The Day the World Stopped Being Real
The notification appeared while Ethan was brushing his teeth.
At first, he thought it was one of those prank overlays, some AR nonsense someone had pushed out overnight. The kind that flooded social media for a week before getting shut down.
But the message didn't disappear when he blinked, or when he leaned closer to the mirror, or when he reached out and tapped it with a toothbrush still hanging from his mouth.
WORLD INTEGRATION COMPLETE SYNCING USER DATA…
The letters floated in midair, pale blue and perfectly sharp, hovering just above his sink.
Ethan slowly spat toothpaste into the basin "…Nope." He turned off the tap, wiped his mouth, and stepped backward. The message followed him. Not physically, just… stayed. Anchored to his vision, like it had always belonged there. His phone buzzed violently on the counter.
Then again.
Then again.
A chorus of notification sounds erupted from the apartment next door, followed by a loud crash and someone yelling, "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?"
Ethan's heart started beating faster.
The blue text updated.
ASSIGNING CLASS…
A pressure settled behind his eyes. Not pain, more like the feeling of holding your breath for too long.
Images flickered across his vision. Swords. Fire. Numbers. Endless menus scrolling faster than he could read.
Then...
Nothing.
The pressure vanished.
The words changed.
ERROR, CLASS ASSIGNMENT FAILED
Ethan frowned.
Failed?
Before he could react, a second window opened. Smaller. Stark. Uncomfortably empty.
STATUS
Name: Ethan Cole
Age: 21
Level: 0
Class: -
Progression: LOCKED
That was it.
No stats. No skills. No helpful tooltips.
Just… zero.
He stared at the screen, waiting for something else to appear. Nothing did.
"Okay," he said out loud, voice steady only because his brain hadn't caught up yet. "That's new."
Outside, a car alarm wailed and abruptly cut off.
Ethan moved to the window.
The street below had stopped functioning like a street.
People stood frozen in place, staring at invisible screens only they could see. Some laughed. Some cried. One man dropped to his knees and screamed in joy.
Above them all, stretching across the sky like a translucent scar, was a massive line of text.
WELCOME, PLAYERS
Then the ground shook.
Not an earthquake, something sharper. Localized.
A ripple passed through the asphalt at the far end of the street, the road folding inward like wet paper.
Light burst upward.
And something crawled out.
It was wrong.
Too many joints. Too many eyes. Its body looked unfinished, like a sketch someone had given up on halfway through.
People screamed.
A new message slammed into Ethan's vision.
EVENT: FIRST SPAWN
SURVIVE
That was all.
No timer. No instructions. The thing let out a wet, clicking sound and lunged. Someone didn't move fast enough. Ethan watched the creature tear into a man in a business suit like tissue paper. Blood sprayed the pavement. The body hit the ground in pieces.
A floating message appeared above the corpse.
PLAYER TERMINATED
Ethan staggered back from the window, His hands were shaking now. "This isn't real," he muttered. "This is, this is stress or something. I didn't sleep enough." Another scream cut short outside. A different message flickered at the edge of his vision.
WARNING: UNREGISTERED ENTITY DETECTED
Ethan blinked. The message wasn't pointing at the monster, It was pointing at him.
ANOMALY FLAGGED
LEVEL VALUE INVALID
The status window pulsed faintly.
For half a second, a line of text appeared beneath Progression: LOCKED.
Condition Met: Survival Without Progression
Then it vanished.
Ethan didn't know why, but his fear sharpened into something colder.
Focus.
If everyone else had levels… then they'd fight like players.
Predictable. Patterned.
The monster lunged again, charging toward a group of panicking people.
Ethan grabbed his jacket.
"Okay," he whispered, heart pounding. "Okay. If I'm level zero…"
He opened his apartment door and stepped into the hallway as the building shook.
"…then I guess I don't get to play fair." Outside, the system watched, and for the first time since integration, It didn't know what would happen next.
Ethan didn't run.
Not because he was brave, but because his legs refused to move. The hallway outside his apartment trembled as something heavy slammed into the stairwell below. Dust shook loose from the ceiling, drifting down like gray snow. Somewhere, glass shattered. Somewhere else, a woman screamed until her voice broke. Ethan's heart hammered so hard it hurt.
Think, he told himself. If you panic, you die. The system window hovered in the corner of his vision, unchanged.
Level: 0
Progression: LOCKED
No helpful red arrows, no glowing escape routes, just reality. He edged toward the stairwell door and cracked it open, The smell hit him first, ozone, dust, and something metallic. Blood.
