came back.
I had died and come back to life.
At the time, I thought that was a good thing.
I had no idea what it really meant.