The world hit the pause button.
Auroras ignited the sky—ribbons of green and purple twisting like some cosmic screensaver on overdrive. But this wasn’t the kind of beauty you’d frame on a postcard. It was the kind that wormed into your skull and whispered, “Something’s wrong. Run.”
The colors didn’t just glow—they moved, deliberate and unnerving, as if the sky had decided to stage a sinister performance. Not the happy-clouds-and-sunshine variety, but the "Here’s your complimentary glimpse of the apocalypse" kind. Beautiful, sure. But beauty that felt alive—watching, waiting.
Then came the hum.
It rolled through the earth like a colossal tuning fork, a low frequency that bypassed the ears and punched straight into the bones. It wasn’t just sound; it was vibration, steady and insistent, like reality itself was warming up to deliver bad news. People froze mid-step, their heads tilting toward the auroras, faces caught somewhere between awe and Oh, hell no. Even the wind held its breath, as if afraid of what came next.
Shadows stretched and twisted unnaturally, bleeding into the green and purple haze until buildings and trees began to warp. Their edges flickered like a glitching video game, reality struggling to keep its composure. And then, the hum stopped.
The silence hit harder than the sound ever could—thick and oppressive, like the world itself was holding its breath. This wasn’t the calm before the storm. This was the storm’s final warning.
A crack split through the air—not a sound, but a violation, like the fabric of existence had been unzipped. Across the horizon, fractures appeared, jagged and glowing like cosmic fault lines. They spiraled outward, voids swirling with a darkness so deep it felt like staring into regret itself.
And then the monsters came.
They spilled out like nightmares running late—shadows with claws, fangs, and glowing ember eyes. Their forms defied logic, bending physics into something unholy. A dragon’s roar echoed in the distance, shaking the earth, and somewhere far off, an unholy screech answered it.
People screamed, but the sound barely registered over the absurdity of what the hell. Across the globe, humanity stood slack-jawed, staring into the kind of abyss that doesn’t just stare back—it charges admission.
Reality wasn’t just broken. It was over.
----------------------------------------
The conference room was a shrine to monotony.
Flickering fluorescent lights buzzed like dying insects, their hum almost in sync with Gerald’s droning voice. A spreadsheet of doom dominated the projector screen, detailing efficiency metrics no one cared about. The air carried the stale tang of reheated coffee and the ghost of microwaved fish. Corporate despair at its finest.
Gerald gestured at the screen with the enthusiasm of someone selling life insurance to the recently deceased. “If we meet Q3 targets,” he intoned, “I’m confident we can pivot for synergy.”
I leaned back in my chair, trying not to yawn. My disheveled hair fell into my eyes, and I brushed it back, staring at the water glasses on the table. They rippled faintly, and not just from Gerald’s self-importance.
Trevor sat to my left, his broad shoulders hunched as he sketched on a notepad. From the corner of my eye, I caught the unmistakable shape of a shark devouring a tiny stick figure labeled “Gerald.” A chuckle escaped before I could stop it.
“Something funny, Ethan?” Trevor whispered, his warm smile deepening the absurdity of his doodle.
“Just appreciating your artistic commentary,” I muttered, glancing at Gerald. Still oblivious. His droning voice didn’t even skip a beat.
Trevor’s grin widened, but I caught the flicker of restlessness in his posture. He wasn’t any more immune to the corporate soul-sucking than I was. The difference? He knew how to turn it into humor. I’d just perfected the art of barely staying awake.
Claire, seated to Trevor’s right, adjusted her glasses with a practiced motion. Her sharp eyes flicked to his antics, offering a subtle shake of her head—a silent, almost parental warning not to encourage him. But the faint quirk of her lips betrayed amusement. For Claire, that was practically a laugh.
Izzy, across the table, scribbled notes with the intensity of a soldier taking orders in the middle of a battlefield. Every frantic stroke of her pen screamed I’m paying attention! Please, notice me! Then, like clockwork, the pen slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. She fumbled to retrieve it, muttering apologies as the blush crept across her cheeks.
Barry sat in the far corner, his stoic presence like a fortress against the chaos. His massive hands rested on a notebook that could’ve been filled with tactical plans or the grocery list for next week. Still, when Izzy dropped her pen, he glanced up, calm and reassuring, before returning to whatever private calculations ran through his head. Barry didn’t waste energy on trivial things. Probably saving it for arm day—or the apocalypse.
