“Have you seen this one, L-man?” Axel asked me, pushing his iPhone into my face.

He played the video and I watched as a man approached one of the black holes, tentatively reached up to touch it and then disappeared. Here one moment, gone the next. In a single frame. I wondered if the man had a family or friends. Hoping his loved ones would see the video so they may have closure, I shook my head.

“No, but that’s kinda messed up. Why didn’t the person filming stop him?”

Axel shrugged and continued scrolling. Sitting across from him, I tried to find the good of his parents in him. There was nothing of his mother’s warmth, nor his father’s cheer. In all ways but personality, he took after his father who’d been naturally athletically gifted, especially in sprints. Axel was a blonde man in his late twenties with an undercut, deep bags under blue eyes that were blessed with thick lashes, and full lips pressed together in idle thought.

I had heard in passing people compliment his looks, with girls in high school even giving him the nickname of Apollo, literally comparing him to a Greek god. And that was why I had stopped comparing myself to him ages ago. The dude didn’t even exercise but still managed to have the kind of build men spent hours at the gym to achieve. It gave me some semblance of mental peace that despite all that, Axel had never fully settled into his height, having sprouted up during puberty to compete against skyscrapers, and even now to compensate he hunched over his phone. Part of me thought it might even be a confidence thing.

Not wanting to suffer something else from his social media feed, I left him at the dining table and moved to the lounge. We’d gotten these armchairs secondhand at the dump much to Axel’s chagrin. I sunk into one and I tried not to think about what these black holes meant. But avoiding the idea just sent me right back to it.

Was it aliens? Demons? Alternate dimensions? There were so many conspiracy theories floating around online with no official explanations from any government that it would’ve been easier to figure out time travel at this point than to find out what was actually happening.

Lost in my thoughts, I only vaguely heard the audio from another video play off Axel’s phone. The sound of several people screaming slingshotted me back into reality. Turning around in my chair to face him, I shot him a worried look.

I’d known Axel all my life. We weren’t so much friends as the second generation of friends. Our parents had been super close and as a result Axel was like a sibling that I didn’t really understand. Simply due to circumstance, we now shared a flat in the city. Sometimes life is like that. You get tied to someone for life because of things outside of your control.

Most people assumed since we’d been together for so long that we were a couple. It didn’t help that when friends saw us heckle each other they often joked about what a married couple we were. Axel hated it, and was always first to correct it, but it played in my favour for a long time, especially since I didn’t know how to break it to my parents that I was ace. That was a conversation I’d been avoiding since I’d realised there was a label for the way I’d felt way back when I was twelve. A decade and a half long con to avoid an awkward exchange with my mother and father.

Omission wasn’t lying, was it?

Again Axel shrugged in reaction to my expression, jutting his chin at his phone. “Same man disappearing, different person who filmed it.”

“Howabout stop?” I suggested, a pit of tar sinking in my stomach, as I looked away from the uncaring form of my flatmate.

The appearance of the black holes around the world had initially seemed like a stunt meant for virality, but the way that people seemed to no longer exist after touching one was too uncanny for it to just be special effects. Too many angles, too many reactions. I had laughed the first time I saw one, but now I was beginning to feel sick. There was something seriously wrong. This wasn’t just some social media blitz or social experiment.

~Dungeons Active~

For a moment, I wasn’t sure what had happened. Like, I had definitely heard someone say those words, but I had actually not heard them say it. There was no audio in the exterior world, nothing had entered my eardrums. But I’d heard it crystal clear all the same. As if someone was speaking directly into my head.

Was I going crazy? Had the anxiety from the black holes caused me to start hallucinating? Perhaps the videos Axel had been showing me were affecting me more seriously than I thought. Wondering if I should ask him if he’d heard the voice too, another mental sound played, interrupting the thought. A long high-pitched beep. I tasted static.

Blue flashed in front of my face, blinding me.

My eyes stung as I blinked away the fading light, taking in what I was seeing. It was a notification, like a push notification on a phone. It floated in front of my face, maybe one metre away. Instinctively, I tried to wave it away, but my hand just phased right through it. Oh, so I was going crazy.

