The computer's fan whirred like a distant swarm of bees, a noise Arin had long ago tuned out. It blended with the patter of rain on the fire escape outside his window, two sounds that might have lulled him to sleep on a better night. But not this one. Not with the raid boss's health bar ticking down on his screen, red and stubborn, refusing to shatter no matter how many combos he chained.
He slouched in the desk chair, the kind with cracked vinyl that stuck to the backs of his thighs in summer. Empty energy drink cans lined the edge of the desk like sentinels, their aluminum sides dented from absentminded squeezes. The apartment smelled of stale takeout and the faint, metallic tang of overheating circuits. Arin's reflection ghosted in the monitor's glow: dark circles under his eyes, stubble creeping past three days, hair matted from too many hours without a break. Twenty-seven, and he looked like he'd been dragged through a war zone.
In Elaris Online, though, he was someone else. Level 85 Bladeweaver, cloak embroidered with threads of enchanted silk that caught the pixelated wind just right. His character—Kael, he called him—leapt across crumbling stone bridges in the Shattered Spires, sword a blur of cold steel. The final quest prompt hovered in the corner of the HUD: The Phoenix Awakens. Accept it, and the expansion ended. Walk away, and... what? Log off to the empty fridge and the stack of unpaid bills on the counter?
He clicked accept. Kael's voiceover—Arin's choice, a gravelly baritone from some voice actor he'd never bothered to look up—rumbled through the headphones: "One last dance with the flames."
Arin leaned back, a half-smile cracking his lips. "Yeah. One last."
The clock on his taskbar read 2:47 a.m. The city beyond the rain-streaked glass had gone quiet, save for the occasional siren wailing down Broadway. His parents' accident had been on a night like this—wet roads, poor visibility, a truck that didn't stop. That was five years back. The insurance payout had covered the rent for a while, but it couldn't fill the hole. Nothing could. Friends drifted, calls went unanswered. Elaris filled the gaps: quests that had clear endings, loot that meant progress, a world where loss was just a respawn timer.
He mashed keys, guiding Kael through a gauntlet of shadow wraiths. The boss loomed at the end of the chamber, a colossal bird of ash and ember, wings spanning the screen. Arin's fingers flew—dodge, parry, flame slash. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The health bar dipped to 10%. 5%. Victory chime primed.
Then the screen stuttered. A glitch? No, the frame rate plummeted, colors bleeding into static. "Connection lost," flashed in blocky red letters. Arin cursed under his breath, tabbing out to check his router. But the monitor didn't go dark. It pulsed—once, twice—like a heartbeat under glass. A white light bloomed from the center, not harsh like a bulb blowing, but soft, insistent, spilling over the desk and washing the cans silver.
He froze, hand halfway to the power cord. The whirring fan pitched higher, vibrating through the wood of the desk, up his arms. The air thickened, charged, like the moment before a storm breaks indoors. Arin's chair creaked as he pushed back, but the light latched on—tendrils of it curling toward him, warm against his skin. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, squinting into the glare. "What the—"
The room unraveled. Not with a bang, but a sigh: edges softening, walls folding like wet paper. The rain's whisper cut off mid-note. His stomach lurched, weightless, and then—
Warmth seeped into him, bone-deep, like sinking into fresh sheets after a fever breaks. No hum of fans, no damp chill from the window. Just this: steady, even, like sunlight filtered through leaves.
Arin cracked his eyes open. The ceiling arched above him, veined with crystal that caught some unseen light and threw it back in shifting blues and golds, like oil on water. He lay on a platform that gave under his weight—not soft, not hard, but alive, pulsing faintly with his breaths. His shirt clung damp to his chest, the one he'd thrown on that morning, now rumpled and out of place in... wherever this was.
A low chime echoed, mechanical but not cold, like gears whispering secrets. Words materialized in the air before him, woven from motes of light that hung and dissolved as he read:
[System Online]
Welcome, Player 016.
Initializing World: Elaris.
The name landed like a stone in still water. Elaris. His game. The one he'd poured three thousand hours into, grinding levels in the dead of night. Heart thudding against his ribs, he pushed up on his elbows. His hands—real hands, callused from keyboard marathons—trembled as he flexed them. No controller, no screen. Just skin and bone, and on the inside of his left wrist, a mark: a phoenix etched in faint red lines, wings curled as if mid-beat, the ink—or whatever it was—throbbing in time with his pulse.
"This isn't happening," he said, voice rough, scraping out like it hadn't been used in hours. He pinched his arm, hard enough to bruise. The pain bloomed sharp and immediate. Real.
The words shifted, unbidden:
Please proceed to the orientation portal when ready.
No voice this time, but the instruction echoed in his skull, clear as a headset feed, laced with a synthetic patience that set his teeth on edge. Orientation? Like some corporate onboarding? He scanned the room: seamless walls of that same crystalline material, floor cool under his socks (socks—he was still in socks, for Christ's sake). No door, no exit. Just a faint circle etched into the far wall, edges glowing like embers under ash.
Arin swung his legs over the platform's edge, feet touching down on something that felt like polished stone warmed by hidden coils. He stood, knees wobbling for a second, then steadier. The circle brightened as he approached, spilling light across the floor in a fan that warmed his shins. Up close, it hummed—a low vibration he felt in his fillings.
He reached out, fingers hovering. Back home, this would be a loading screen, a cutscene. Here? His skin prickled, the air thickening again. Screw it. He pressed his palm flat against the glow.
The world inverted. No drop, no spin—just a hush, like stepping through a curtain of heavy velvet. The room winked out.
Wind hit him like a slap, raw and salt-edged, whipping his hair across his eyes. The scent crashed in next: wet earth and pine, undercut with something sharper, like blood on steel. Arin staggered, boots—wait, boots?—sinking into loamy soil at the lip of a drop-off. He clawed for balance, fingers digging into spongy moss.
Below stretched a valley that swallowed breath. Rivers snaked through it, glowing faint blue, threading between stands of trees whose bark gleamed silver in the half-light. Higher up, chunks of earth hung suspended, islands adrift on nothing, their roots trailing like veins, undersides flickering with veins of orange fire. The sky above churned, not with clouds but layers of haze, violet and gold, as if the whole damn place was lit from within.
The voice returned, threading through the gale—not in his head this time, but woven into the wind, almost companionable, like an old raid buddy calling out a strat.
"Welcome to Elaris," it said. "Your story starts now."
Arin wiped rain—or was it mist?—from his face, tunic (tunic? He glanced down: simple linen, belted at the waist, boots laced to his knees. Kael's gear, translated to flesh and thread) plastered to his skin. He took a step forward, gravel crunching underfoot. The edge crumbled a little, pebbles tumbling into the void with faint, fading clatters.
For the first time since the light had swallowed his apartment, since the cans and the bills and the endless scroll of unread texts, something uncoiled in his gut. Not terror, exactly—though his pulse hammered like a war drum. Not wonder, either, though the view clawed at the edges of his vision, too vast to take in.
Just a spark. Small, untested. The kind that said, maybe this wasn't the end of anything. Maybe it was the start of something he hadn't mapped out yet.
He straightened, hand drifting to the sword at his hip—real weight, real hilt, leather grip worn smooth. The phoenix on his wrist flared once, warm as a coal.
"Alright," he muttered to the wind. "Let's see what you've got."