Meanwhile, Ned looked seconds away from vibrating out of his chair. His darting eyes scanned the water glasses, the door, and the table in rapid succession, like a prey animal mapping every possible escape route. The rhythmic drumming of his fingers against his pen casing was so precise it could’ve driven me insane if Gerald hadn’t already claimed that honor.
A flicker in the corner of my vision tugged my focus. The shadows twitched, curling faintly like smoke caught in a rogue breeze before snapping back into place. I blinked, hard. Fluorescent lights are the worst. Just waiting for them to flicker out and turn this room into a horror movie set.
Trevor nudged me, pulling my attention back to the table. “I think Gerald just set a record for saying ‘synergy’ without explaining what the hell it means.”
His grin widened as he slid another masterpiece my way: a stick figure Gerald posing triumphantly next to a bar graph labeled Useless. The oversized trophy in stick-Gerald’s hand was the pièce de résistance.
“You should frame this,” I muttered, stifling a laugh. “Better yet, sell it.”
Trevor, deadpan, whispered, “Thinking of submitting it to HR. Corporate mascot material.”
Across the table, Claire’s sharp eyes caught us. The projector light reflected off her glasses as she flicked her gaze between Trevor and me. Her lips twitched ever so slightly. Was that a smile? No, couldn’t be. Claire laughing was like spotting Bigfoot—rumored, but never confirmed.
The lull was interrupted by a sharp clatter. Izzy’s water glass tipped over, spilling across the table in a slow but menacing crawl toward Gerald’s holy grail: the efficiency binder. She scrambled, frantic hands flailing in a desperate attempt to contain the flood. Naturally, the scene only got worse.
“I—I’m so sorry!” she stammered, her voice barely a squeak. Gerald barely registered her panic, dismissively waving her off like swatting at an annoying gnat.
Barry, from his fortress of calm in the corner, leaned forward. He tore a napkin from his notebook and handed it to Izzy with a deliberate, steady motion. “Here.” His voice was a low rumble, the kind of tone that made you feel like everything was somehow under control.
Izzy muttered her thanks, her cheeks blazing red as she mopped up the mess with trembling hands. The simple gesture seemed to ground her, the chaos in her movements gradually giving way to awkward precision. Barry leaned back, the faintest hint of a nod signaling the end of his involvement.
Meanwhile, Ned’s pen tapping reached a frenetic tempo, each click like the tick of a bomb about to go off. His pale face gleamed under the harsh fluorescent lights, which only enhanced his I’ve-seen-ghosts-and-they-hated-me aesthetic. Ned: the human embodiment of a browser with twenty tabs open, all frozen.
Trevor leaned closer, his usual smirk replaced with genuine concern. “Hey, buddy,” he said softly, his voice an unexpected oasis of calm. “Need to step out for a minute?”
Ned’s hand tightened around his pen as if it were a lifeline. He nodded—a jerky, almost mechanical motion that suggested he might collapse before making it to the door.
Gerald paused his monologue long enough to shuffle his meticulously organized notes. “Now, as I was saying—”
A flicker at the edge of my vision yanked my focus. The shadows in the room stretched unnaturally, their tips curling toward Gerald like they’d found something worth investigating. My spine stiffened. This wasn’t just bad lighting. This was intentional.
I leaned forward, my unease bubbling as the shadows rippled once, twice, then slithered back to their rightful places. A faint vibration thrummed through the water glasses, their delicate chime cutting through the monotony of Gerald’s sermon. Trevor’s eyebrow arched as he caught my glance.
“What?” he mouthed.
“It’s fine,” I muttered, though the churn in my gut begged to differ. Exhaustion, I told myself. Corporate burnout with a side of paranoia.
The shadows twitched again, this time curling like smoke caught in reverse. My chest tightened. The temperature in the room shifted—a creeping chill that raised goosebumps along my arms. The fluorescent hum deepened, resonating with a strange, rhythmic cadence that thrummed inside my skull. I rubbed my temples, but the unease lingered like static clinging to the air.
Trevor leaned in. “Is it just me,” he murmured, “or is the room getting freaky?”
Before I could answer, the tremor returned—stronger this time. Gerald’s efficiency binder rattled against the table, its pristine pages shivering under an invisible pressure. I wasn’t the only one who noticed; Claire’s sharp gaze flicked toward the binder, her lips thinning. Trevor’s earlier smirk was long gone.
For once, we were all on the same page. Something was wrong. And this time, even Gerald couldn’t pivot his way out of it.
Then it happened.
