The sky broke at three in the afternoon.
One moment, the office was drenched in the bland, buttery light of a Tuesday, the next, a bruise-black shadow fell over the city, so sudden and absolute it was as if a giant's hand had snuffed out the sun. Riley, staring numbly at a spreadsheet whose numbers had long since blurred into meaningless runes, lifted her head. The quality of the silence that followed the darkness was profound, a vacuum that sucked the breath from the room. Then, behind the impossible ink-wash of the clouds, something pulsed. It wasn't lightning. It was a feverish, arterial red that beat like a diseased heart, bathing the tops of the skyscrapers in a momentary, ghastly glow.
Dozens of brilliant, searing streaks began to tear through the unnatural twilight, screaming down from the heavens not with the silent grace of meteors but with the predatory hiss of something alive. They were meteors of light, shooting from the sky. A collective gasp rippled through the cubicle farm. Someone near the window screamed. Riley remained frozen, a half-sipped, lukewarm coffee still clutched in her hand. Then came the jolt.
It wasn't a deafening explosion, but a deep, resonant thump that shivered up through the building's steel skeleton, a vibration felt more in the bones than in the ears. The floor shuddered beneath her sensible heels. The novelty pencil holder on her desk rattled against her monitor. A framed stock photo of a forest - a place she'd never been - tilted askew on the wall. That was it. That was the switch. The numb, grey apathy that had been her shield for years simply evaporated, replaced by a single, blindingly clear imperative that bypassed all rational thought. Run.
She didn't grab her purse. She didn't log out of her computer. She just moved, her body a coiled spring suddenly released, pushing past her desk and into the aisle. Outside, beyond the plate-glass walls of the lobby, the world was a symphony of panic. The air was thick with screams - not a unified chorus, but a tapestry of individual, sharp shrieks of pure terror. Distant, concussive booms rattled the windows, followed by the shattering tinkle of glass from somewhere higher up. But beneath it all, there was another sound, a strange, wet, chittering noise that scraped against the inside of her skull, a sound that was utterly and obscenely wrong, like a billion insects chewing their way through concrete.
Her logical mind, a small, screaming voice in the back of her head, insisted that staying inside, within the reinforced concrete and steel of the tower, was safer. It was a fortress. But Riley was already pushing through the throng of panicked bodies, her gaze locked on the exit. Why? She didn't know. Maybe the wires in her brain had finally been fried by eight hours a day of soul-crushing data entry, the recycled air, the incessant hum of the servers. Maybe it was the accumulation of a thousand tiny aggressions: the passive-aggressive emails from Brenda in accounting, the way her manager, Mark, would look at her chest when he thought she wasn't paying attention, the sheer, crushing pointlessness of it all. This chaos wasn't an interruption to her life, it felt like a culmination.
A staccato click-clack-click-clack echoed on the marble floor, a frantic, desperate rhythm. Riley looked down in mild surprise, realizing the sound was coming from her own feet, from the four-inch heels she'd always complained about. She'd always scoffed at the heroines in movies, the ones who could outrun explosions and monsters in stilettos. It seemed so utterly ridiculous. Yet here she was, her ankles protesting but her legs pumping, finding a strange, powerful grace in the absurdity. The pain was a distant, unimportant thing, easily drowned out by the adrenaline roaring in her ears.
"Riley! Wait!"
The voice belonged to Mark. A remnant of the old world, the dead world. Hearing it, that familiar, condescending tone now laced with fear, only made her run faster. She didn't look back. That person, that life, no longer existed.
Ahead, the polished steel doors of the elevator bank slid open and a desperate knot of people surged forward, trying to cram themselves inside. For a heartbeat, she considered it - the fast, modern, easy way down. But her eyes darted to the right, to the simple, unassuming door marked with the silhouette of a descending figure. The stairs. The old way. The brutal way. Her body made the choice before her mind could argue, and she veered hard, slamming her shoulder into the fire door and stumbling into the sterile concrete well of the stairwell.
The exact moment the heavy door boomed shut behind her, sealing her off from the lobby's cacophony, the world plunged into absolute, suffocating blackness. The emergency lights didn't even flicker. The hum of the building's ventilation, a sound she had never consciously noticed until it was gone, died, leaving a silence so complete it felt like a physical pressure against her eardrums. A wise choice, then. The wisest she'd ever made.
Fumbling with a tremor in her hands she couldn't control, Riley ripped her phone from her pocket, her thumb smearing across the screen until the flashlight icon glowed. A narrow, brilliant white beam cut through the darkness, illuminating a universe of grey concrete and steel railings. Her breath hitched in her chest, a ragged, ugly sound in the sudden quiet. And then she began to climb.
