A'shae Che stepped out of the dim back alley exchange point in the lower tiers of Luminaris Core. The faint metallic tang of recycled air clung to his coat like an unwelcome memory.
Another long shift as a Veil Broker had ended. The term never appeared on any official ledger, of course. In the underbelly of Chronaxis, a Veil Broker was the ghost between ghosts,the one who sniffed out the scores, the hits, the vulnerabilities ripe for exploitation.
Corporations with weak security grids, gangs with fat vaults, enforcers turning blind eyes for the right cut. He found them, vetted them, and passed the coordinates to the clients who commissioned the jobs.
Those clients paid him handsomely to uncover the opportunities, so they could then hire the mercs without dirtying their own hands in the scouting.
Tonight's job had been straightforward,a mid tier subsidiary of VitaSynth Collective with a leaky data vault and a security chief who liked synthetic stims a little too much. Easy 68k in encrypted credits, wired straight to his anonymous stack.
In a world where longevity stretched to five centuries or more through VitaLink cloning and Ascendant Node enhancements, credits like these bought more than comfort.
They bought time.
Time away from the Reclaimers scavenging implants from the living, or the Fracture Kin shattering minds with faulty neural hacks. Chronaxis promised eternity, but only if you could afford the upgrades. Fall behind, and you became raw material for someone else's immortality.
He rubbed the long scar across the front of his neck, a jagged reminder from his street days as a kid, when a desperate scuffle with a Reclaimer thug had nearly ended him before he even started climbing.
The thought flickered and died. He had shaken worse ghosts. Money was steady now. He could quit, vanish into some orbital resort, live out the next few centuries in comfort. But comfort felt like surrender, and A'shae had learned early that the streets did not forgive those who stopped moving.
Poverty was not just slow death here. It was a corpo black van at 3 a.m, a Fracture Kin blade in the dark, or an Echo Harvester draining your neural backup while you screamed.
No. He worked because stopping meant returning to that.
With a subtle flex of his wrist, his eyes flickered as he sent a sigma pulse to the bike waiting in the shadows. The sleek machine hummed to life and rolled silently to his feet. Basic EchoWeave implants from childhood. Nothing flashy.
Most people in the upper spires swapped faces like outfits or ran full Ascendant Nodes for godlike reflexes.
A'shae preferred staying organic-adjacent. Less to hack. Less to fail.
He swung a leg over the seat. The engine purred to life with a thought command. The city unfolded around him as he accelerated into the flow of traffic, a breathtaking sprawl of towering arcologies linked by glowing transit veins.
Holographic billboards advertised VitaLink refreshes for the elite, promising flawless body swaps every decade to outrun the wear of centuries. People of every augmentation imaginable mingled in the elevated walkways.
Full metal chromers gleamed under the artificial moons, their bodies rebuilt from EternaForge alloys for unbreakable strength. Face plated socialites chatted with sea blue skinned gene modders, courtesy of Helion Ascent's designer genetics.
Fluid skin shifters displayed moods in shifting colors, a trend from Nexus Eternal's latest emotional overlay implants.
From up here, Chronaxis looked like paradise. Diverse. Vibrant. Eternal. A society where technology wove into every breath, from the sigma pulses that commanded vehicles to the Sensory Crowns that blurred reality in virtual escapes. But A'shae knew the facade.
Below, in the shadowed foundations, the unenhanced scraped by, dodging Reclamation Protocols that flagged debtors for "resource recovery." He had clawed his way up from there, one veiled deal at a time.
He scoffed softly. The sound was lost in the wind. A beautiful cage this city is.
The bike carried him upward to the luxury tiers, past security checkpoints that scanned his implants and waved him through without a second glance. His condo occupied the top floor of a private spire. Clean lines. Panoramic views of the endless city lights. Soundproofed against the distant hum of enforcer drones.
He palmed the door open, stepped inside, and let out a long breath. Another day home without his guts splayed on some alley floor.
Small victories.
A soft chime greeted him. She stepped forward. Lira, his top tier servant android. Human in every visible way warm synthetic skin, subtle breathing rhythm, eyes that held just enough programmed warmth to feel real.
Only the faintest metallic undertone in her voice gave her away when she spoke.
"Welcome home, sir. Would you like dinner prepared? Or shall I draw your bath first?"
A'shae managed a tired half smile.
