There was no sound.

No pulse. No body.

Only light—soft, endless, alive.

Then warmth returned.

A heartbeat.

One.

Two.

Then, sound returned. A low hum beneath everything.

Then weight. The pull of gravity.

Then breath. And the light took shape.

Mirai’s eyes snapped open to a sky that shouldn’t exist.

Radiant. Vast. Alive.

Clouds glowed in impossible shades of gold and white. Towers of crystal spiraled upward in the distance, their edges reflecting light like blades. The air was warm — fragrant with rain, ozone, and something electric.

He blinked hard, disoriented.

“Wasn’t I just… at my desk? Putting on the headset?”

He tried to recall the login screen, the chime, anything — but the memory slid away like water through his fingers, as if something between that moment and this one had been cleanly erased.

He pushed himself upright. His fingers brushed stone — smooth, cold, patterned with faint runes that pulsed faintly under his touch. The surface rippled like shallow water, responding to his movement.

Then he saw his hands.

Not quite his own. Calloused, steadier. A faint glow lingered a brief moment beneath the skin, like veins filled with light.

“What the…”

Around him, dozens of others stirred — men and women, young and old, all dressed in armor or robes they hadn’t been wearing moments ago.

Their clothes shimmered with faint sigils; their weapons rested beside them like props from dreams.

Confusion rippled through the plaza. Some cried out. Some just stared, lost between panic and awe:

“Holy shit, these graphics—”

“Bro, this can’t be pre-rendered.”

“This is… FNL, right? The game?” another voice said, uncertain, grasping for logic.

No one answered.

Mirai steadied his breathing, scanning the horizon. The city spread out like a painting come to life — bridges of glass arching over rivers of light, airships drifting between spires, streets lined with radiant flora.

Everything was too vivid, too perfect.

A voice cut through the daze — calm, rehearsed, and not entirely human.

“Welcome, travelers, to Elysium’s Reach. Please remain calm as orientation begins.”

Mirai turned.

A group of armored guards moved through the crowd, their expressions serene, their voices identical in tone.

They spoke like actors reading from an ancient script. Behind them, the city’s massive crystal tower shimmered with faint text that scrolled across its surface, glowing letters visible even from here:

INITIALIZATION COMPLETE.

CLASS DATA: SYNCHRONIZED.

BEGIN.

[ CLASS UNLOCKED: SJELBRAND ]

The letters faded.

He exhaled, mind racing.

“Class data?”

He had no memory of choosing anything. But when he looked down again, he noticed the sword at his hip — ornate, unfamiliar, yet somehow… his. It felt like muscle memory, something he’d always carried.

His heart thudded once, sharply. “Saiya? Takara? Zenobia? Issan?”

No answer. Just the overlapping noise of panic and wonder.

Mirai pushed through the crowd, searching for familiar faces. His reflection flashed in a window as he passed — his eyes glowed faintly blue now, almost crystalline, like glass holding light.

His appearance was almost the same as his real body, but cleaner, sharper — a version of himself sculpted by some unseen will.

Somewhere above, a bell tolled. The plaza fell briefly silent.

For the first time since waking, Mirai felt something heavy and wordless settle in his chest — a pressure that whispered unspoken: You’re not going home.

He didn’t know why the thought struck him.

Only that it felt real.

Elsewhere, in the same plaza — seen through another life.

The morning had been ordinary.

That, in hindsight, was the strangest part.

Elias Verne, apprentice glasswright, stood at his stall polishing a crystal lantern. The first light of the day caught the glass just right, splitting it into ribbons of gold and violet that danced over the cobblestones.

Overhead, twin domes shimmered faintly — the great shields that crowned the heavens, radiant colors that arched across the heavens. It hummed, as it always did, low and alive, a sound people had long stopped noticing.

He was thinking about lunch.

And then the world blinked.

No thunder. No burst of magic. Just absence — a single instant when everything that was became everything that wasn’t.

The lantern slipped from Elias’s hand — and didn’t fall. It hung there, weightless, trembling in the still air.

The crowd around him: Shoppers, guards, civilians — had all frozen, caught in poses of life. Even the Great Domes, Elysium’s heartbeat, fell silent.

The silence was so total he thought he’d gone deaf.

Then sound came rushing back all at once: a gasp, a hundred voices, the crack of glass as the lantern finally struck stone and shattered.

Elias stumbled backward, heart pounding. The street wasn’t empty anymore.

Dozens of people stood where nothing had been a heartbeat ago.

Men and Women in strange fabrics that shimmered like woven light. Armor that breathed. Some carried weapons. Some knelt, clutching their heads. Others screamed. One vomited. Another shouted a name that no one here had ever heard.

“By the light — what are they?” Elias began, but his voice caught.

A young woman just a few paces away was staring at her hands like they didn’t belong to her. “This isn’t — this isn’t the headset lobby,” she whispered. “Where’s the HUD—”

Elias blinked, not understanding a single word.

“Miss? Are you hurt?” he asked gently.

She looked up at him with eyes that flickered, like a glitch between two images, and for a moment, he thought he saw something else — a reflection that wasn’t his world at all.

Then she screamed.

“That NPC is so real! Creepy!”

The guards came running. People crowded in, kneeling, shouting prayers, demanding answers.

The church bells rang of their own accord, deep and dissonant, as if the towers themselves had forgotten how to sing.

And then, from somewhere far above, the barrier rippled—once, like breath drawn in.

A thousand rays of light swept across the city, warm and terrible. Every crystal window and every mirrored wall reflected the same thing: strangers filling the streets.

By sunset, there were rumors.

“They’re sky-fallen souls.”

“Punishment for forgetting his mercy.”

“The gods are opening the walls again.”

But Elias knew what he saw.

When he’d looked into that girl’s eyes, he hadn’t seen divinity.

He’d seen terror — and a flicker of something that had no name in any of Elysium’s languages.

Something… fixated.