KIERAN
I woke up standing.
That was the first thing that felt wrong. I had been lying down in my apartment but now I was vertical and the transition had no middle ground. One second darkness, the next second I was on my feet in a place that should not exist.
The second thing was the air.
I could smell it. Actually smell it, it was weird to describe and understand but the air had a smell. Not the fake sensory feedback from cheaper VR rigs but real scent filling my lungs. Ozone and something floral and underneath it all a crisp cleanness like mountain air after rain. I took a breath and felt my chest expand. Felt the oxygen hitting my bloodstream.
"Holy shit."
My voice sounded different. Richer somehow. I looked down at my hands and they were not my hands. Not yet. They were translucent, flickering between solid and transparent like a hologram struggling to maintain cohesion.
I was standing in a massive circular chamber carved from white stone that seemed to glow from within. Other figures materialized around me, dozens of them, all with that same flickering translucent quality. Beta testers. They were looking around with the same mixture of shock and wonder that must have been plastered across my face.
"Welcome to Elarion."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. A woman's voice, calm and professional. In front of me a screen materialized out of thin air, floating at eye level.
"Please select your character archetype."
Six options appeared. I recognized them from the promotional materials I had skimmed over in the email. Warrior, mage, ranger, rogue, cleric, paladin. Standard fantasy game fare. Each one had a rotating 3D model showing what the class would look like.
A guy next to me reached out and touched the Warrior option. His translucent form immediately solidified into a muscular avatar wearing leather armor and carrying a sword. He laughed and flexed his new arms.
"This is incredible! I can feel everything!"
He was right. I reached out and touched the screen and the sensation of glass under my fingertips was perfect. It was cold, smooth and real. The technology in this game was out of this world.
I was about to select Mage when the screen glitched.
Just for a second. A flicker of static across all six options and then a seventh appeared at the bottom. The image was corrupted, fragments of red and black that hurt to look at directly.
DEMON CLASS.
I leaned closer. The moment I focused on it the corruption cleared and I saw the avatar. Humanoid but wrong. Ashen skin, eyes that glowed like embers, small horns curving back from the temples. It looked dangerous. It looked powerful.
A warning box appeared in angry red text.
"WARNING: DEMON CLASS IS FORBIDDEN. Players who select this class will be hunted by NPCs and other players. Zone access restricted. Extreme difficulty. Permadeath conditions apply. This class is OUTLAWED by game lore. Select at your own risk."
I stared at the warning. Around me other players were finalizing their choices, exclaiming over their new appearances, testing out their starter weapons. Nobody else seemed to see the seventh option. It was just for me.
Why would a game include a forbidden class? Why warn players away from content they had created?
Unless it was not supposed to be there.
I thought about the email. Someone wanted me to see this. Someone had enabled this option specifically for me.
My competitive instincts kicked in. The harder the challenge, the better the rewards. That was game design 101. If demon class was this restricted, this difficult, the payoff had to be massive.
Plus I had never been good at following warnings.
I selected DEMON CLASS.
The screen flashed red three times like it was giving me a chance to reconsider. Then my translucent form exploded into particles of light and reformed. I looked down and saw ashen gray skin, saw my hands tipped with nails that were just a bit too sharp. My clothes had changed to dark leather armor that fit perfectly. I touched my head and felt the small nubs of horns.
"Character creation complete. Spawning in designated starting zone."
The white chamber dissolved and suddenly I was falling. Just for a second. Then my feet hit solid ground and I stumbled forward.
Heat hit me so hard I thought I was melting.
I was standing on a cliff overlooking a landscape that looked like the inside of a volcano. Rivers of lava cutting through fields of black rock. The sky was deep red, not like sunset but like the whole atmosphere was on fire. Ash drifted through the air and I could feel it settling on my skin. In the distance massive obsidian spires jutted up from the wasteland, their peaks lost in crimson clouds.
The Abyssal Expanse. My starting zone.
I had in-game knowledge somehow in my head already.
"Incredible."
I walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. Hundreds of feet of sheer drop to a lava flow below. I could feel the heat rising, could smell the sulfur, could hear the distant roar of the molten rock. This was not a game. This could not be a game. It was too real.
I opened my menu with a thought and saw my character sheet. Level 1. Basic stats. Two starter skills: Hellfire Barrage and Shadow Strike. I dismissed the menu and it vanished.
Something moved in the rocks below.
I crouched and watched. A creature emerged from behind a boulder. It looked like a wolf but it was odd. It had too many teeth. Eyes that glowed red. Skin that seemed to smoke like it was burning from the inside. A nameplate appeared above its head.
Hellspawn. Level 1.
My first enemy.
I climbed down from the cliff using handholds that felt real under my fingers. Sweat dripped down my back from the heat. When I reached the bottom I picked up a rock and threw it at the Hellspawn.
It turned and snarled.
I activated Hellfire Barrage.
Fire erupted from my hands. I could feel the burn but it just didn't leave marks like actual fire would that I could feel generating in my palms and launching forward in a spray of flame. It hit the Hellspawn and the creature yelped and staggered. I felt a surge of adrenaline and cast it again. The second blast finished it off and the creature dissolved into particles of light.
A notification appeared.
"50 XP gained. Level progress: 50/1000."
I laughed. I could not help it. That had felt amazing. The fire, the combat, the victory. I felt powerful in a way I had never felt in real life.
More Hellspawns emerged from the rocks. I fought three of them, getting better with each encounter. Learning to aim, learning to dodge. One of them got close enough to bite my arm and the pain was sharp and real but manageable. Not game pain. Actual pain.
How did they code this? i felt so much excitement to see what else this game held.
"100 XP gained. LEVEL UP. You are now Level 2."
My health bar refilled and I felt stronger. I checked my stats and saw small improvements across the board. This was perfect. This was everything a game should be.
I spent the next fifteen minutes exploring. Fighting Hellspawns. Collecting loot from their bodies. Finding a path that led deeper into the wasteland. The world was massive and detailed and beautiful in a terrifying way. Every time I thought I had seen the limits of the immersion, something new surprised me. The taste of ash on my tongue. The way the heat shimmered off the lava. The distant sound of something massive moving through the volcanic caves.
I walked up a hill and looked out over miles of the Abyssal Expanse stretching to the horizon. This was it. This was the game that would change everything. I was going to master demon class. I was going to find out what Dad had been working on. I was going to win.
Then the sky turned the wrong color.
Red shifted to crimson shifted to something darker. The air felt more heavy now.
System alerts flooded my vision in flashing red text.
"CRITICAL ERROR. NEURAL LINK COMPROMISED. LOGOUT FUNCTION DISABLED. WARNING: PAIN RECEPTORS ACTIVE. EMERGENCY DISCONNECT FAILED. ALL PLAYERS REMAIN IN GAME UNTIL ISSUE RESOLVED."
My stomach dropped.
In the distance, from somewhere deeper in the wasteland, I heard screaming.