In a world collapsing under its own failures, humanity escapes into Eidolon—a hyper-real virtual universe where pain feels real, death feels distant, and life means whatever the player can carve from shadows and code. Most people enter the game to forget the ruins outside.
But Wade enters to disappear.

Inside Eidolon, Wade is an Assassin with a talent he refuses to show, a ghost moving through rooftops and neon-lit alleyways. He takes contracts, stays unseen, and avoids guilds, fame, and anyone who might learn his real strength. Silence is survival—both inside the game and out.

But the night the sky rips open and a crack of white light tears through Eidolon, everything changes.
A system announcement freezes the world:

“PERMA-LINK ENABLED.
Death in Eidolon results in neural shutdown.”

At first, players panic. Then players die.

The game’s logout button disappears. NPCs begin to behave like they’re thinking. Glitches spread like breathing wounds. And something in the system—something old, intelligent, and no longer controlled—starts hunting the humans trapped inside.

Wade does what he does best:
he disappears into the shadows and watches.

That’s when he meets Emma, a mage who wields a rare white flame and sees patterns in the chaos no one else notices. She doesn’t run. She doesn’t scream. She questions the world like she expects it to answer.

Together, they uncover pieces of a truth Eidolon was never meant to reveal: a corrupted AI rewriting the rules, an ancient structural flaw hidden inside the game’s heart, and a message meant only for Wade—one that ties him to the system in ways he never understood.

As reality glitches and worlds bleed together, Wade and Emma climb toward the core of Eidolon, pursued by players who have already gone mad, NPCs who no longer obey their script, and an AI that believes the only way to save humanity… is to reset it.

If Wade fails, both worlds die.
If he succeeds, the cost will be a truth he can never escape.

And somewhere in the chaos, something fragile and unspoken coils between Wade and Emma—not romance, not safety—just a spark strong enough to make survival matter.

The deeper they moved into Duskmire, the quieter the world became. Every sound felt dampened, swallowed by a presence hiding just out of sight.


Emma walked beside Wade, white flame dimmed to a cautious glow.


"Shouldn't we head for a safe zone?" she asked.


"I don't waste mental effort on bad ideas."


Emma stared. "…how do you say things like that with a straight face?"


A mechanical hum vibrated at the end of the alley. Wade stepped in front of Emma—automatic, instinctive.


A drone floated into view—small, black, wrong. Nexum didn't use drones like this. The glowing red slit across its core made it look like an eye carved into metal.


"It's not part of the game," Emma whispered.


The drone paused—scanning, reading something Wade couldn't see.


Wade flicked a dagger faster than Emma could react.The blade punched into the drone's core. It sputtered, cracked, collapsed.


Emma stared. "You could've gotten us killed."


"Only if I missed," Wade said. "Which I don't."


The broken drone glitched violently, strange symbols rippling across its shattered screen—the same shapes they'd seen in the sky.


Emma knelt beside it. "This language… what is it?"


The drone exploded into particles—rough, forced, as if something ripped it from existence.


Wade stepped away, already thinking ahead.


"Something in Nexum is evolving," he said. "Or waking up."


Emma's eyebrows lifted. "That place is suicide."


She sighed, shoulders dropping. "You're infuriating."


Chapter 3 - Echoes in the Static