A symbol flared into existence above the conference table, jagged and alien, pulsing with a light that wasn’t light at all. It burned itself into my vision, its angular edges twisting and shifting like it existed in some dimension just out of reach. My mind recoiled, struggling to make sense of it.
“What the hell is that?” I whispered, but no one reacted. Gerald droned on about synergy metrics like nothing had changed. Trevor, always quick with a quip, sat frozen, his eyes unfocused.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
The symbol pulsed, and the air cracked like a whip, sending a jolt straight through my chest. Pain exploded behind my eyes—hot, white, and merciless. My heartbeat raced, pounding in time with the symbol’s rhythm. My vision splintered, fragments breaking apart as if reality itself was fracturing.
[System Notification: Integrat--n in Progress. Err-- Det--ted.]
The words echoed in my head, broken and laced with static, each syllable colder than the last. Before I could process them, the symbol flared again. A searing bolt of light struck me in the forehead, ripping the world out from under me. My consciousness shattered into jagged bursts of pain.
I hit the floor, clutching my head as agony burned through my nerves. My skull felt like it was splitting apart, molten fire pouring into every crevice. I tried to scream, but the sound caught in my throat. The only noise was the steady hum of the fluorescent lights above me and the soft, mocking flicker of the symbol.
Then came the whispers.
They weren’t voices, not exactly—static-laden murmurs that seeped into my thoughts, words half-formed and alien. They slipped through my mind like smoke, intangible but suffocating.
[Error Detected. Integration Protocol Adjusted. Neural Expansion Initiated.]
“Fuck,” I gasped, clawing at my temples as if I could dig the pressure out with my bare hands. The pain wasn’t just inside—it was everywhere, an endless wave tearing through me. My skull felt too small, cracking under the weight of something vast and incomprehensible.
And then, it stopped.
The relief was so sudden it left me gasping. My chest heaved as I sucked in air I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. But something was wrong. The room felt… off. Too sharp. Too vivid. Like someone had cranked reality into high-definition. The flickering fluorescent lights cut into my vision like a strobe, and every sound—the rustle of paper, the hum of the projector—was deafening.
The stale tang of coffee hung heavy in the air, its bitterness clawing at my tongue. The faint metallic bite of fear followed, sharp and unmistakable. My senses weren’t just heightened—they were weaponized, drowning me in the mundane.
“What… the hell?” I muttered. My voice sounded foreign, like it belonged to someone else. My fingers brushed the edge of the table, and every groove, every imperfection, was impossibly clear. It was like my skin had been replaced with sensors tuned to overdrive.
But the whispers hadn’t stopped. Softer now, they lingered at the edges of my thoughts, static buzzing at the back of my mind—a constant reminder that something inside me had changed.
[Integration Complete. Expanded Neural Sensory Threshold Active. Full ability locked due to ID#7B6F9's inability to Process Required Data.]
My head whipped toward the source of the sound, but the glowing words had already vanished, leaving behind a searing afterimage burned into my retinas.
Expanded neural sensory threshold? I thought. That sounded about as comforting as hugging a hand grenade mid-explosion.
I tried to stand, but my legs buckled beneath me, trembling from whatever the symbol had done. I reached out to steady myself on the table’s edge, but every detail—the wood’s grooves, its faint stains—felt unnervingly clear, like someone had cranked my senses up to eleven. Focus. Just breathe.
The rhythmic pulse of the symbol echoed faintly in my mind, relentless and alien. It had done something to me—something irreversible. Judging by the lack of reaction from the others, I was on my own in this nightmare.
The room snapped back into its dull routine. Gerald’s droning voice continued uninterrupted, praising the holy synergy. Trevor yawned. Barry calmly took a sip from his water bottle. No one even glanced my way. Not at the guy slumped on the floor, clutching his head like he’d just seen God—or something far worse.
It was like nothing had happened.
Yet my chest heaved, phantom heat clinging to my skin and static whispers crawling in the back of my mind. The scene felt staged, like I’d stumbled into someone else’s life. But the rattling windows and faint vibration beneath the table told me the world outside wasn’t playing along.
Then the change began.
A hum crept into the air, faint but insistent, wrapping around me like a static-filled blanket. My ears popped, the sensation like plunging too deep underwater. Across the table, Izzy’s pen clattered onto her notepad—a small sound that somehow carried like a gunshot. But my focus locked on the window behind Gerald. The sky was wrong.