The notification read: “Player Lee Bastion Castillo registered. Title: None. Class and traits generating...”

I pinched at the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes. Taking a deep breath, I opened them again and was still met with the same screen. Had I been gaming too much? Something similar had happened when I played Skyrim a lot when I was a kid. When I walked around I would think about all the different plants and insects I could harvest and even hallucinated the E prompt button when close to a bush or shrub.

But I hadn’t even played anything that much recently. I’d been too busy fretting over how to break it to Axel that I wanted to move out by myself. I’d finally saved up enough to afford a deposit for my own place and was actively checking out apartments for rent in different suburbs. Before the Doomsday tag had started trending, I’d been practising in the mirror again and again but it had done nothing to relieve my nerves. I had planned on breaking the news to him tonight come hell or high water.

But if the screen was talking about class and traits… Was it imitating a game, like an RPG or something?

“Lee.”

My heart skipped a beat, as Axel’s voice spoke into my ear. He was standing right behind me. Somehow, he’d closed the distance between us without me noticing. He was not a quiet person by nature and honestly kind of clumsy. Yet he’d managed to get right behind me without so much as a creak on the floor.

I moved to turn around and face him, but he stilled me, his hand on my shoulder. Like an iron weight. It was weird that he was touching me. Since primary school he’d stopped being cuddly. Of course, since then a lot had changed about me too.

But that’s when it hit me. Axel had called me “Lee.” He hadn’t called me Lee our entire lives, as an age-old in-joke that had long since worn out its charm. Specifically, when we were three, he’d thrown a tantrum about me stealing his mother’s name.

I hadn’t contested the thought since my parents had explained my name was based on both Axel’s parents. When I said our parents had been close, I wasn’t joking. I was Lee after Li-hua, and Bastion after Sebastian. I had never known if Axel knew my parents were his namesake, but Axel for Alessandra and Zeke for Ezekiel, it would’ve been obvious to anyone else. But what was clear to most often flew over his head.

Unable to ignore it, I said, “You never call me Lee.”

Axel laughed. It was bitter. Bitter? That made no sense. He was the one who decided to use any name under the sun other than my birth name. Well, I guess I’d never understood him before and that wasn’t about to change.

“I’ve just been wanting to say it for a while.”

“You’re welcome to use it, you know. It’s literally my name.”

The warmth of his hand slid from my shoulder, the strangely charged moment past, and so I turned to look at him. There was a smile I’d never seen before on his face. Or rather, maybe I’d seen it once, but on a much younger version of him. But for this moment in time, the expression in his eyes was nonsense. On anyone else, I would’ve believed it was grief, but what did Axel have to feel mournful about? There were very few people on Earth that Axel held in high regard, and even fewer that would cause such emotion in him.

My heart jumped into my mouth, thinking the worst. “Are our parents okay?”

He blinked and, just like that, the sorrow was gone, replaced by his usual noncommittal gaze. “For now, at least.”

The shift in his expression was like a weight off my shoulders, a physical relief that calmed me and allowed my lungs to expand properly, to breathe. There was something about the look in his eyes that said things I didn’t understand, far more than the usual nonsensical Axel. Trying to make light of the situation, I said, “You’re being kind of weird, dude.”

“I know, I just… heard this voice in my head. Something about dungeons…”

Everything odd that Axel had done was immediately forgotten as I stood to face him. “You heard it too? I’m not losing my mind! And this blue notification menu, you see it too, right?”

I pointed in front of me where the ellipsis at the end of the sentence continued to type in and disappear, like a loading bar. Axel shook his head, and for a brief moment I felt despair well inside me. But then, he gestured in front of himself. “I see a blue screen here.”

So, we had our own screens. I guess that made just as much sense as anything else. My screen had my name. So, Axel’s probably had his too then.

Was everyone around the world getting these same notifications? I pulled my phone from my pocket and tried searching online, but realised the Wi-Fi was dead and I wasn’t getting any reception. When I mentioned it to Axel, he just nodded in acceptance and mumbled something about server overload. If anyone would know, it would be him—he was something of an IT guru. I decided to take his response at face value.

He asked, “Do you have a title?”