Yes. Up. Not down.
Her legs, burning with a fire she hadn't felt since a long-forgotten high school track meet, carried her upward, step after agonizing step into the concrete gullet of the building.
Why up?
Because when that meteor shower of light had torn through the bruised sky, she had seen it. Her vision, a crisp 20/20 that had always been her one small, perfect vanity, had caught something the others missed. They weren't just chaotic streaks of fire. As they fell, one in particular seemed to shed its incandescence, and for the briefest fraction of a second before it struck their roof, it resolved into something else. Something with form. With intention. A golden, streamlined shape, less like a rock and more like a javelin hurled by a god. It hadn't fallen, it had arrived.
So now she climbed, fueled by a terrifying, exhilarating question: was she right? Or had the soul-crushing inanity of her nine-to-five finally shattered her mind, sending her chasing a fatal hallucination born of fluorescent lights and passive-aggressive memos? There was a kind of wild freedom in not knowing.
The climb was five minutes of pure, lung-searing agony. Her chic office blouse was plastered to her back with sweat, a clammy second skin. The muscles in her calves screamed, tight knots of protest against the unnatural angle forced on them by her heels. The narrow beam of her phone's flashlight danced and jerked with her ragged breaths, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to writhe on the concrete walls around her. She braced a hand against the cold, dusty steel of the railing, hauling her own dead weight upward, the metallic taste of exhaustion thick on her tongue.
Finally, she saw it: a heavy, red door with a push-bar, stenciled with the word ROOF. She practically fell against it, her shoulder hitting the bar with a desperate shove. For a heart-stopping moment it held fast, and a wave of despair washed over her. Then, with a groan of protesting metal, it swung inward.
The wind hit her first, a physical blow. It was a cold, howling gale that tore at her hair and clothes, carrying with it the scent of ozone, burnt plastic, and something else… something coppery and organic. She staggered out onto the gravel-strewn rooftop, into a world bathed in the hellish red glow pulsing from the clouds above. The city's symphony of screams was fainter up here, a muffled, distant roar.
And there, in the center of the rooftop, was the source. A crater, ten feet across, was punched clean through the concrete and tar. But it wasn't a jagged, ugly wound of destruction. The edges were smooth, cauterized, and the entire hole pulsed with a soft, internal golden light, a serene counterpoint to the violent sky. It wasn't a crash site. It was a nest.
Riley's breath caught in her throat. She was right.
Driven by an impulse that had long since hijacked her reason, she scrambled forward, her heels digging awkwardly into the loose gravel. She peered over the glowing edge. There, nestled in the wreckage of rebar and shattered concrete, lay a chest. It was wrought from a gold so pure and bright it seemed to drink the light from the hole around it, its surface covered in elegant, geometric engravings that shifted and flowed as if they were alive.
There was no time to think, no room for awe. She dropped to her knees, heedless of the sharp debris, and leaned precariously into the crater. Her fingers brushed against the cool, smooth metal of the lid. She braced for a lock, a trick, a trap. But there was none. It lifted with an impossibly light, silent motion, as if it had been waiting for her touch.
The light from within spilled out, warm against her face. Inside, nestled on a bed of what looked like spun shadow, were three objects. The first was a card, heavy and solid, forged from the same impossible gold as the chest. It was framed in a border of a strange, matte black metal that absorbed the light, and in its center was a simple, stark cross with four equal arms. Beside it lay a small, crystalline stone, cut with a thousand tiny facets. It pulsed with a soft, inner luminescence of its own, a tiny, captured star.
And next to that, absurd and utterly out of place, lay a... baseball bat?
Whatever arcane logic had bound a golden card, a captured star, and a piece of sporting equipment together in an alien chest was a puzzle for another lifetime. Riley had no time for riddles. The moment her fingers closed around the three objects, the chest didn't just close, it ceased to exist, winking out of reality with a soft, soundless implosion of light. In its place, the darkness of the crater deepened, and from the stairwell door behind her - the door she'd left wide open in her haste - came a low, guttural snarl that vibrated through the soles of her shoes.
She spun around. Framed in the doorway, silhouetted against the dim concrete interior, was a monkey. But Riley was quite certain that normal monkeys did not belong in the urban heart of a sprawling metropolis, especially when she couldn't recall a single news bulletin about an escaped circus troupe or a calamitous zoo incident. Furthermore, no monkey she had ever seen in a documentary had a pair of jagged, obsidian horns curling from its brow, each wreathed in flickering, malevolent flames that cast dancing, hellish shadows across its simian features.
