I’ve been burned, stabbed, possessed, set on fire (twice), and emotionally traumatized by a falling goblin. But nothing—and I mean nothing—compares to the horror of watching your best friend cast [Fireball] directly into melee range.

  "GWIL, I'M IN THE BLAST RADIUS!".

  Too late.

  The cavern lit up like a solar rave hosted by an arson with no concept of friendly fire. My eyebrows made a noble sacrifice as I flew backward, slammed into a stalagmite, and reconsidered every life choice that led me here—including trusting a guy whose idea of strategy is ‘more fire equals more better.’

  "Bro can't even aim a big ass fireball." I mumbled while getting up to take a look at the aftermath.

  When the smoke cleared, we were all miraculously alive. Singed, coughing, covered in monster goo but alive.

  Yvan, who was unfortunately not caught in the blast radius, wiped some ichor off his sword and groaned. “We need a healer.”

  “We need a brain cell,” I muttered, patting out the last of the flames on my tattered shirt. “Preferably one we can share.”

  “I said I had it under control!” Gwil called from the backline, clearly worried.

  But just as we started celebrating our ‘totally intentional’ victory, we froze.

  The beast we were fighting? Yep, still standing.

  Only difference is that now it had wings and cool glowing eyes. It started chanting a spell and—

  Oh, what's that? we skipped a few chapters in? Fine, let's rewind the clock to what led us into taking a nice stroll in an overleveled dungeon while being underleved.

  Let's Rewind.

  Not metaphorically. I mean actually rewind.

  Back before the wings, the explosions, the void-staring, and whatever unholy creature just made eye contact with my soul. Before I became an accidental demigod. Before I started hearing whispers when I close my eyes and seeing threads unravel from reality like tangled yarn.

  Back when things were normal.

  Well... as normal as three best friends screaming at each other over a busted mic setup at 2 A.M. can be.

  "Okay, hold up," I said, pushing my chair back from the desk, "this can't be real."

  [YvantheWyvern] came over to my side in-game. “You glitched through a wall again?”

  “No, look. There’s a door here—behind the lava waterfall. That wasn’t in any of the patch notes.”

  [MageWithMuscles] a.k.a 'Gwil' came over as well, complete with a fashion disaster for a mage outfit (seriously, what kind of mage wears shorts?). “That's either a dev oversight… or we're about to discover the forbidden lore. I say we vote for Lance to go first. Go on, meat-shield.”

  “Bet,” I said, already pressing forward on my keyboard and entering through the door, followed closely by my DPS and mage, all of us taking chip damage from the lava. The room looked plain, except for pulsing runes that constantly flickered in and out of existence.

  This is why you don't play when the devs are working on a new patch. "Well, it's a bust. Must be in development."

  The screen flickered. The game stuttered.

  Then the music changed.

  From a goofy synth loop to... silence.

  Followed by a sound like someone whispering right next to my ear—except none of us were speaking.

  “Okay,” Yvan said slowly, “totally not creepy. A little mix of horror isn't so bad.”

  I looked around the room and saw an NPC in white dress on the left side of the room. Covering her face and weeping out loud. I could have sworn the room was empty. For God's sake she's even facing the wall. But mama didn't raise a bitch so I went closer to interact with her.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Just pixels on a screen, right? The only other interesting thing here are the weird-looking runes shifting in and out of the walls.

  You see, the best part about Vaelmyrrha's Children is the fact that this indie top-down 2D pixel game runs smoothly on my laptop that thinks Minesweeper is AAA gaming. So why and how is this NPC rendered as a 3D model, complete with ray tracing shaders? As far as I know, horror is not commonplace in this unbalanced and rage-inducing game.

  I stutter-stepped closer to the weeping woman pixel by pixel, trying to incite any reaction. I even emoted and threw firecrackers around her.

  She didn't react.

  “Bro, don’t,” Yvan warned. “She’s literally facing the wall. That’s like, rule number one of horror games.”

  “Which is why I’m doing it,” I whispered. “This is clearly some Easter egg event. Maybe she drops a hidden item or unlocks a secret boss...”

  I reached out, about to press the interact key.

  The moment I did—

  SHE SCREAMED.

  It wasn't a scream. It was a data crash, a siren-wail, a thousand corrupted audio files forced through a speaker all at once. The lights in my room flickered. My screen spasmed. My keyboard lights flared red, then cut out.

