Maxwell Ambrose hadn't cried the day the tribunal ended. He hadn't raged or begged or broken the composure expected of a naval cadet, even as the verdict was handed down like a sentence carved in stone: dishonorable discharge, all ranks stripped, barred from future service. No final salute. No handshakes. Just silence.
But now, three weeks later, in a one-bedroom apartment that smelled like damp carpet and fried noodles, he sat barefoot on a cracked pleather couch, and nearly wept watching a progress bar creep toward login.
**Connecting to MythRealms...
Syncing NeuroLink Interface...
Establishing Cognitive Stream...**
He didn't cry, though. Pride, even broken and bleeding, was a stubborn thing.
A storm rolled outside his third-floor window—real rain, not scripted weather cycles. The downpour drummed steadily on the warped windowpane. The cracked plaster walls around him were cluttered with the wreckage of a life: unopened bills, two half-empty bottles of knockoff rum, and a framed photo turned face down beside his VR rig. He didn't need to look at it. He already knew the faces—his mother in her officer's blues, his sister in cadet whites, and himself in the center, smiling like a fool.
Back when things still made sense. Back before he became a liability.
His hands hovered above the login visor, knuckles pale. "Stupid fucking game," he muttered.
He'd mocked it once. All of it—*MythRealms*, the streamers who treated it like gospel, the obsessives who let their real lives rot while chasing digital power. Gods in the machine. False oceans. Pirate kingdoms built on code. Ridiculous.
But it paid.
People sold legendary loot for real-world crypto. Streamed battles to millions. Some even got signed by corporate syndicates and pulled six figures a month sailing around with ghost crews and enchanted fleets. *MythRealms* wasn't a game anymore—it was a second economy. A second world. And Maxwell had run out of ways to survive in the first one.
He'd held out as long as he could. Tried applying for private security work—shut down by background checks. Considered logistics or cargo shipping—his name was blacklisted. It didn't matter that the tribunal had been rigged. That he took the fall for a commanding officer's failure. All that mattered was what showed up on screen: a red stamp. DISHONORABLE.
So here he was. Staring down the barrel of a VR visor like it was a loaded weapon.
**Insert NeuroLink. Confirm consent.**
He took a breath, lifted the tethered jack, and slotted the neural connector into the port behind his ear. It clicked in with a small hiss.
**Consent confirmed. Welcome to MythRealms.**
The world blinked away.
---
Before light, there was salt.
It filled his mouth and nose, stung his eyes. He gagged, sputtered, rolled over—and found wet sand beneath him, shifting under his weight like something alive. For a second, he panicked. Was he drowning? Had something gone wrong with the link?
Then his head cleared.
The sun above him blazed hot and indifferent. Gulls cried overhead. Waves lapped against a shore littered with driftwood and broken crates. Palms swayed beyond the dunes, casting long shadows over a desolate, curved coastline.
Maxwell coughed seawater and irony. He'd once trained to command real vessels, stand on real decks. Now he was a half-naked castaway in a fantasy world designed by basement-dwelling AI.
Perfect.
A thin UI prompt flickered at the edge of his vision:
**Tutorial Initiated: Stranded No More**
**Objective: Survive.**
Short. Brutal. Fitting.
He sat up, sand sticking to his back. His body felt... real. Too real. Muscles ached. Skin burned. The NeuroLink immersion was better than he'd expected. Even the heat was convincing.
No armor. No tools. Just linen pants, a ragged shirt, and an empty satchel slung over one shoulder. Great start.
He stood slowly, joints cracking. Farther down the beach, a group of new players were yelling at each other beside a tipped-over lifeboat. One of them kicked a crab and screamed when it bit back. Another screamed louder when the crab exploded in a puff of purple mist and dropped a shiny shell.
Maxwell turned away. He wasn't here to play tourist. This was survival.
And survival started with assessment.
He opened his inventory. It blinked into view with a faint shimmer:
**Inventory:**
* 1x Satchel (Common)
* 1x Salted Jerky (Stale)
* 1x Empty Flask
He swiped it away with a grunt. No stats, no gear, no direction. Just dumped into the game like sea trash.
"Welcome to the bottom," he muttered, brushing sand off his arms.
He started walking.
---
The first hour passed in silence. He skirted the noob zone chaos and followed the coastline, keeping the ocean to his right. The world was gorgeous in a way that felt dangerous. Too beautiful. The kind of beauty that came with hidden hooks.
He found wreckage—broken barrels, half-rotted sails, the ribcage of a long-dead merchant ship jutting from the shallows. Scavenging yielded rope, a dull knife, and a soggy map inked with unreadable glyphs. He pocketed everything.
Twice, he was attacked. Once by a swarm of bone-billed gulls that shrieked like banshees. Once by another player—a boy who tried to stab him for his flask.
Maxwell disarmed him with a rock to the face and took the knife.
**Combat Bonus: +1 Improvised Tactics**
"Thanks," he said to the unconscious body, then walked on.
---
By nightfall, he'd built a lean-to from driftwood and sailcloth near a tidepool. The fire took three attempts and cost him half the jerky.
Stars burned overhead, the moon bloated and red.
Maxwell sat alone, blade in hand, watching the surf.
He should've felt something. Triumph, maybe. Or despair. But all he felt was the numb weight of motion. Do or die. No in-between.
He leaned back against the log, and for the first time since entering the game, opened his system log.
A line stood out, blinking faintly:
**You have been marked by the Tides.**
No prompt. No context.
Just that.
He stared at it, heart thudding.
"Marked?"
He tapped the phrase. Nothing happened. No tooltip, no explanation. He'd never heard of a mechanic like that. And he'd studied before logging in—watched hours of breakdowns, hidden class rumors, god-event theories.
This wasn't in any of them.
He closed the log, unease curling in his gut.
Wind howled low across the beach. In the distance, through the fog that now rolled in off the sea, he thought he saw a light bobbing. Then another.
Lanterns.
Ships?
No.
They hovered above the water, unmoving.
Maxwell gripped his blade.
And the sea whispered his name.
"Maxwell..."
He spun around, but no one was there. Just the surf and the cold.
A notification pinged.
**???** **You feel the pull of the De**
---
Back in the real world, his body twitched in the NeuroLink cradle. Electrodes hummed quietly. Outside, the rain had stopped. A billboard flashed across the city skyline:
**"MYTHREALMS: WHERE THE GODS STILL REMEMBER YOUR NAME."**
Inside the game, Maxwell Ambrose wrapped his coat tighter and watched the waves, his face unreadable.
He'd fallen. But not broken.
Tomorrow, he'd build.
Not a kingdom.
An empire.
**End of Chapter One.**