It was late, past midnight, probably closer to two. He hadn't looked at the time in hours.
The only light in the apartment came from his computer monitor, its bluish glare washing over a cluttered desk littered with empty coffee mugs, snack wrappers, and a half-finished to-do list from three weeks ago. His laundry was piled in the corner.
The silence of the dark room only broken by the clicking of his keyboard.
He sat slouched in a swivel chair with a slight lean to the left. The cheap mesh back was starting to give out, but he hadn't bothered replacing it. It worked. Like most things in his life it worked well enough to get by, not broken enough to go through the hassle of replacing it.
He clicked aimlessly between browser tabs. Job boards, looking for positions other than his boring office job, MyTube videos he'd already seen.
He rubbed at his eyes with the palms of his hands and leaned back, exhaling slowly. The ceiling fan ticked softly above him, wobbling with each pass like it was seconds from falling apart.
"What the hell am I doing?"
He didn't say it aloud, but the thought settled in his chest like cold ash.
Twenty-Five years old. No real career. No partner. No hobbies that stuck longer than a few months. He had friends, but most of them had drifted away; moved out of state, started families, stopped replying to group chats. He had the kind of loneliness that creeps in slowly so you don't notice until it had turned into something more constant.
Outside, the rain tapped gently against the windows. It was the kind of steady drizzle that seemed like it could go on forever.
He looked down at his hands.
"When did they start looking so old?"
There was a time when he believed things would fall into place. A time when he thought hard work and a good heart would be enough to get him somewhere. But somewhere along the way, way up vanished.
"Would the world be any different if I didn't exist?"
Maybe that's why, when it happened, he didn't shout or jump out of his chair.
It was subtle at first, a shift in the air pressure, like a stormfront arriving indoors. The hairs on his arms stood up. Then came the sound: a soft crackle, static building between layers of reality.
He turned his chair around slowly towards the source.
Roughly ten feet away from him, in the middle of his living room, the air warped.
It didn't make sense, not the way it moved. It wasn't smoke or mist. It was space itself folding inward, like the room had blinked and opened an eye.
A jagged circle of blue energy twisted outward, the edges flickering like it was half-submerged in water. It didn't hum or buzz or make any movie-like whooshing noises.
It was quiet. Deeply, disturbingly quiet.
He blinked, Stared, and stood up.
This wasn't a dream. The cold ceramic of the coffee mug in his hand. The ache in his shoulder from sitting too long. The subtle scent of mold from the window AC. All still real.
And yet...
There it was. Impossible. Unreal. Unexplained.
He didn't run. He didn't call anyone. His phone sat face-down on the counter, forgotten. There was a moment, a long one, where he just stood there, chest rising and falling, trying to think. But the thoughts didn't come.
He took a slow step forward. Then another.
It pulsed once. Softly.
He stopped two feet from the thing that could only be described as a portal, and for the first time in hours, he felt... awake.
Was it beckoning? No. Not exactly. It wasn't offering answers. It didn't promise anything. But it was there, and that alone felt like a kind of invitation.
"What else do I have?"
No one other than work would notice him gone until next week when his rent went unpaid.
Maybe this was madness. A break with reality. A cosmic joke. But something deep inside him, a voice so quiet it barely qualified as his own, whispered:
"It's got to be better than here."
He didn't pack. Didn't leave a note. Just walked over and put on some shoes and grabbed a few protein bars.
He stepped towards to the portal.
And the world inside swallowed him whole.
He fell hard, knees first into thick, sucking mud.
The light that had surrounded him vanished in an instant, replaced by a heavy, overcast sky the color of wet concrete. The air hit him like a punch, humid, sour, and thick with the smell of rot and rust.
Coughing, he pushed himself up, the ground squelching beneath him. His hands were already coated in muck.
He looked up.
The field stretched out endlessly in all directions, choked with shallow pits of standing water, twisted tree stumps, and an ominous, flickering fog. The sky gave no sense of time no sun, no stars, just dimness.
And he wasn't alone.
All around him were people, dozens, maybe hundreds, stumbling, coughing, yelling. Some screamed. Some knelt in silence, dazed and shivering. Most looked like him: normal clothes, sneakers, hoodies, the wide-eyed expressions of those who had just walked out of one world and into another.
That's when he heard the first thud.
Then another. And another. Like the beat of a war drum.
From the mist ahead, figures emerged.
Massive.
At least ten feet tall, towering over the crowd of people like ancient statues come to life. Their skin gleamed in slick shades of blue and green, etched with spiraling tattoos that moved, moved like oil in water. Their eyes were large and imposing. Their muscles rippled beneath ragged cloth and leather.
They were armed. Long, curved blades hung from their hands, each seemingly larger than the people around him. .
One of them stepped forward, voice low and broken, each word strained as if this wasn't it's natural language and it held heavy on the tongue.
"Welcome, humans... to the world... at eternal war."
The creature spread its arms, indicating the field.
"This is your party. Your... initiation."
Then it swung.
The blade moved too fast for something so large. It cleaved through three people in front of him like paper, spraying mud and blood across the field.
Screams erupted from the crowd. Panic spread throughout.
The man didn't move. Couldn't move.
His legs were locked in the muck. His mind froze at the scene unfolding in front of him.
The world was chaos now.
And somehow, this was still better than where he came from.