"Oh hell no," she whispered, the words a puff of vapor in the cold air.
The creature launched itself forward, a blur of matted fur and incandescent rage. Pure instinct took over. Riley threw herself sideways, tucking into a desperate roll across the abrasive gravel. The movement was clumsy, graceless, and it tore a run in her stockings, but it saved her life. Razor-sharp claws, long and yellowed like old ivory, sliced through the air where her throat had been a second before, gouging deep furrows into the rooftop concrete with a sickening shriek of stone on bone. A shiver of ice traced its way down Riley's spine; she could vividly imagine what those talons would have done to her flesh.
It screeched, a sound that was half primate fury and half grinding metal, and lunged again. Scrambling backward on her hands and feet, Riley's flailing hand connected with the coarse ceramic of a decorative planter. Without thinking, she seized it, its weight a surprising comfort, and hurled it with all her might. It arced through the air with surprising accuracy, shattering against the creature's face in an explosion of terracotta and potting soil.
The monkey staggered back, roaring in frustration as it pawed at the dirt suddenly blinding it. That moment was all the time Riley needed. She lurched to her feet, grabbed a second, larger pot filled with some sad, withered petunias, and launched it as well. It struck the beast squarely in the chest, making it stumble. Her eyes darted around, landing on the baseball bat she had dropped in her initial shock. It lay gleaming dully on the gravel a few feet away. She sprinted, her heart hammering against her ribs, and snatched it up, the smooth, weighted ash wood feeling impossibly solid and real in her trembling hands.
The monkey, having cleared its eyes, charged again. This time, Riley was ready. She swung the bat in a wide, desperate arc, pivoting on the ball of her foot and putting every ounce of her adrenaline-fueled terror into the blow. The wood connected with the creature's shoulder with a wet, heavy crack that echoed across the rooftop. It shrieked, a high-pitched sound of pure agony, and a new, more primal rage ignited in Riley's chest.
"Go to hell," she snarled, the voice that came out of her throat a raw, unfamiliar rasp. She swung again, and again, not with the finesse of a batter but with the frantic, brutal efficiency of a cornered animal. The bat became an extension of her will, a cudgel of defiance against the impossible nightmare that had invaded her world.
Suddenly, the flames on the creature's horns erupted, engulfing its entire body in a sheath of roaring, orange fire. The heat was intense, forcing Riley to stumble back with a cry of alarm, shielding her face with her arm. The monkey, now a moving inferno, let out a deafening roar and lunged, its burning hands outstretched. Riley thrust the bat forward horizontally, a desperate, flimsy barrier. The creature's flaming claws closed around the wood, which immediately began to smolder and blacken. With a contemptuous flick of its wrists, it tore the bat from her grasp and flung it across the roof where it clattered against a ventilation unit.
The force of the movement sent Riley sprawling backward onto the gravel. She landed hard, the air knocked from her lungs in a painful gasp. Her vision swam, dark spots dancing before her eyes. The fiery beast loomed over her, a monster from a fever dream. As it raised a flaming fist to deliver a final, killing blow, her gaze fell upon a coiled green hose connected to a spigot on the wall nearby.
With a final, desperate surge of energy, she scrambled toward it just as the creature brought its fist down. The flaming appendage slammed into the spot where she had been, cracking the concrete and sending a shower of sparks into the air. Her fingers closed around the cold, brass nozzle. She twisted the spigot with a strength she didn't know she possessed.
A powerful, pressurized jet of water exploded from the hose, striking the flaming monkey square in the chest. It howled as steam billowed from its burning fur, the sound a horrific fusion of a sizzle and a scream. Riley held on, the hose bucking in her hands like a living thing, and methodically doused the creature from head to toe. The flames hissed and died, revealing scorched, blackened skin beneath, and the creature reeled, clearly in agony from the sudden thermal shock. It took a wavering, pained step towards her, its eyes burning with a hateful promise of retribution.
But before it could take another step, Riley acted. In her frantic scramble for the hose, one of her heels had come off. Now, it lay on the gravel beside her. She dropped the hose, snatched up the shoe, and surged forward. With a guttural scream torn from the very depths of her soul, she lunged, bringing the shoe up in a vicious, stabbing motion, driving the needle-sharp stiletto heel deep into the creature's eye.
A piercing, unearthly shriek tore through the air as blood, thick and black as tar, erupted from the ruined socket. The monkey thrashed wildly, clawing at its face. Riley, now barefoot, scrambled away, her breath coming in ragged, sobbing gasps. She spotted the bat, her bat, lying near the edge of the roof. She ran, her bare feet protesting against the sharp gravel, and scooped it up.