The perfect blue was bleeding green at the edges, the kind of green that didn’t belong on Earth. The auroras coiled and twisted, deliberate in their movements. Too deliberate. They didn’t look like natural phenomena; they looked like they had a purpose. My stomach churned as patterns emerged in their glow—alien shapes that defied reason, shapes my brain refused to process.
The floor vibrated faintly, sending ripples through the water glasses. The hum deepened, resonating through the room like the heartbeat of something enormous. Trevor straightened, his casual grin nowhere to be found. “What’s that noise?”
The pressure built. My chest felt tight, like an invisible hand was squeezing the air from my lungs. Around the table, discomfort etched itself on my coworkers’ faces. Ned’s knuckles whitened as he gripped his pen, and Claire’s sharp gaze darted to the window.
“Do you feel that?” Claire asked, her voice calm but her eyes sharp with concern.
The shadows in the room crawled, stretching unnaturally toward the table’s center. The air thickened, heavy with an electric charge. Gerald frowned at his notes, oblivious—or just uninterested.
The ceiling cracked like thunder.
A blinding flash tore through the room, leaving jagged cracks in its wake. Reality fractured, shimmering as if the air itself was breaking apart. My skull buzzed. My teeth rattled. My heart… skipped.
[System Integration Complete.]
The notification struck with a finality that chilled me. Clear. Unforgiving. A truth I hadn’t been prepared for. Before I could process it, another one hit.
[Welcome to the Trials. Survival Protocol Activated.]
Glass shattered, snapping me back to the present. Shards exploded outward, catching the aurora’s light as they scattered into the void. Outside, the sky writhed as the auroras thickened, their unnatural light spilling into spiraling shapes that twisted in on themselves. Portals. Dozens of them.
One opened against the far wall, black at its core and webbed with glowing cracks. Its edges writhed like living shadows, the entire thing pulsing with a rhythmic clicking that grew sharper with each beat. The sound burrowed into my head, more invasive with every second.
I didn’t know what was coming, but I knew one thing for sure: it wasn’t friendly.
“What the hell is that?” Barry muttered, his calm veneer cracking as his voice wavered.
“More importantly,” Trevor added, his grin an empty echo of itself, “how do we send it back?”
The clicking from the portal became a roar, drilling into my skull like a thousand knives. Shadows warped and twisted, crawling along the walls like liquid. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but logic held me firmly in place. Run where?
No one moved. We were caught in the silence between disbelief and brutal reality. The air thickened, heavy with the metallic tang of ozone. A storm wasn’t coming.
It was already here.
Then the System spoke.
[Notification: Trial 1 Activated. Objective: Kill 1 or More Monsters. Time Remaining: 12:00.]
The words weren’t jarring this time. They settled into my mind cold and detached, a brutal contrast to the chaos unraveling before us. The timer appeared at the corner of my vision, ticking down like a cosmic deadline for survival. Twelve minutes to fight—or die.
Barry’s jaw clenched, his shoulders rolling back in quiet preparation for whatever came next. His eyes fixed on the portal, unflinching. Claire adjusted her glasses, her sharp gaze darting to the swirling shadows. Trevor opened his mouth, hesitation twisting his features, before he finally muttered, “Twelve minutes? Great. Is this a speedrun?”
Izzy’s voice broke, trembling as she clutched her notepad like it was the last thing tethering her to sanity. “What does that even mean?”
Trevor forced a chuckle, brittle at the edges. “Maybe it’s just… a team-building exercise. Next, they’ll want us to do a trust fall through the portal.”
Barry cut him off with a sharp look, his voice harder than I’d ever heard it. “Shut up.”
The portal churned, shadows writhing along its edges like ink in water. The clicking intensified, a maddening rhythm that clawed at the edges of my sanity. A high-pitched screech joined in—a sound like metal raking across glass. Every nerve in my body screamed danger.
“What happens if we don’t…” Claire started, her voice calm but low. She didn’t finish the question. She didn’t need to.
The next notification hit like a sucker punch.
[Failure Condition: Slow Death.]
No poetry. No riddles. Just cold, unrelenting truth. The words hung in the air like a noose, choking what little hope remained.
“Well,” I muttered, swallowing hard, “that’s direct.”
No one laughed. The portal pulsed again, dragging shadows inward like a heartbeat. A new message appeared, and this one was worse.
[Note: Your life expectancy will vary depending on individual skill level. Don’t worry—death is just a tutorial failure.]
The sarcasm would’ve been almost funny if it didn’t carry the weight of a threat. A tutorial failure? My stomach churned as I clenched my fists against the rising panic. Who the hell designed this system? And why did it feel like they were enjoying the chaos?
