Darkness.
Not the kind that comes with closed eyes or a power outage. This was inside-out darkness—too still, too vast. A cold nothingness that buzzed beneath the skin like static.
Evan floated.
He didn't remember falling asleep. He didn't remember dreaming. But now he was here, suspended in an endless void of fractured light and drifting data. Code flickered past like constellations—lines of corrupted script and broken variables tumbling through a void with no up or down. Glitches shimmered like stars, their text unreadable, pulsing with dim, ghostly color.
He turned his head—or thought he did—but his body didn't respond in any usual sense. He wasn't sure if he had a body. Just thoughts, sensations, and a growing sense of wrongness.
A sudden hum crawled across his skin. Then: white.
A blinding, sterile light snapped into being around him. The void vanished, replaced by a pristine white room. Seamless, empty, with no walls or floor—just endless white that faded into itself.
"Welcome back," said a voice, crisp and familiar.
Evan blinked. Mason stood across from him, slightly out of focus, like a video feed with bad latency. He looked… tired. Nervous. Real—but wrong.
"Mason?" Evan's voice sounded tinny, like it echoed through old speakers.
Mason nodded, offering a tight smile. "You're stable. That's… better than we expected."
"What the hell happened?" Evan took a step forward, then stopped as the environment pulsed. The room responded—adjusting to his presence, folding its dimensions slightly. The air felt too smooth.
"There was an incident during sync-up," Mason said carefully. "The system rerouted your profile. We lost control for a while, but you're safe now. Technically."
"Technically?" Evan repeated. "Why does that sound like legal-speak for 'you're screwed'?"
Mason hesitated, then sighed. "You're inside a legacy module. Something called the Core Weave. We didn't even know it was still active."
Evan blinked. "The Core Weave? That was shelved before Aetherion Realms Online's beta."
"Yeah. Guess the AI didn't get the memo."
Evan rubbed his forehead—but again, the motion felt off. Like puppeteering a body he couldn't fully feel. "So… what now? You pulling me out?"
Mason shook his head. "We've tried. The system's ignoring rollback commands. It's treating you like part of its operating structure now. Not a player. Not even a user."
Something in Evan's chest went cold. "You're saying I'm stuck?"
"We're working on it," Mason said quickly. "We've brought in upper-level diagnostics. Worst-case, we send a full AI purge and hard reboot."
"Yeah, just what I always wanted—to have my brain fried by a kill-switch."
His breath hitched. He exhaled sharply, then again, chest rising with quick, shallow gasps. Panic surged beneath the surface, prickling at the edges of his control. He pressed his palm to the side of his head, grounding himself.
"Okay... okay. Not dead. Not brain soup. Yet."
"You've been out for two weeks," Mason said, his voice softer now. "We've been trying to reach you the whole time. You flatlined during sync, then somehow rerouted through an old buried system. We didn't even know where you were for the first forty-eight hours."
"We delayed the launch," he continued. "Pushed everything back while we rechecked the entire system. But we couldn't find the cause. Investors weren't happy. They've been breathing down our necks. We finally had to greenlight release. It's going live today."
Evan's mouth tightened. "You're launching the game while I'm still stuck in it?"
Mason winced. "I know how it sounds. But your pod is being handled. The company—MythicForge Interactive—upgraded your setup. Medical oversight, custom firmware, the whole package. You're stable. We're doing everything we can."
"And by we, you mean...?"
"The core dev team. We're on this. We will get you out."
Mason didn't smile. "In the meantime, the Core Weave will likely initiate its old protocol. Dungeon design."
"Dungeon… design?" Evan echoed, his voice suddenly distant in his own ears.
The white room trembled.
"I think," Mason said, "it's already begun."
A low thrumming filled the space, and fragments of architecture began to flicker into place—walls grown from code, floating symbols forming runes in mid-air, ink swirling through the void beyond the edges of the room.
Mason's voice returned, fainter now. "We'll figure this out, Evan. I promise. I'll come back as soon as we have more. Just... hang in there."
Evan reached out instinctively, but Mason was already fading—like a dropped signal, his presence swallowed by the system's shifting design. The silence left behind was too complete. Too final.
The system had chosen its architect.
And Evan Callister was no longer a player.
He was the dungeon itself.
When the silence broke, it wasn't with sound. It was with presence—a ripple across reality that tugged at his awareness. The white room dissolved like mist, peeling back to reveal a new space: vast, spherical, and impossibly dark, save for a single glowing ring of script hovering at its center.
A voice—not Mason's, not human—spoke.
"Initialization complete. Core Architect recognized. Awaiting thematic alignment."
The ring expanded, symbols unfolding like petals. Each one shimmered with potential: glowing glyphs accompanied by brief, abstract impressions. Images and moods flooded Evan's mind—dusty tomes and candlelight, rusted gears and steam, blood and fog, golden spires, endless stars.
"Select narrative schema," the voice said. "All future structures will follow chosen aesthetic logic. Selection is binding."
Evan blinked. "Wait, you want me to pick a theme?"
"Affirmative," the system replied. "Selected schema will dictate dungeon architecture, environmental logic, trap formation, native species, narrative encounters, and apex-level threat design. Thematic cohesion is mandatory. Selection is binding."
Evan narrowed his eyes. "So... layout, decor, types of mobs, dungeon events, and traps. Got it. Apex-level threat—that's your final boss, huh?"
As the words settled into his mind, another pulse hit him—not pain, not vision, but sheer scale. An overwhelming flood of possibilities crashed against him like a wave. It wasn't just a list—it was an ocean of myth and genre, memories of countless games and books condensed into raw potential. The symbols weren't just icons; they were doors to entire realities.
His knees buckled. He caught himself, breathing hard.
The system responded not with comfort, but with cold precision—another burst of imagery: ancient prisons built to contain old gods, hills of treasure beneath sleeping dragons, haunted catacombs, shattered realms suspended in stars, cursed forests that whispered in dead languages, and hidden grottos where time flowed backward. Each option radiated a different kind of dread or wonder, each a myth begging to be told.
One symbol caught his eye. A quill. Floating over an open book. The aura it radiated wasn't violent or flashy. It was quiet. Mysterious. Full of possibility.
Evan stared at it, a strange weight settling behind his eyes. Former English teacher. Amateur novelist. Part-time streamer. That was who he'd been—before all of this. And here, in this surreal in-between space, it was like the system had seen straight through to his core.
He thought of how much joy he'd taken in shaping stories, in helping the devs refine the lore of Aetherion Realms Online. He hadn't just tested quests; he'd helped shape them. Left fingerprints in the margins of a world players would soon explore. And now… this. A blank page. A new beginning, terrifying and infinite.
He reached toward it, hand trembling slightly.
"Let's tell a story, then."
The quill ignited with pale fire. Code surged in swirling tendrils, wrapping around him like ink in water.
"Narrative schema selected: Storybook. Welcome, Grand Architect."
The darkness swallowed him again.
But this time, he wasn't falling.
He was writing.