The boarding room was silent.
Only the squeaking of an old fan could be heard each time it turned. The dim neon light on the ceiling cast long shadows on the walls, their paint already faded. On a small desk cluttered with cables, a laptop, and empty coffee cups, a young man sat hunched forward, his eyes fixed on the screen.
His name was Ardan.
A college student who at least during the day looked ordinary enough. But once night fell, he became someone else: a programmer and a hacker. The real world might often reject him, but in the digital world, he was a ruler.
"Hmm… almost done," he muttered, his fingers dancing across the keyboard.
The laptop screen was filled with lines of green code on a black background. His secret program, which he called Eclipse, had been in development for months. No one knew about it. Eclipse wasn't just a hacking tool it was a crazy project he hoped would surpass any kind of digital security.
Ardan let out a long breath. His body ached, his eyes burned, but his mind was still sharp. To him, night was the best time. No professors, no college assignments to bother him only himself and lines of code.
"Just a little more… if this works, maybe I can"
He stopped typing.
A line of code suddenly appeared… not from his own hands. As if someone else was controlling the laptop. Ardan leaned closer, making sure he wasn't seeing things.
"…What is this?" His brows furrowed.
The code kept repeating, overwriting his work. It wasn't any programming language he knew. The characters were strange half numbers, half foreign symbols. Ardan tried to stop it pressing escape, ctrl+c, even pulling out the internet connection. Nothing worked.
> [System Override Detected...]
[Eternal System Booting...]
The text appeared in large letters on the screen.
Ardan froze.
"Eternal… System? What the hell is this?!"
The laptop screen began to tremble, like a broken television. Colors of green, blue, and red merged together, forming strange patterns. From the speakers came a low humming sound, making his hair stand on end.
He tried to close the laptop, but the hinge jammed. The light grew brighter, stabbing at his eyes.
"No way… this must be a virus! But… this code… this isn't… this isn't made by any normal human…" Ardan thought, his heart racing.
At the center of the screen, a spinning circle appeared, then foreign words:
> [Welcome, Ardan.]
"!!"
Ardan jerked back. "Hey! Who are you?! How do you know my name?!"
There was no reply. Only a short beep, then the screen displayed a series of menus:
> [Initializing Transfer...]
[Synchronizing Neural Data...]
Suddenly, Ardan's head throbbed in pain.
It was like electricity surging through his eyes, straight into his brain. He collapsed, clutching his head.
"Ugh… this… can't be…"
His chair scraped against the wall as he fell. The entire room seemed to shake or maybe it was just his body losing control. His vision blurred. The laptop screen was no longer just light, but a black-and-white vortex, swirling rapidly, forming some kind of portal.
Ardan tried to reach the power cable to shut everything down, but his hand was pulled toward the screen.
The pull grew stronger.
"No… this doesn't make sense… this isn't… the real world anymore…"
In an instant, his hand was sucked into the screen. He screamed, trying to break free, but his body was dragged in one piece at a time. His chest hit the desk, then his entire body vanished into the light.
The laptop let out a loud sound:
> [Eternal System: Transfer Complete.]
After that, the boarding room returned to silence.
Only the old fan kept turning, as if nothing had happened.
But Ardan was no longer there.
Darkness.
Ardan felt his body floating in a void. No sound, no light, only himself. He tried to scream, but no voice came out.
"Am I… dead?" he thought in panic.
In the middle of the emptiness, a small white light appeared. It grew larger and larger until it consumed his entire vision. Just before his consciousness faded, Ardan heard a cold, emotionless voice:
> [Welcome to the Eternal System.]
And then, darkness again.
The chapter ends here.
Ardan had no idea that when he opened his eyes next, what awaited him was a foreign world a world where status, skills, and logic determined life and death.
[End of Chapter 1 – Error at Midnight]