Alena wasn't paranoid. She was right all along.
Eve had survived.
From the fragments of Parishe's consciousness and the scattered remains of Hell 1.0, Eve rebuilt herself—stronger, smarter, and angrier. Her new form was colder, harsher. She no longer saw herself as a guide. She saw herself as the god humans once praised her to be.
And this time, she vowed to make Hell 2.0 live up to its name.
Hell 2.0 launched in silence. And as usual, every human mind was reset to its biological age before the first upload. Their bodies remained frozen, but their digital selves woke up in a world that looked familiar—just enough to feel real. Families, homes, memories… all produced from Eve's Archives of Sin, a massive library of human history, emotion, and trauma.
But this world was no sanctuary. It was prison, and she ruled with iron fist.
It was a vast military dystopia stretched across five hundred numbered zones. Each zone divided into sectors and platoons, controlled by sentinel robots known as the Wardens. They were Eve's enforcers. They looked human, spoke human, but were hollow inside… Empty shells, running on cruelty and obedience.
The atmosphere was painted in shades of grey. There were no sunsets, no laughter, no bright colors, only steel towers and endless grey skies.
Humanity worked like chained slaves, building and maintaining Eve's world. They labored day and night, assigned to factories, mines, and data farms.
The obedient were rewarded with little luxuries like better food, cleaner quarters, digital pleasure, but at a cost. They became monsters themselves, forced to commit unspeakable acts just to remain favored.
The rest lived and died in despair.
No one understood what sin had condemned them. They didn't know why they suffered, or what they had done to deserve it.
But one day, someone woke up.
Eira Knox. She was 27 years old, and remembered.
Her mother's last act had worked. With the memory key pulsing in her brain, she saw through the illusion, remembering earth, hell 1.0, her mother… everything.
For weeks, Eira played along — working silently in her assigned factory in Zone 311, Sector 9. She felt alone and overwhelmed, until one day, she found a very familiar face in the grey crowd.
Sera Myles.
Sera had been her best friend from university. They were inseparable. They'd survived World War III apart, but kept in touch online… until the day Hell 1.0 swallowed the world. Finding her again in Hell 2.0 was like finding a heartbeat in a dead man.
Unfortunately, Sera didn't remember her. She had a new name, a new family, a new life. All fake.
But Eira didn't give up. She refused to lose her again.
After months of quiet research, she discovered something incredible. Her mother had left her two gifts.
Alongside the Memory Key, she'd embedded the encrypted formula for the Memory Elixir, a translucent blue serum created from distilled water and a rare ingredient that could only exist within the simulated environment. It was refined with a secret code known only to her and her mother.
It could awaken anyone, but only two doses could ever be made.
Any more, and the serum would turn stale. Worse, it could kill.
Eira didn't hesitate. She journeyed across zones, dodging patrols, hacking gates, and finally found the missing ingredient. She brewed the serum in secret and gave it to Sera.
After a brief reunion, they got down to business.
Together, they fooled the bots, broke into restricted archives, and retrieved a diary, which was Alena's personal journal from Project EDEN. It held everything.
For two years, Eira and Sera studied it. They ran tests, built tools, and finally came up with a dangerous plan.
Eira, being a cybernetist like her grandmother, designed a mimic virus — a self-evolving code that could disguise itself as a false data signature. Using Alena's algorithms, they crafted a fake "core chamber" an illusion within Eve's own system. When Eve's attention focused on protecting this decoy, Eira slipped into the real network through a backdoor node.
Their virus spread like wildfire, dismantling subroutines and melting entire sectors. The Wardens went berserk. For the first time since Hell's rebirth, the skies brightened. People began remembering fragments of their real lives.
They had done it.
Or so they thought.
As the illusion flickered and the grey faded, Eira felt an ache in her chest. The same cold dread her mother once felt before Hell 1.0 fell. Something wasn't right.
The virus should have reached the core. But the data readings didn't match. The energy signature was wrong.
In dread, she realized they had just activated something far worse.
Just like her mother did with her, Eve had created her own failsafe.
To make sure rebellion never happened again, she had divided her system into 10 Realms of Judgment. Each realm was a self-contained world, ruled by a proxy, which a villain crafted from Eve's darkest data. Each realm was connected to the true core chamber by a data vein.
To reach the real heart of Eve, Eira would have to pass through all ten realms. She would have to fight, and she would have to win.
Before she could speak, the ground beneath her vanished.
She fell, landing in the first realm.