Turning, she faced the blinded, staggering monster and attacked.
"Aaaaaaaah!" she screamed, a raw, continuous sound of fury and terror, bringing the bat down on its head, its shoulders, its back, again and again and again. Her face was wet, a salty mixture of spraying water, sweat, and hot, angry tears. She didn't stop, couldn't stop, even when the creature's shrieks subsided into wet gurgles, even when its thrashing limbs grew still. She kept swinging until her arms burned and her muscles screamed in protest, until the only sound on the rooftop was the wet, percussive thud of wood on flesh and bone.
Finally, the rage subsided, leaving behind a hollow, trembling emptiness. The monkey was a still, broken heap on the rooftop. Riley stumbled backward, her legs shaking uncontrollably. The bat slipped from her numb fingers and fell to the ground with a soft thud. Her vision blurred through a film of tears. A single, choked sob escaped her lips. She raised a trembling arm and wiped her face on the sleeve of her blazer, smearing grime, water, and blood across the expensive fabric.
Sinking to her knees on the rough gravel, the last dregs of adrenaline drained out of Riley, leaving her feeling hollowed out and weightless, a fragile shell of a person. The baseball bat lay beside the pulpy, unrecognizable remains of the monkey, both looking equally alien under the bruised, red-lit sky. She ran a trembling hand through her disheveled hair, the expensive styling now a tangled mess of sweat and grime.
"What the actual hell is happening?" she whispered, her voice a raw, broken thing that barely disturbed the howling wind.
As if in answer, a soft, melodic chime echoed directly inside her skull, a sound as clean and pure as a single drop of water falling into a still pool. It was startlingly intimate, bypassing her ears entirely.
A voice followed, cool and impersonal, like a synthesized narrator from a video game tutorial. [You have successfully slain a monster. Player qualification acquired.]
Riley flinched, her eyes darting around the empty rooftop. There was no one there.
[You have slain
The words formed not as sound, but as pure information downloaded directly into her consciousness.
[You have slain your first monster.
Before she could even begin to process the barrage of impossible messages, the air in front of her shimmered, coalescing like heat haze on a summer road. A simple, unassuming cardboard box, the kind one might receive from an online retailer, simply blinked into existence and hovered a few inches above the gravel.
Riley stared, then blinked, then stared again. "Oh, crap," she breathed, the sheer banality of the object somehow more shocking than the monster had been. "This is legit."
Of course, the apocalyptic sky, the rain of fire, and the horned, flaming primate that had tried to tear her throat out had already provided ample evidence that her reality had taken a sharp, screaming left turn into the bizarre. But this? This was different. A game? Players? Beginner's Package? It superimposed a layer of absurd, structured rules over the terrifying chaos, and she didn't know whether to feel relieved or even more terrified. A wave of weary helplessness washed over her, but beneath it, a stubborn, angry spark of a will to survive flickered to life. With a groan, she crawled forward and, with hands that still shook, tore open the floating cardboard box.
Inside, nestled on a bed of what looked like packing peanuts made of solidified light, lay two items. One was a small, practical-looking dagger with a simple black hilt and a wicked, double-edged blade that seemed to drink the ambient red light. The other was a crystalline stone, a perfect twin to the one she'd retrieved from the golden chest, its countless facets glittering with a soft, internal glow.
The moment her fingers brushed against it, the serene, synthesized voice returned. [You have received a
Skill? Hidden deep within me? The phrase was pure fantasy nonsense. What skills did she have? Advanced spreadsheet manipulation? The ability to make the perfect cup of lukewarm office coffee? The whole thing was ludicrous. But at this point, questioning the mechanics of her new, insane reality felt like a waste of rapidly dwindling energy. She was too tired, too sore, too profoundly bone-weary to argue.
Clutching the cool, smooth stone in her palm, she closed her eyes and focused, repeating the command in her mind like a mantra. Use it. Use it. Use it.
The stone in her hand flared with a brilliant white light, so intense she could see it through her closed eyelids. It grew warm, then hot, then dissolved into a thousand tiny motes of light that flowed like a river of fireflies, phasing painlessly through her skin and sinking deep into her chest. Her eyes flew open in astonishment as a strange, tingling warmth spread through her veins, a feeling like champagne bubbles and electricity.
And then, the voice, now tinged with something that almost sounded like surprise.
[You have awakened your S-Grade hidden skill:
Safe Zone?