The clicking from the portal abruptly stopped.
Silence.
The quiet was worse.
The portal twisted, its core folding inward before pulsing outward in slow, deliberate waves. A new sound emerged—not sharp, but wet. Organic. Like bone and sinew twisting in ways they shouldn’t.
Gerald finally looked up from his binder, his eyes narrowing as if assessing a competitor in a quarterly review. “This has to be some sort of prank. Someone’s idea of a sick joke.” His voice carried none of the terror etched on the rest of our faces, just exasperation—as though the universe itself was inconveniencing him.
“Gerald, I don’t think the portal got the memo about your schedule,” Trevor muttered, his quip laced with nerves.
“Can we focus on surviving instead of making jokes?” Barry snapped.
Ned, on the other hand, was all jagged breaths and darting eyes, his fingers trembling as they clutched his pen like it was the only thing anchoring him to reality. His lips moved soundlessly, running through some internal monologue that probably wasn’t comforting.
“What are you doing?” I asked, half-snapping, unable to handle his spiraling panic.
Ned flinched, his wide eyes meeting mine. “I… I need to think. I need… I need a plan.” His voice cracked with desperation. He looked toward the timer, then the portal, then the door, his breaths coming in shallow gasps. “We… we can’t—”
Another screech interrupted him, louder this time, like claws raking across my nerves.
“Pull it together, Ned,” Claire said, her voice sharp but not unkind. “If we panic, we’re dead.”
The clicking resumed.
The portal twisted again, its edges writhing, pulling in shadows like liquid tendrils. The core pulsed outward, and something stepped through.
The light caught it first: a beetle’s shell, glowing faintly in refracted greens and silvers, like shattered glass under moonlight. Its mandibles clacked in short bursts, the sound grating and precise. Its legs moved with eerie precision—a predator’s rhythm, both chaotic and deliberate.
It wasn’t big, maybe the size of a soccer ball, but the way it moved… the way its shell gleamed in the flickering light... Size didn’t matter. This thing hunted.
The System chimed again, clinical as ever.
[Enemy: Lumic Beetle (Level 1, Common)] HP: 10/10 Threat Level: Low Role: Harasser Description: Small, agile scavengers equipped with a defensive flash ability. They rely on erratic movements and bursts of blinding light to disorient prey before striking.
“Low threat?” Trevor whispered, his voice a pale shadow of its usual bravado. “That thing looks like it crawled out of a horror movie.”
The beetle lunged, its mandibles snapping with a noise that sent shivers straight to my teeth. It moved too fast, its glowing shell blurring as it darted toward us. The room erupted into chaos—chairs clattered, feet scrambled, and panicked shouts filled the air.
I grabbed a chair leg, instincts firing on pure adrenaline, and swung with every ounce of strength I had. The improvised weapon connected with a resounding crack, the force reverberating up my arms. The beetle skittered back, its glowing shell untouched. Are you kidding me?
“Hit it again!” Claire’s voice cut through the cacophony, sharp and steady. She crouched low, her gaze locked onto the beetle like she was calculating its every move.
I swung again, this time aiming for where it would be, not where it was. But it darted sideways, its erratic movements almost mocking. The System chimed in, its tone unhelpfully clinical.
[Combat Tip: Lumic Beetles excel at evasion. Perhaps aim where it’s going, not where it is. Just a thought.]
“Helpful,” I muttered through clenched teeth. The beetle’s mandibles snapped close to my leg, the sound alone enough to churn my stomach. I stumbled back, narrowly avoiding a bite that I didn’t need to learn was lethal.
Ned was frozen in place, his breath ragged as he clutched his pen like a talisman. His wide, darting eyes followed the beetle, his lips moving soundlessly. “We’re gonna die. We’re—”
“Ned, focus!” I barked, jerking my chair leg in a defensive stance. He flinched but didn’t respond, his panic like a black hole, pulling rationality into the void.
Meanwhile, Gerald took a step back, holding his binder up like a shield. “This is ridiculous. Someone stop playing games,” he snapped, his tone sharp with disbelief.
“Gerald,” Trevor hissed, sidestepping a lunging beetle. “The time for synergy metrics is over!”
A second portal pulse sent vibrations up my spine, the sound burrowing into my skull. Another beetle emerged, then a third, their clicking mandibles adding to the oppressive rhythm of panic. The tang of ozone thickened in the air, sharp and electric.