Eli didn't open the image right away.
The thumbnail glowed on his phone screen, a small rectangle of pale colors and shadow—his own in-game character, Kael the Riftblade, caught mid-motion under the mid-lane tower. The composition was perfect, centered, almost artistic.
He could tell it wasn't a random screenshot. It was deliberate.It was personal.
He set the phone face-down on the desk and leaned back in his chair, feeling the wood press against his spine. His apartment was quiet again—always quiet after matches. That strange vacuum that came when the adrenaline faded and real life pushed its way back in.
Outside, Hollowbrook's traffic sighed through the afternoon heat. The sound of the city had texture—like a constant low hum that never quite stopped.
Eli ran a hand through his hair. "Still playing the same Champion, huh?" The words lingered in his head.
He could almost hear Rook saying it aloud—half-teasing, half-distant, the way he used to when they scrimmed in old Nexus Arena tournaments.
But that was years ago. Back then, Eternal Nexus was smaller. No corporate sponsors, no global league, no polished broadcast sets. Just raw competition.
When Eternal Nexus launched eight years ago, it wasn't expected to last. People thought it was too complicated. There were over a hundred playable Champions at release, each with unique lore, abilities, and stat scaling that could change depending on the map's shifting "phase cycles."
The Rift itself—the battlefield everyone played on—wasn't static like other games. Its terrain evolved. Every fifteen minutes of in-game time, the map subtly changed: rivers dried into crystal valleys, jungle monsters mutated, the air color shifted from blue to violet. Players called it The Cycle.
It made every match unpredictable. Every mistake permanent. Every victory earned.
For Eli, that complexity was beautiful. Others played for fun. He played to understand.
He turned the phone over again and finally tapped the image.
It expanded to fill the screen.
The perspective was eerie—Kael frozen mid-animation, sword halfway through a slash, the shimmer of the tower's protective aura cutting across him like glass. In the corner, the enemy jungler's HUD was visible: level 14, full health, mana bar pulsing.
And above that, the username.
RookTheHunter.
The timestamp was from five minutes before the end of the match. The same match.
So Rook—or whoever this was—had taken it live. That meant they'd sent it almost instantly after the game ended.
His phone vibrated again. Another message.
"You still study the game like scripture?"
Eli's pulse quickened. He didn't respond. He locked the phone, placed it gently on the desk, and stared at his monitor. The Eternal Nexus icon still glowed in his taskbar, a soft swirl of blue and gold light.
He hesitated, then clicked it open.
The client loaded with its usual orchestral theme, but the music felt different now—slower, heavier. The lobby background had changed for the new season: a panorama of the Aether Ruins, a desolate battlefield floating among stars, its towers suspended in fragments of shattered constellations.
He navigated to the "Lore" tab—something most players ignored.
Every Champion in Eternal Nexus had a backstory tied to one of the five great Realms: Verrad (Dominion of Order), Luneth (Realm of Shadows), Kaelra (Forge of Elements), Aseron (The Eternal Wilds), and Nexus Prime, the mythical hub where all Realms converged.
Kael—the one Eli had always played—was from Luneth. A former general who betrayed his realm and was cursed to wander the Rift forever, seeking redemption through endless battle.
There was a line in his lore that had always stuck with Eli:
"Some fights end. Mine only rest between breaths."
He hovered over it now, reading it again and again until the words blurred.
He wasn't sure when Kael had stopped being a character and started feeling like a mirror.
A soft ping.
New message—this time in-client chat.From RookTheHunter.
"You ever wonder why they changed the Rift lighting?"
Eli froze.
He typed back before he could stop himself.
"What are you talking about?"
No reply.
The chat indicator blinked once, then disappeared.
He opened the patch notes again, scrolling through lines he'd memorized hours ago.
'Updated Rift lighting for improved visibility and realism.'
That was all it said. A tiny line buried among hundreds.
He minimized the notes and stared at the game's main menu, where the Rift shimmered faintly behind the translucent interface. If he looked close enough, he could almost see movement in the fog—tiny flickers, like stars pulsing.
He leaned forward.
The animation paused for a heartbeat. Then continued.
Probably lag.
Still, something about Rook's message gnawed at him.
Eli pushed his chair back and stood. He paced once around the small room. His thoughts felt like they were folding in on themselves—memories of their old duo queues, the tournaments, the late-night strategies they'd planned on voice chat.
Rook had been different back then—obsessed with exploiting the game's systems. He'd dive into code leaks, datamined assets, half-finished lore entries that the developers hadn't released yet.
Once, during Season 7, he'd told Eli something strange:
"They didn't build this game just for us to play. They built it to watch how we play."
Eli had laughed it off. Everyone joked about the devs spying on players. But the way Rook said it… it hadn't sounded like a joke.
He sat back down and checked his replay folder. The game from earlier had automatically saved. He loaded it.
The camera followed his perspective for a while—standard mid-lane gameplay, his careful positioning, his first death. Everything normal.
Then, at the twenty-minute mark, something flickered in the fog of war near the top of the map. Not Rook. Not any Champion.
Just… a shape.
A faint humanoid outline, pure static, visible for half a second before the fog closed over it.
He rewound. Slowed the playback to 0.25 speed.
There it was again. Same spot. Same flicker.
He zoomed in.
The static resolved into something almost recognizable—a silhouette with a long blade, standing perfectly still, facing the camera.
Not part of the game model set.
He paused the replay, heart thudding.
The timer read 20:14.
He'd died at 20:15.
The hum of his PC fans seemed louder now, like distant wind through wires. He saved a screenshot of the frame, labeled it "glitch," and tried to laugh at himself. It was probably a bug. The game had millions of lines of code; small things slipped through all the time.
But still…
He alt-tabbed and checked the file's metadata. Creation date matched the replay. But there was an extra tag at the bottom—something he hadn't added.
user: rookth3hunter
His cursor hovered over it.
The room felt suddenly smaller, the air heavier.
He looked at the clock. 2:37 p.m. He was already late for his shift.
But he couldn't move.
He minimized everything and stared at his desktop wallpaper—an old photo of the Eternal Nexus World Finals stage, blue light cascading across a sea of fans. The caption at the bottom read:
"One day."
He whispered it under his breath. "One day."
The phone vibrated again.
Another message.
This one didn't have text—just a short video clip.
Eli hesitated, then opened it.
The camera panned slowly through a dark room lit by a single computer monitor. His computer. His desk. His cracked ShadowFox poster.
And in the reflection of the monitor—his own silhouette, sitting perfectly still.