The world was wrong.
Colors bled together where they shouldn't. Every sound arrived a half-second too late, as though echoing from underwater. My body felt heavy, packed with sand and static, each heartbeat dragging me down further into the dark.
Where am I?
I blinked once, twice, until the blur became something solid: the inside of a car. The window beside me pulsed faintly with the light of passing streetlamps, streaks of yellow and gray slicing through the night. My breath fogged against the glass. The air smelled of oil and damp metal, cold against my teeth when I breathed.
I couldn't move.
Panic clawed its way up my throat—soft at first, then harder, until it felt like my ribs were vibrating. My hands wouldn't obey me. Even breathing took effort. My thoughts were slow, slippery, refusing to form.
Had I been… drunk? Drugged?
No. I remembered.
Work. The long shift. Coming home, falling onto my bed. Opening my phone. The familiar menu screen of Love and Deepspace. I was trying to clear level ninety of Directional Orbit: Energy—Sylus's Deepspace Trial—
A soft sound broke through the noise in my head: a shallow breath that wasn't mine.
Someone was beside me.
I turned my head—or maybe it only felt like turning—and saw her slumped against the opposite seat. Her face was half-lit by the streetlight that bled through the window. That face. Pale skin, long black hair tucked behind one ear.
My own voice escaped me before I could think.
"Elara."
The name felt too loud in the small space.
It was her. The protagonist I had created. My MC.
I'd picked that face myself. Those exact features. The name I'd typed into the screen months ago.
I stared, frozen, waiting for the moment to crack open—for something to remind me this was a dream.
But she stirred.
Her lashes fluttered. Her gaze found mine, unfocused, slow, like she was waking from the same fog that swallowed me. And when she spoke, her voice was soft, fragile, threaded through with exhaustion.
"You shouldn't be here."
The words hung between us, thin as glass.
I tried to answer, but my tongue felt foreign in my mouth. "I—what—?"
The car jerked violently, cutting me off. The engine coughed, sputtered, and died. Somewhere up front, a man cursed and slammed his hand against the dashboard. The door flew open, letting in a rush of cold air and the crunch of gravel beneath his boots.
"Got them," he muttered into his communicator, voice sharp with tension. "Yeah. Both signatures match—the main target and a UNICORN tech. Sending coordinates now."
My heart stuttered. UNICORN. Elara's organization. Somehow, the system had lumped me in with her.
The light outside flickered, distorted by the haze still pressing behind my eyes. I tried to move again—to reach Elara, to shake her awake—but my arm was dead weight. The air around me pulsed, thick with an energy I could feel but couldn't name.
Then the door beside us ripped open.
A hand grabbed me by the collar and yanked me into the cold. The shock of the night hit like a slap—wet pavement, distant sirens, the raw scrape of gravel against my knees.
Elara was dragged out next, her body limp but fighting to stand.
The man crouched in front of her, his voice darkly curious, a scientist dissecting his specimen. "So, you're the girl everyone's after," he said. "The one with the Aether Core."
The flashlight beam cut across her face—then mine. I flinched, blinded.
He froze, studying us both. "Boss didn't say anything about a plus one. What are you doing here, sweetheart?"
Should I bargain? Say this was a mistake, that he could let me go? But then I'd just be dumped into the most dangerous zone of the game. If I died here… would I go back to my world?
His focus shifted back to Elara.
My fingers twitched. Just once—barely. It was enough to feel the tremor of my pulse pounding against my skin. The fog was thinning. My senses were returning, cruelly slow.
Then, a sound—low and metallic, scraping through the silence.
The man's flashlight snapped toward the noise. "Who's there?" he barked, his voice suddenly small.
The darkness answered with movement. Two figures emerged from the edge of the road, tall and deliberate, their steps perfectly synchronized. Long coats swayed with each stride, catching the faint shimmer of moonlight. Their masks gleamed like polished obsidian, shaped like birds with hooked beaks.
Behind the slits, eyes burned red.
I knew them.
Luke and Kieran.
Sylus's twins—his foster kids, at least that's how I'd always thought of them. In the game they'd always unsettled me, but not like this. There, they were half-teased as the "crow brothers," eccentric, darkly funny, broken in ways the story wanted you to pity. I'd felt sorry for them; for the way Sylus tested them before taking them in, for the violence the script made them enact.
But seeing them now, stepping out of the shadows like predators wearing human shapes, that pity twisted into something cold. This wasn't the clean, stylized version the game offered. This was what it must have looked like before anyone softened the edges for players.
Elara didn't react. She didn't recognize them.
I did—and the recognition made my stomach turn.
The man stumbled back, his hand flying to his holster.
The one on the left—I wasn't sure if it was Luke or Kieran—tilted his head lazily, his voice smooth, almost amused. "Looks like someone decided to play a dangerous game. Kidnapping her without clearance? That takes nerve."
"She's ours," said the other, his tone precise, cutting. "Our boss doesn't appreciate interference."
Onychinus.
The name fell into place before I could stop it. My heart clenched. I'd heard this dialogue before.
I'd watched this scene. I'd played this scene.
The kidnapper raised his gun, eyes wild. "I don't answer to Onychinus! She's mine!"
He aimed—not at them, but at Elara.
"One more step, and I'll kill her!"
The night held its breath.
The twins didn't move. The air itself seemed to tighten around them.
The one on the left sighed, as if disappointed. "You're really going to make this difficult, huh?"
His voice was exactly the same as the line from the game—but hearing it here, from a real mouth, made my stomach drop.
The man's finger pressed against the trigger—
I tried to shout, to move—anything.
A metallic click.
A blur of motion.
Then—BANG.
The gunshot tore through the night, and the sound didn't fade like it did through my phone speakers. It rang through my bones.
I'd seen this scene before.
But now I was inside it.