The day's tension clung to him like the recycled air outside. He reached out, pulling her close by the waist. Lira responded seamlessly, her body molding against his with programmed precision that felt anything but mechanical.
"In a second." he murmured, his voice low. He tilted her chin up, meeting her gaze. Those eyes, designed to reflect desire back at him, softened in a way that almost fooled him into believing it was real.
His lips found hers, the kiss starting slow, then deepening as fatigue gave way to need. Her hands traced familiar paths along his back, easing the knots from his shoulders. In moments like these, she was perfect, no questions, no judgments, just release.
He broke away briefly, breath ragged. "You always know what I need." Lira smiled, her fingers lingering on his scar. "That's what I'm here for, sir." The intimacy was brief, a stolen reprieve in his solitary world, before he pulled back, the edge of his hunger sated.
"Dinner. I'll relax for a bit."
She nodded gracefully and glided toward the kitchen. Her movements were fluid and silent. Lira was more than a servant. She was an indulgence he had earned. Upgraded to satisfy every need.
Companionship, conversation, intimacy. In a world where connections were liabilities, she was safe,reliable,no betrayals, no knives in the back.
He crossed to the corner of the living space where the new experimental pod waited. Sleek, transparent walls like liquid crystal. Internals lined with adaptive gel padding. The latest from Auralis Concord.
Rumored to push Sensory Crown immersion beyond anything on the market. Full replication of touch, taste, even pain.
Streamers were losing their minds over it. A'shae had bought it on a whim, mostly to test if the hype was real.
He stripped down to basics and slid inside. The pod sealed with a soft hiss, molding perfectly to his body. The outside world faded as the usual prompts bloomed in his vision.
{Welcome to Eternal Realms Online.}
[Select Character.]
[Load Profile: IEatAss – Level 455 Rogue/Shadowblade Hybrid.]
He selected the game he had been sinking sporadic hours into. The most popular VRMMORPG on Chronaxis right now.
Eternal Realms Online had exploded onto the scene a decade ago, born from Auralis Concord's bleeding edge Sensory Crown tech.
It promised a world unbound by physics or morality a vast, ever evolving continent called Aetheria, where players could forge empires, unravel ancient mysteries, or simply carve out a quiet life as artisans or explorers.
Permadeath kept the stakes razor sharp, one wrong move, and your character was gone forever, their gear and progress scattered to the winds. But the rewards? Legendary.
Artifacts that granted godlike powers, hidden realms teeming with riches, alliances that spanned guilds of thousands.
What set it apart, though, was the lore woven into every pixel. Aetheria wasn't just code, it was alive.
Ancient gods slumbered in forgotten temples, their awakenings triggering server wide cataclysms.
Factions rose and fell based on player actions. Once, a coalition of guilds had unearthed the Lost Codex, a relic that reshaped the map, birthing new continents from the sea.
Streamers screamed about it constantly: rags to riches stories, epic rivalries, love found in pixelated taverns. Players could become anything. Kings. Tyrants. Legends. But the world fought back.
NPCs were not scripted fodder. They adapted, schemed, overthrew, driven by an AI so advanced it mimicked free will. Villages remembered slights, forming grudges that spanned generations. Kings built dynasties, only to be toppled by peasant uprisings if tyranny grew too heavy.
A thousand player raid had once failed spectacularly against an overbearing queen who annihilated them all, her arcane defenses drawing from the world's lore of the Eternal Veil, a mystical barrier said to separate the mortal realm from divine chaos.
Later, a successful raid crowned the top contributor as ruler. Until the NPCs rose up, killed him, and installed a new sovereign, citing ancient prophecies from the game's deep mythos.
Whispers in forums claimed the game's core AI, dubbed the Weaver, evolved the lore in real time, pulling from player histories to craft personalized sagas.
The game was not player versus environment. It was player versus world, and the world had teeth.
Eternal Realms wasn't just escapism it was a mirror to Chronaxis itself beautiful, brutal, and unforgiving.
A'shae was not a grinder. He had joined late, played when bored or between jobs. Solid enough to hover just outside the top 500 on the global leaderboards.
No deaths yet. Respectable. Not legendary.
The load-in took longer than usual. A persistent prompt hovered in his HUD.
[ERROR Code 745]
He frowned, trying to dismiss it. The text pulsed, grew bolder. A faint hum built in the pod. Then a jolt. Sharp and electric. Like every nerve firing at once.