The stairwell was chaos. People rushed downward, tripping over each other, eyes wide and unfocused. Above them, a man clung to the railing, screaming as something dragged him up step by step.
Ethan saw the monster clearly now.
It was smaller than the one outside, but faster. Its body was all sharp angles and twitching limbs, like it had been built for corners and confined spaces. Its eyes, too many of them, tracked movement obsessively.
Floating text hovered above it.
CRAWLER – Level 3
A young guy near Ethan shouted, "I've got this!"
Fire erupted from his hands, bright, violent, uncontrolled. The flames slammed into the creature's side, charring flesh and filling the stairwell with smoke.
The Crawler shrieked.
And then it adapted.
Its limbs flattened, spreading wide as it clung to the walls and ceiling. The next burst of fire missed completely.
The Crawler dropped.
The guy didn't even have time to scream.
Blood sprayed across the steps. The floating text above him appeared a second later.
PLAYER TERMINATED
The words were clean. Impersonal.
Ethan's stomach twisted.
Someone behind him sobbed. Someone else laughed hysterically.
A man with a glowing blue shield shoved past Ethan, shouting orders, already organizing people like this was a game he knew how to play.
Ethan stepped back into the hallway and closed the stairwell door slowly.
Levels matter, he realized. Classes matter.
I don't have either.
His gaze flicked to the system window again.
Still nothing.
Then briefly another line shimmered into existence beneath it.
Observation Logged
It vanished before he could focus on it.
Ethan swallowed.
"Okay," he whispered. "So you're watching."
The building shook again. This time closer.
The hallway lights flickered, then went out completely.
Emergency lights snapped on, bathing everything in red.
Something scraped against the far wall.
Ethan turned.
At the end of the corridor, where the elevator used to be, the wall bulged outward, then split.
The Crawler forced its way through, tearing concrete apart with limbs that bent the wrong way. Dust billowed into the air.
Its many eyes locked onto Ethan.
CRAWLER – Level 3
Ethan's body screamed at him to run.
Instead, his brain did something strange.
It slowed down.
The monster lunged.
Ethan dove sideways, barely avoiding the swipe. The creature smashed into the wall behind him, cracking it open. Plaster rained down.
It's fast, Ethan thought, scrambling to his feet. But it commits.
The Crawler turned, too sharply and slipped for half a second on the smooth tile floor.
Half a second was everything.
Ethan sprinted.
Not down the hall.
Up.
He ran straight for the fire door leading to the roof.
The handle was hot, but it turned.
Cold night air slammed into him as he burst onto the rooftop. The city beyond looked unreal, buildings flickering with holographic overlays, monsters roaming streets that had been familiar an hour ago.
Ethan didn't stop.
He ran to the edge of the roof and skidded to a halt.
Eight stories down.
The Crawler burst through the door behind him, shrieking.
There was nowhere left to go.
Ethan turned to face it, chest heaving.
"I don't have levels," he said aloud, not sure why. "So I guess I don't have rules either."
The Crawler leapt.
Ethan stepped aside at the last possible moment.
The creature overshot.
Its limbs scrabbled at the concrete, claws failing to grip.
Gravity did the rest.
The monster vanished over the edge, its shriek cutting off abruptly.
A distant, wet crunch echoed from the street below.
Silence followed.
Ethan stood there, shaking, staring at the edge of the roof.
A notification appeared.
NO EXPERIENCE GAINED
He laughed once, short, sharp, almost hysterical.
"Yeah," he said. "I noticed."
Then the system hesitated.
The air in front of him distorted, like heat rising from asphalt. New text flickered into place, unstable, glitching.
IMPOSSIBLE EVENT RECORDED
ENTITY: ETHAN COLE
CONDITION: SURVIVAL WITHOUT PROGRESSION
Ethan's breath caught.
The message lingered longer this time.
Then another line appeared beneath it.
ANOMALY CONFIRMED
For a heartbeat, the city noise vanished. No screams. No sirens. No monsters.
Just him.
And the system.
Ethan felt a strange pressure behind his eyes again, not painful, but aware.
As if something was trying to look at him… and failing.
The message disappeared.
His status window returned.
Unchanged.
Level: 0
Progression: LOCKED
But Ethan wasn't fooled anymore.
Because for the first time since the world ended, The system had reacted after he acted.
And that meant one thing.
Level Zero wasn't useless.
It was unaccounted for.