“Mine says ‘None.’ You?”

I watched as the muscle in Axel’s jaw twitched, and he said, “No. No title either.”

We were both quiet. I knew Axel’s tell. He knew I knew. Why would he lie about his title? If I was right about this screen imitating games, then titles were usually assigned because of events completed, feats achieved, or evident characteristics. Maybe his title was something embarrassing? Racking my brain, I tried to imagine anything that would cause his reaction.

He’d recently been doing a solo-run on Divinity: Original Sin II, so…

Could his title be something like “Lone Wolf”? Getting assigned that by this random all-knowing screen would be the kind of second-hand cringe that would make anyone hurt. The idea of anyone considering Axel a lone wolf almost made me laugh, but I quickly smothered it. The truth was Axel was a social butterfly. Actually, that kind of title might be more humiliating for him.

Maybe it was the current state of events, and how they didn’t align with the reality I’d known my whole life, but in my head, I imagined rainbow wings sprouting out of his back, and him gracefully soaring through the air. Laughter snorted out of my nose.

Axel raised a single thin blonde eyebrow at me. Coughing a few times, I thumped a fist at my chest. “Allergies.”

“Sure.”

“How long do you think the—”

~Class and traits loaded~

The blue menu transitioned like a PowerPoint slide into a new larger screen. I instantly recognized the information provided. Indicators for a game character. Health, stamina, experience, mana, abilities, traits. I paused and did a double take. Mana? Did that mean there was magic?

The absolute absurdity of the situation dawned on me.

It felt like a whip in the face. There were black holes appearing around the world, my lifetime acquaintance for the first time had randomly called me by my real name, a random blue box knew said name, and now there was magic.

I wondered when my mind had broken and what had caused it. Was it from the stress of telling Axel I wanted to move out? Maybe I was sitting somewhere in a padded cell with my arms straitjacketed to my body. That made more sense. Obviously, I was having a psychotic break. Somewhere nearby, there was probably a repeating message telling me to come back to the real world.

I closed my eyes and imagined waking up.

“You’re not crazy.”

I looked over to Axel. “What?”

“You’re not crazy. This is real. This is happening.”

His unshakeable gaze met mine.

Taking the armchair opposite me, Axel asked, “What are your stats?”

“Uh, I…” I looked at my status bar. It was minimal, really. Like barebones. The game devs probably would’ve gotten bad reviews if they released even a beta like this. “[20 HP], [20 MANA], [20 STAMINA]. No traits, but one ability: [Channel].”

Even though I’d only skimmed the data before, when I said it out loud, it seemed like a fairly bad character sheet. This was like a throwaway. If I had rolled this poorly, I would’ve restarted the game. This hallucination was an incredibly depressing one. My mouth started going dry. I didn’t know why, but some part of me knew if I played a game with this I probably would’ve died a few times in just the tutorial level.

Axel swore creatively under his breath, something about time. “And your class?”

Having ignored the largest piece of information on the floating screen before me, I flicked my gaze back up to the very top where my class was situated.

“[All-rounder]?”

Well, that’d account for the low mana, low health, and low stamina. Not great at anything, but middling at all. I hoped that meant it was a middle of the grid kind of class with the chance to move in any direction. Normally, character upgrade trees for blank slates like this were usually for pro players who knew what they were proccing into. Or that was what I was desperately praying was true. Because if that wasn’t the case, and I literally could never really focus into anything, that’d mean my stats would remain under average all round. Which, with the sudden changing of the world, suddenly felt like a very dangerous thing to realise.

I could feel the hyperventilation start in the swelling of my lungs, but I tried to slow my breathing. I swallowed back my concerns. There was no point thinking too far ahead right now.

“What about you?”

“[70 HP], [25 MANA], [55 STAMINA], one trait of [Swift Footed], and three abilities: [Ground Smash], [Intimidation], [Thick Hide]. My class is [Combatant].”

Combatant. That sounded like a front-line damage type. Again, the muscle in Axel’s jaw twitched. Was he lying to make me feel better? Were my stats literally so awful that even with all the info he just shared that completely dwarfed mine, he was still trying to be humble to spare my feelings?