  Closer still—her form flickered, like a corrupted asset, the white dress distorting into static before snapping back. Her sobs echoed louder now, bouncing unnaturally in the room like someone had cranked up the reverb settings too far.

  “Oh hell no,” Gwil ran away. “WHAT DID YOU CLICK, LANCE?!”

  “I DON’T KNOW—SHE WAS JUST CRYING—”

  The screaming stopped. She twitched and stood up, arms limp at her sides as her head rotated all the way around without moving her body.

  She looked at me.

  Straight at me.

  Not my character.

  Me.

  And then—total darkness.

  Not the screen.

  The room.

  I jumped "Oh shit. The power went out." But... the screen is still on? and then that went out too. Now it is complete darkness.

  Not a fade-to-black. Not a crash. Not even a blue screen. I tried to stand up from my chair but I couldn't even feel my body. It felt like I was just floating? And there's nothing around me.

  Just an endless black void.

  My heart skipped. If I even had a heart at this point.

  I frantically looked around, paranoid that the woman in white dress could be somewhere around because what if she actually walked out of the screen?

  Then I saw it. Not the woman, no.

  It stared back at me. Impossible shapes. Illogical geometry. Ancient. Far from organic yet distinguishable as an entity. All around me.

  The silence pressed in like gravity.

  Then—

  a voice.

  But not a voice.

  A resonance that echoed from every direction, from behind my eyes, inside my bones. It didn’t speak through sound. It spoke through knowing. Words unraveled themselves in my mind like ancient threads being pulled taut.

  "You who gazed beyond the shroud... who dares to tread paths not woven..."

  Oh no. This was definitely a boss monologue.

  "Child of form. Branded by paradox—are you..."

  A pause. Spanning infinity and eternity.

  Whatever it was, it hesitated.

  "...Void... Daddy... seven-seven?"

  The way it said it—serious, solemn, like it was intoning some apocalyptic title. Like the number 77 held cosmic significance. Like that was the name that would echo through time and unravel galaxies.

  "...Oh god," I muttered into the infinite darkness. "I’m gonna die as a meme."

  "God? Have you commune with the gods?"

  “Gods as in G-O-D-S? Plural form? I know not what you speak of… err, all-powerful eldritch entity.”

  It might sound like I kept my composure, but if I had pants, they would’ve been soaked and stained in at least three different shades of regret. I was definitely tempting fate trying to imitate its speech—might as well ask the cosmic horror if it wanted a latte with that monologue.

  The silence that followed stretched on.

  I felt… watched. Judged. Poked at by something that didn’t use hands. "Your words are... strange. Your mind, fractured. Curious."

  A sensation like being scanned washed over me—memories flipping open like pages in a book. My browser history included, probably. (Incognito mode did not help me.)

  "Yet your thread burns brightly. You are not meant to be here. And yet... you are seen."

  It leaned in—not physically, but conceptually, like reality folded to make space for its presence. "No matter. You do not have time."

  Wait, hold on, time for what? "Bear the mark of the unseen and unmade. We shall meet again... Void... Daddy... seven seven."

  I didn't have time to ask what the hell that meant before the entire void collapsed inward. Like someone hit the cosmic flush lever.

  There was a soundless boom, a pulse of light that came from nowhere and everywhere. My thoughts screamed. My soul flipped.

  And suddenly

  I hit the ground.

  Hard.

  “OW! What the hell?”

  Stone. Cold, jagged stone beneath me. My head throbbed like I’d headbutted a black hole. My vision blurred. My tongue tasted like static.

  Someone groaned nearby.

  “Dude, are we dead?” Gwil’s voice.

  “Was that... a cutscene?” Must be Yvan.

  I blinked up at a ceiling of dripping, jagged rock.

  "Where the fuck are we?" I groaned as I got up. I looked in front and got a full view of Gwil bending down to fix his shoes from the backside.

  "Hey Gwil, you been working out? those shorts are cupping them apple bottoms." I rubbed my hands while inching closer to him.

  Wait... Gwil's character model? in front of my eyes?

  Then the reality started sinking in.

  We weren’t wearing headsets. We weren’t behind a screen.

  There was no UI.

  No health bar. No minimap. No menu.

  Just three guys standing in a dungeon that smelled like something had recently died—and was planning to do it again for fun.

  “…Guys?” I widened my eyes in horror, looking around. “I don’t think we’re on Earth anymore.”

  I heard someone sigh.