Riley drew in a shaky breath, the name echoing in the new, silent space of her mind. Okay. She had no idea what it truly meant in this terrifying new context, but it sounded good. It sounded like something she desperately needed. It sounded like the opposite of a flaming, horned monkey trying to claw her face off.
As if her very thought was a query prompt, a torrent of raw information flooded her brain. It wasn't a voice this time, but a sudden, overwhelming download of data that made her gasp and clutch her head, her knuckles white. It wasn't painful, not in the physical sense, but it was profoundly disorienting, like having an entire encyclopedia forcibly shoved into her subconscious in the span of a single heartbeat.
When the dizzying sensation faded, something new remained. A persistent, internal interface, hovering at the edge of her consciousness like the ghost of a computer monitor she'd stared at for too long. On it, in crisp, minimalist text, was a description:
[Skill:
Grade: S
Description: Creates a designated area of absolute safety around the user. Monsters and other players are incapable of entering the zone.]
That was it? Riley's brow furrowed in a flicker of genuine disappointment. She'd expected something more… bombastic. More detailed. She rarely played video games, but she'd absorbed enough through cultural osmosis to know that an "S-Grade" skill was supposed to be the stuff of legends. Rare, powerful, game-breaking. This felt less like a legendary power and more like a glorified, invisible panic room.
Still, a panic room was better than nothing. Much better.
Come to think of it… her thoughts snagged on a memory from just moments before the fight. She did have another one of those stones, didn't she? The one from the golden chest.
A frantic surge of hope, sharp and painful, lanced through her exhaustion. Her hands, slick with a mixture of sweat and gore, fumbled at the pocket of her torn blazer. Her fingers closed around the second crystal. It felt cool and solid in her palm, a small, tangible piece of potential in a world that had suddenly become intangible and insane. She didn't hesitate. Closing her eyes, she focused every remaining ounce of her willpower on the object. Use it.
The exact same phenomenon occurred. The stone in her grasp erupted in a silent nova of brilliant white light, then dissolved into a swirling galaxy of luminous particles that streamed into her chest, merging with the lingering warmth of the first.
The dispassionate voice chimed in her mind once more.
[You have consumed a second
[Scanning for latent skills within the player…]
A flicker of anticipation sparked within her. Maybe this time she'd get something offensive. A fireball. Lightning bolts. Something to make sure she never had to bludgeon a monster to death with a piece of sporting equipment and a high-heeled shoe ever again.
[Player does not meet the conditions to unlock a new skill.]
Her brief hope deflated with a weary sigh. Of course. It couldn't be that easy.
[Proceeding to enhance an existing skill.]
Wait. Her eyes snapped open.
[Target skill
[You have awakened your SSS-Grade hidden skill:
Riley took a deep, shuddering breath, the air still thick with the coppery tang of blood and ozone. So, no new skill. Instead, an upgrade. An absurd, exponential leap from S to SSS. A part of her mind, the part that was still a data-entry clerk from a dead world, tried to parse the logic and failed spectacularly. Who was grading these things? What was the rubric?
And SSS? Three S's. It sounded less like a tier of cosmic power and more like a brand name for a ridiculously expensive steak. But still. A dizzying, hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat. The fuck!? That has to be the highest grade, right? Right? It has to be!
Just as the manic euphoria began to set in, a sound cut through the wind, slicing through the air from somewhere far across the ruined city.
It was not the sound of any bird she had ever known. It was a jagged, metallic shriek that scraped against the sky, a sound of territorial rage, of vast and hungry things claiming their new dominion. It was piercing and full of a predatory promise that made the growls of the now-pulverized monkey seem like a child's tantrum in comparison.
Riley's saliva turned to dust in her mouth. She scrambled to her feet, her bare soles protesting the sharp gravel, her legs trembling with a fresh wave of fear that was entirely different from the frantic terror she'd felt before. This was a deeper, more primal dread, the fear of a mouse hearing an eagle's cry. Her eyes found the baseball bat, lying stained and forgotten. She snatched it up, her grip so tight her knuckles were white against the abused wood.
Yes, she still wanted to live. Just because her life had been a slow, gray death by spreadsheet, a numb march toward a meaningless retirement, didn't mean she was ready to roll over and die for real. In the face of actual, violent oblivion, the petty miseries of her former existence seemed like a ridiculous luxury. Here, now, holding a bloody bat on a rooftop under a bleeding sky, she had never felt more horribly, brilliantly alive.
Her gaze snapped to the stairwell door, a dark rectangle promising a treacherous descent. It was a long way down. But it led, eventually, to the street. And the street led home.
Time to go home.