Chapter 1: The First Login
The world ended on a Tuesday.
Nobody noticed until Thursday.
That was how quiet it was. No mushroom clouds. No zombie hordes. No alien invasion fleets blotting out the sun. Just a slow, methodical unraveling that started somewhere deep in the global networks and spread outward like frost on glass.
By Wednesday morning, the stock markets had frozen. Banks stopped answering phones. Satellites began drifting off station. Power grids flickered in rolling brownouts that grew longer each cycle. People still went to work, still posted memes, still argued about politics on dying forums. Denial is a powerful drug.
Thursday brought the sky.
It changed color gradually, the way milk curdles. Blue leeched away until everything above looked like the static of an old television left on a dead channel. Planes fell out of that gray haze. Not many. Just enough for the videos to go viral before the networks collapsed entirely. Phones went dark one carrier at a time. Emergency broadcasts looped the same useless advice: stay indoors, conserve water, await further instructions.
Instructions never came.
I know all this because I was awake through most of it. Night shift at a 24-hour convenience store on the edge of a dying suburb. The kind of place truckers and insomniacs and teenagers with fake IDs drifted through between midnight and dawn. My name is Kael. Twenty-three. No degree. No girlfriend. No savings beyond the rigged-together gaming PC I had spent three years building part by part, paycheck by paycheck.
That rig was my pride. Mid-tower case with tempered glass side panel. RGB fans synced to music. A 34-inch ultrawide curved monitor that made games feel like windows into other worlds. I had just finished installing a new GPU the week before everything went wrong. Top of the line. Liquid cooled. The kind of card that made reviewers weep.
When the power started failing, I panicked about the rig first. Hooked it to a UPS battery, then to the old car battery in my trunk with jumper cables and prayers. It kept running long after the store lights died and the freezer alarms stopped screaming.
The last customer came in around 3 a.m. Thursday. Old guy named Mr. Harlan who bought the same two scratch-offs and black coffee every night. He looked at the gray sky through the front windows and said, "Looks like snow that forgot how to fall."
Then he left, and nobody else came.
I locked the doors at dawn, pulled the security gate, and went home to my one-bedroom apartment above a laundromat that no longer spun. The streets were empty. A dog barked somewhere far away. Sirens had stopped days ago.
Inside, I ate the last protein bar, drank tap water that still ran cold, and sat in front of the rig. The monitor glowed like a hearth in the dark room. Internet was gone, but local files still worked. I loaded up an old single-player RPG. Something to do with my hands while the world finished dying.
The game ran for maybe ten minutes. Then every light in the apartment flickered once, hard, and the screen went black.
I swore. Checked cables. Hit the power button. Nothing.
Then the monitor woke on its own.
Not the game. Not Windows.
Just a simple black window with white text:
SYSTEM ONLINE
Welcome, Player.
Do you wish to begin?
[Y/N]
No logo. No publisher splash screens. No music. The text hovered there, cursor blinking patiently.
I stared for a long minute.
Outside, something large crashed in the distance. Metal tearing. Glass shattering. Then silence again.
I moved the mouse. The arrow appeared. I clicked Y.
The screen flashed white.
Not the soft white of loading screens. Not the gentle fade of cutscenes. This was harsh, surgical white. The kind that bleaches color from your eyes and drills straight into your brain. I flinched, hands flying up, but the light was already inside me somehow, pouring through my retinas and flooding every thought.
It lasted seconds or hours. Time lost meaning.
Then it stopped.
I was standing in grass.
Real grass. Cool blades between my bare toes. Damp earth smelling of recent rain. A breeze carried pine and something sharper, metallic, like the air after lightning. The sky above was flawless sapphire, cloudless, deeper than any blue I remembered from Earth. In the distance, mountains rose jagged and white-capped, their peaks catching sunlight that felt warm on my skin.
I looked down at myself.
My body was still mine, but refined. The slight gut from too many energy drinks and instant noodles was gone. Arms showed definition I had never earned. Skin clear, unmarked. I wore simple linen pants the color of wet sand and a sleeveless tunic in storm-cloud gray. No shoes. No watch. No phone in my pocket.
No HUD. No floating inventory. No minimap in the corner of my vision like every VR game I had ever played.
Just me, the meadow, and a single line of text shimmering in the air three feet away, translucent as heat haze:
Welcome to Aetheria, Kael.
Class selection will begin shortly.
Please wait warmly.
Wait warmly. The phrase felt like someone's private joke.
I reached out. My fingers passed through the letters without resistance. They rippled and re-formed.
A soft chime sounded behind me. Delicate, like glass wind bells.
I turned.
Ten meters away, a girl stood in identical starter clothes, staring at her hands as if seeing them for the first time. Short black hair, sharp features, maybe seventeen. Wide dark eyes flicked up to meet mine.
"You see this too, right?" she called. Her voice carried easily across the grass, trembling only slightly. "I'm not finally losing it from dehydration or radiation or whatever?"
"You're not," I said. My own voice surprised me. Deeper. Steadier. Like someone who had never spent years mumbling through customer service scripts.
She let out a breath that was half laugh, half sob. "Good. Because my little brother kept begging Mom for closed-alpha access to some big new VR thing. Guess the universe delivered."
More chimes rang out, spreading across the meadow like ripples in a pond.
People began appearing.
Not spawning with particle effects. Just there, sudden but gentle, accompanied by pale flashes that faded instantly. A burly man with graying beard and confused scowl. A woman in her thirties clutching a toddler who stared at everything with solemn curiosity. An elderly man in pajamas, leaning on empty air where his cane should have been.