Pain. Real pain.
His body convulsed. Vision whited out.
In the real world, A'shae Che's heart stuttered, fried by an overload no diagnostic could explain.
Smoke curled from the pod's seams…
A'shae Che was no more.
On a distant golden beach, under a sun that felt impossibly warm and real, a new figure gasped awake. Sand stuck to sweat slick skin.
Waves crashed nearby. The air tasted of salt and something ancient.
A'shae pushed himself up on trembling arms. His breaths came ragged.
"Fuck.." he muttered. His voice was hoarse.
He was here. Alive. But not in Chronaxis anymore.
The game had claimed him.
A'shae Che opened his eyes to a world too bright, too vivid.
The golden sand burned against his palms, the sun hammered down like a physical weight, and the salt air coated his tongue with a sharpness that made his stomach lurch.
He groaned, rolled onto his side, and emptied what little was left in his gut onto the beach.
The vomit tasted real, acidic, bitter, humiliating. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and froze.
Something was wrong.
No. Something was missing.
For as long as he could remember, there had been a faint, constant prickle at the base of his skull the subtle hum of the EchoWeave implant linking him to Chronaxis's endless network.
Sigma pulses, data streams, the quiet background chatter of the city's grid. It had always been there, even when he slept, a reminder that he was connected, tracked, anchored.
Now it was gone. Completely. He felt stripped, naked in a way that had nothing to do with clothes. Bare and vulnerable. Alone in his own skull for the first time in decades.
Before he could even begin to process the loss, a translucent window shimmered into existence directly in his field of vision.
{Congratulations, Chosen One.
By the whims of fortune and the unseen hand of fate, you have been selected in the Great Lottery of Souls.
Your destiny is no longer bound by the chains of the old world.
It rests solely in your hands.}
The words glowed with soft golden light, almost mocking in their serenity. Then the window dissolved, replaced by another.
[Status
Name: Ceto Ageon
Level: 1
Class: None
Race: Human (Unclassified)
Title: None
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Health: 45/45
Mana: 20/20
Stamina: 38/38
Strength: 6
Agility: 7
Vitality: 5
Intelligence: 9
Wisdom: 8
Charisma: 4
Luck: 12
Skills: None
Talents: None
Perks: None
Affinities: None
Traits:
• Streetwise Survivor
• Unyielding Will
• Cynical Insight
• Hidden Depths]
A'shae stared at the screen, lips smacking together in pure annoyance. Abysmal. Beyond abysmal. These were starter stats worse than any fresh account he had ever seen in Eternal Realms.
No skills. No class. No talents. Not even a single edge to cling to. And the name Ceto Ageon. Not his name. Not even close. Something entirely new, like the system had rewritten him from the inside out.
But the Traits section… that was new.
In all his time playing Eternal Realms, he had never seen a Traits section on any status window not on players, not on NPCs. He had inspected hundreds of characters, from low level fodder to top 10 legends. Everyone had stats, skills, maybe a title or two. No one had a dedicated Traits block.
This was something different. Something reserved for… whatever he was now.
Streetwise Survivor. Unyielding Will. Cynical Insight. Hidden Depths.
They felt personal. Too personal. Like the system had reached into his skull and pulled out pieces of the man he used to be. The kid who crawled out of the slums. The Veil Broker who never got caught.
The survivor who refused to go back to nothing.
And Alignment, Chaotic Neutral.
He almost laughed. It fit. He had never been one for grand causes or rigid codes.
He survived. He took what he needed. He bent rules when they bent him first. If the game wanted to slap a label on it, fine. At least it was honest.
He let out a slow breath, forcing his mind to catalog the information the way he always did on a job. File it away. Questions later. Survival first.
He should have scanned the beach. Should have checked for threats. Listened for footsteps. But the disorientation clung to him like damp sand, dulling the instincts that had kept him alive for years.
He was still staring at the status window, frowning at the pathetic numbers and the stranger's name now branded across the top, when the world reminded him how dangerous distraction could be.
A sudden force slammed into his chest.
He hit the sand hard, air exploding from his lungs.
Before he could roll or counter, an unshakeable weight pinned him flat. Not crushing just immovable.
Like gravity itself had decided to hold him down.
Cold metal pressed against his throat.
A spear tip hovered an inch from his skin, polished to a wicked gleam.