Jace Rowen hated the smell of bleach. It reminded him of prison, of sterilized hallways and floors scrubbed clean of yesterday’s blood. Today, the bleach reeked stronger than usual, like someone had tried to wash away something worse.

  He sat on a cold metal bench, wrists cuffed to the seat, a thin black jumpsuit clinging to his skin. A single overhead light buzzed like a mosquito that refused to die. Across the sterile room, a wall-mounted screen showed a looping promo video.

  “Reformation through immersion! Atonement through gameplay!” The voiceover was too cheerful, like a Saturday morning cartoon host had gotten into politics. "The Chainbound Initiative, where every choice earns freedom, and every failure has consequences."

  Jace tilted his head back and closed his eyes. They'd pitched it to the world like a gift, an alternative to prison for nonviolent offenders. But he knew better. The Chainbound system was just another cage. The walls were digital instead of concrete, but that didn't make them any less real.

  A door hissed open. Two guards entered, followed by a woman in a gray coat with a clipboard. She looked like every bureaucrat he'd ever wanted to punch.

  "Jace Rowen," she said. "You're up."

  "Lucky me."

  They uncuffed him and hauled him to his feet. No ceremony. No last words. Just the quiet shuffle toward the next sentence.

  The next room was colder. Wires ran from floor to ceiling like metal vines. At the center stood a capsule, sleek, black, and ominous. The pod's interior was lined with soft mesh and humming softly.

  "Step in," the woman said.

  Jace glanced at her. "Any chance I get a difficulty setting? Maybe something between hard time and hellspawn?"

  "You’ll adapt."

  He snorted but obeyed. As he lay back into the pod, it cradled him like a coffin. A visor descended. Darkness followed.

  Then fire.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  His whole body spasmed. Pain, sharp and total, lanced through every nerve like a lightning strike. He tried to scream but his lungs weren’t real anymore. Then even the pain dissolved, leaving only silence.

  Until he opened his eyes.

  Above him stretched a sky that wasn’t a sky. Red-orange clouds churned like a living storm, and stars blinked in unnatural patterns. The ground beneath him was stone, cracked and warm to the touch.

  A voice echoed in his skull.

  "Welcome to Sablemark, inmate. Your sentence begins now."

  There was no HUD. No minimap. No helpful tutorial pop-up. Just the sound of distant howls, the taste of smoke, and a weight settling on his wrists.

  Chains. Real ones.

  Jace stood slowly, the iron links dragging behind him like a second spine.

  Level 0. No weapons. No skills. No allies.

  Just a man who'd made one mistake too many and stepped into a world where death wasn't just a failure. It was the default.

  He flexed his hands, cracked his neck, and stared toward the horizon.

  A howl answered him. Closer this time.

  The rocks shifted about twenty feet away. Something crouched in the shadows—a silhouette the size of a dog, with too many joints bending the wrong direction. It sniffed the air, turned toward him, and stood. Its skin was stretched too tight over its bones, and its head had no eyes, only a vertical slit lined with teeth.

  Jace stepped back. The chains scraped the stone.

  The creature jerked, then sprinted.

  He ran.

  The chains slowed him, dragged like anchors on each stride. Behind him, the thing hissed and skittered with impossible speed. Jace dodged behind a low wall of broken stone and crouched, gasping.

  The creature paused. He could hear it breathing—rasping, sniffing, circling. He looked down and saw the faintest glint of something metal beneath a shattered brick. A spike, no longer than his hand.

  He grabbed it.

  The moment his fingers closed around the weapon, the air shimmered. A single word appeared in faint white letters over the stone: Improvised Shiv Acquired. Durability: 3/3

  Jace grinned. "That’s more like it."

  The hiss came again. This time from above.

  He rolled, barely dodging as the creature pounced from the top of the wall. It landed hard, jaw snapping, teeth grinding against stone. Jace slashed wildly, catching it across the shoulder. Black blood sprayed.

  The thing shrieked and lunged again. He stabbed upward. The spike slid between its teeth and into the slit. The body spasmed, then went still.

  The words appeared again: Kill Confirmed. +1 Combat Instinct

  Jace wiped his hands on the ground and stood.

  No level up. No fanfare. But something had changed. He could feel it in the way his grip steadied, in how the chain links no longer felt like dead weight but tools waiting to be used.

  He took a breath and scanned the horizon. The sky pulsed. Somewhere out there, this world waited to grind him down.

  "Not today," he muttered. "Round one goes to me."

  And with that, he walked. Not because he had a destination, but because he refused to stay still.

  Not in a place like this.