Grace slumped against the cold stone wall, his breath coming in ragged, wet hitches. Darkness pressed in from every side, smelling of damp earth and rot. His left leg was a ruin; the bone had punched through the skin, white and jagged in the gloom. Blood from a gash above his right eye ran hot and thick, stinging as it blurred his vision.
Through the red haze, he saw it. A behemoth—a towering, monstrous shape with eyes that burned like dying coals. It moved with a heavy, predatory grace, closing the distance.
"I guess... this is how I die," Grace wheezed.
The pain flared, then went strangely numb as his mind began to drift. Ten years, he thought. Has it really been ten years since I arrived in this hell?
Suddenly, the darkness of the ruined world peeled away, replaced by the flickering glow of a computer screen. He was back in his room, watching anime, the mundane sounds of the city outside his window. Then, the glitch began.
Reality started to fracture into cascading green numbers—a digital waterfall that looked like a scene from The Matrix.
"What the hell? What's going on?"
He reached for his mouse, but his hand passed through it. The plastic dissolved into glowing digits. Panic surged, a cold, oily wave in his chest. He looked down and screamed; his fingers were unraveling, turning into math and code. There was no pain—just the horrific sight of his own body being deleted.
He lunged for the door, desperate to escape the room before the erasure took him whole. He reached for the handle, but his hand was already gone, erased into a shimmering void.
"Holy shit! Help! Someone help!"
He threw his shoulder against the wood. Bam. Bam. On the other side of the door, ten-year-old Nina stopped in the hallway. "Big brother? What's going on?"
She rushed toward the sound. Grace tried to shout again, but his jaw was half-gone, his voice reduced to a wet, hollow gurgle. He fell to the floor as his legs vanished into the code.
"I'm coming, Grace! Are you okay?" Nina reached for the handle.
No, Grace thought, a sudden, piercing clarity cutting through his terror. Not Nina. If she sees this... she'll never recover.
With the last of his fading strength, he rolled what was left of his torso against the door, pinning it shut with his weight. He wouldn't let her in. He couldn't.
"I'm coming!" she cried, shoving against the door. "Big brother, let me in!"
She pushed harder. One final, desperate shove. The door flew open, and Nina stumbled into the room, her words trailing off. "I'm... coming..."
She blinked, looking around the small, quiet space. All the things that belong to Grace vanished The air was still.
"Brother?" Nina whispered. She tilted her head, a confused frown crossing her face. "Why did I just say that? I don't have a brother."
She turned and walked back into the hallway, leaving the empty room behind. In that moment, Grace wasn't just dead. He had never existed at all
Nina stepped into an empty room, the memory of her brother flickering out like a spent candle. For Grace, there was only the void—a heavy, absolute pitch darkness. He had no arms to reach out, no lungs to scream, yet he existed.
Then, a cold, mechanical pulse vibrated through the nothingness.
[ Spacetime Resequencing Complete. Subject: Grace D. Morgan. Status: Disconnected. Connecting to Nibiru Network... ]
Faint, organic voices bled through the static, sounding hurried and stressed.
"It's done," a man's voice whispered. "Do you really think he can save the world?" "He has to," a second voice snapped. "Look at the energy we've burned just to pull him through."
What the hell is going on? Grace tried to shout into the dark. Where am I? You people sound like you have no idea what you're doing!
[ Alert: Reincarnation Sequence Initiated. Subject: Required. ]
The voices turned to frantic shouting. "Wait—look at the monitors! Where is the subject? Where is the Dragon?" "I don't know! We've lost the signal! Is he dead?" "We're losing him! And he has the Pen!"
[ Status: FAILED. Auto-searching... Search Complete. New Pen Required. ]
"We don't have the resources for a second Pen!" the first voice cried. "If the Dragon is captured in the Tower, we can't reach him. Grace is our only hope now. Just do it!"
In the darkness, a five-inch rectangular cube appeared before Grace's mind's eye. It was covered in glowing, shifting runic patterns that hummed with a terrifying amount of power.
"I can't believe we're wasting a Pen on this guy," someone muttered.
[ Pen Requirement: Success. Reincarnation Process Starting... ]
"Sir, look! The mission isn't uploading! The Pen's address is broken!" Buttons clicked frantically. "Wait... the subject. He's lost his Core. There's no way to connect the Pen to his soul! How can one guy have such terrible luck?"
Grace wanted to laugh, or perhaps scream. Even in the afterlife, he was being scammed.
[ Connection Failure. Soul-Pen Sync: 0%. ]
"Maybe he can still hear us!" the voice shouted, sounding distant now. "Hey! Grace! If you can hear us—you're a hero! You have to save this world! Conquer the Tower! Release the Dragon—!"
The voice was cut off by a digital shriek.
[ Error. Status: Healing Required. Reincarnation Process: Success. ]
Light hit Grace's eyes like a physical blow.
He gasped, his lungs burning with the sudden intake of air. He was sitting slumped against a jagged rock, his limbs feeling thin as dry kindling. Before he could even process his surroundings, a piercing white heat exploded in his skull.
The memories of the body he now inhabited flooded in—a brutal, 14-year-old life spent in the filth of the commoner slums. He saw visions of moldy bread, the constant ache of hunger, and a desperate dream of reaching the city to become an adventurer. Then, the final memory: sleeping by the road, the flash of a thief's blade, and a heavy stone being ripped from his chest.
Grace reached up, trembling, and touched his shirt. It was matted with dried blood, but the skin beneath was smooth and healed. The "healing" the robotic voice mentioned had closed the wound, but it hadn't fixed the malnutrition or the missing "Core" the thief had stolen.
Grace looked at his pale, shaking hands and let out a dry, hacking laugh.
"That was some dark shit, yo," he whispered.
Then, the world tilted, and he passed out into the dirt.