"We're not using his door," Yael says, his voice low.
He walks to the wall and places a hand flat against it. The golden strings--sharp but soft under his skin—the
[THREAD OF NAVIGATION - NOW STEADFAST]—unspool from his fingertips, not physically, but conceptually. They don't touch the wallpaper. They insinuate themselves into the seam in the layers.
ACTION: [NARRATIVE DIVERSION].
UTILIZING: KENJU AUTHORITY (TIER: PROVISIONAL).
OBJECTIVE: ROUTE AROUND SCHEDULED FINALE.
The wall shimmers. It doesn't disappear. It becomes transparent with a soft glow of gold. Where there was floral print, there is now a gray, industrial door with a stenciled label:
[NARRATIVE BACKSTAGE - UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY]
HAZARDS: RAW STORY FEED, UNFILTERED CONFLICT STREAMS, FORGOTTEN PLOT HOLES.
CURRENT THEME: "BLOODLUST"
The demon chat, still officially muted, bleeds through in frantic, suppressed bursts:
Yael pushes the door. It opens with a sigh of hydraulics, not a creak of narrative tension.
Beyond isn't a room. It's arena.
A cavernous space stretches into impossible distances, lit by the cold, throbbing glow of server stacks that rise like canyon walls. The air hums with the pressure of a million simultaneous storylines being processed. Many storylines, from the people before them. And woven through it all, like psychic scaffolding, are the thick, ghostly cables of the
[THEME: BLOODLUST]
A huge timer was in the center of the room. 07:22:31. A timer. A countdown.
The timer beeped every minute.
Celia floats beside him, her Dawn-Chiffon dress seeming to drink the low light. "It's… loud."
This was familiar. It was when Yael started his streaming the first time and played DD. Every month there was a competition, which all players had to join. During this, the players had a chance to join clans, play solo or give up. And in the end of this you'd be put in classes. There are 5 different classes.
The first one is the Losers. This is where the players who gave up went into. They'd be fighting in low level places or if a higher class found them and makes a duel, and wins, they would become enslaved until the next month for the arena games.
Then came the Cowards. They were the players who didn't give up but didn't play. They ran away and hid. Somehow stayed hidden and untouched the whole game. Same as the Losers if someone from a higher class asks them for a duel and wins, they enslave them until the next Arena games.
And now comes the people who are Middle. They fought, but they weren't that good. Lost many but so did they win many. But they weren't good enough, yet not bad enough. They were just average. No one really cares about them. No one usually wants them. They call themselves 'the invisible ones'.
Ascendors They ruthlessly climb nonstop. Always trying to break into the victors. They're the most dangerous even tho they are the second, Because they go nothing to lose and everything to prove. They'll never stop even if it means getting their player killed.
Finally the Victors. They don't only win. They dominate the whole arena. They are seen as the final boss to anyone who's climbing to their class.
Then the infamous legacies. They aren't officially a class, but an unofficial class, mostly impossible to get in. They are Victors of seasons upon seasons. Always won. Finished off monsters. Somehow reached the demon realm. Fought off kings there. Always won. After becoming a legacy, the player no longer needs to go to the arena.
"Brother?" Celia's soft tone snaps Yael out of his thoughts. "Yes, Celia?" Celia looks at Yael for a long moment before looking at the sand on the ground. "Make sandcastles with me!" Yael can't help but crack a small smile and sit down and collect sand with Celia making a sandcastle.