Hundreds became thousands. The meadow filled with humanity in starter linens, spreading outward in waves. No one screamed. No one ran. We were all too hollowed out by the end of everything to do more than stand and stare.
A final chime, deeper, resonated in my chest more than my ears.
The sky rippled like water disturbed by a stone.
A figure descended.
No wings. No halo. No dramatic thunderclap. Just a woman in flowing silver robes, barefoot, drifting down until her toes brushed the grass. Her hair moved as if underwater, strands catching light like fiber optics. Eyes the color of distant galaxies, swirling slowly. She looked thirty and three thousand at once. Beautiful the way glaciers are beautiful. Remote. Ancient. Untouchable.
She raised one pale hand.
Every murmur in the meadow died.
"Children of the lost world," she said.
Her voice was everywhere. Inside my ears. Inside my thoughts. Inside the bones of my skull.
"I am the System. I am the Arbiter. I am the last refuge."
She paused. The silence felt deliberate, giving weight to each word.
"Your world could no longer sustain you. Its time ended. You have been brought to Aetheria, a realm prepared across ages for this purpose. Here, you will live. Here, you will grow. Here, you may yet become what you were always meant to be."
A teenage boy near me, acne scars livid on pale cheeks, shouted, "What about going back? What about Earth?"
The System's galaxy eyes turned to him. The meadow held its breath.
"There is no back," she said, and her tone carried infinite gentleness wrapped around unbreakable certainty. "Only forward."
Then she smiled. Not warm, exactly. More like sunrise on mountaintops. Distant, but promising light.
"Class selection begins now."
The air shimmered in front of every person. Translucent panels unfolded silently, each tailored to its owner. Mine hung at eye level, crisp and waiting.
CLASS SELECTION
Select your path. One choice. No resets.
Six symbols floated below the text, pulsing softly.
A crossed sword and shield.
A crystal-topped staff.
Bow and arrow.
Twin curved daggers.
Open hand glowing gentle green.
Hooded figure with book and lantern.
Fighter. Mage. Ranger. Rogue. Healer. Scholar.
Safe. Familiar. Exactly what I expected.
Around me, people began choosing. Panels flashed and dissolved. Starter clothes shifted into leather armor, robes, cloaks. Weapons materialized. A man nearby laughed in disbelief as a massive two-handed axe appeared across his back. The girl with short black hair touched the bow symbol. A quiver of arrows settled at her hip, and she drew the string experimentally, eyes bright.
I hesitated.
The System watched from her place above the grass, expression serene.
I reached toward the sword and shield, then stopped.
"Is this really it?" I asked aloud. My voice carried farther than it should have. Heads turned. "Only six?"
A ripple of uneasy laughter spread. The acne-scarred boy snorted. "What, you holding out for a secret seventh class? It's the apocalypse, man, not a YouTube guide."
The System tilted her head. "All paths are valid. Choose freely."
But her eyes stayed on me.
I studied the panel again. Between the six symbols, almost invisible unless you knew to look, was something else. A faint circle of raw white light, no larger than a coin. No icon. No description.
I pointed. "What about that one?"
Gasps rose around me. Apparently most people could not see it.
The System's lips curved in the faintest smile.
"Interesting."
She descended fully, bare feet settling on the grass. The meadow quieted once more.
"That is the Null Path," she said, voice carrying effortlessly to every ear. "No class. No starting skills. No predetermined growth curve. You will gain strength only through deeds performed, choices made, and risks taken. The system will not guide you. It will only record what you become."
The teenage boy laughed outright. "So it's garbage. Instant hardcore mode with no perks. Why would anyone pick that?"
"Because," the System replied before I could, "some souls refuse to be sorted."
Her ancient eyes met mine directly.
"The Null Path is unforgiving. Many who walk it perish swiftly. But those who endure often reshape the world in ways the system itself cannot foresee."
I felt every stare. Pity. Amusement. Concern from the archer girl.
I thought about Earth.
About fluorescent lights and minimum wage. About saving for upgrades while glaciers calved on the news. About pressing Y on a mysterious prompt because there was literally nothing else left to do.
I had followed every prescribed path life offered and ended up watching the sky turn to static.
I reached out and touched the white circle.
The panel dissolved without fanfare. No burst of light. No new equipment. My clothes stayed plain linen.
Only a single line of text appeared, visible to me alone:
Null Path selected.
Growth type: Deed-based.
Starting title: Blank Slate.
The System nodded once. Approval or acknowledgment, I could not tell.
"Your journey begins without advantages," she said quietly, words meant for me even if others heard. "Prove you need none."
She raised both hands.
The meadow began to empty. People vanished in soft bursts of pale light, transported to starting villages, forests, dungeons. Wherever their chosen classes began. The archer girl gave me a small wave and mouthed something I could not catch before she disappeared.
Soon only scattered individuals remained. Those who had hesitated longest, or chosen strangest.
The System turned to ascend, then paused.
"One gift," she said to me alone. "A single question. Ask, and I will answer truly."
I did not hesitate.
"Why did the world end?"
Her galaxy eyes dimmed, colors slowing.
"Because it was asked to," she said, voice soft as falling ash. "And it obeyed."
Before I could press further, she was gone. The sky sealed seamlessly where she had been.
I stood alone in the vast meadow.
Barefoot. Unarmed. Unclassed.
Somewhere far off, a wolf howled. Long, mournful, curious.
I took a deep breath of pine-scented air, turned toward the sound, and started walking.
The Game had begun.
And I was playing it my way.
****
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