“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 Baz Smith 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 Baz 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.
Stolen novel; please report.
“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?
“It looks like I’m strong,” Axel said.
I didn’t want his pity, but I smiled nonetheless.
~Dungeon 5 entered for the first time. Player Sung Jin-woo rewarded title of First Contact~
We let silence settle in between us for a moment, trying to absorb the full repercussion of the most recent mentally projected notification. First Contact? That referred to aliens, didn’t it? And then there was that word again. Dungeon. It was like everything was connected to it. Within my chest, I felt something sprout. A foreign desire taking root, so clearly removed from my own that I could almost identify exactly where it began inside me.
I voiced this newfound desire.
“I guess we’re supposed to go into these Dungeons? Like dungeon diving?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
Neither of us moved.
~Dungeon 13 entered for the first time. Player Kim Dokja rewarded title of Dreamer~
Briefly, I wondered why both the first players to enter a Dungeon were Korean, but quickly ignored the thought. It was probably just coincidence. I wondered what about Dungeon 13 qualified the first player to enter the title of Dreamer. Were the Dungeons different? Were the Dungeons more like game dungeons or like real dungeons? Would there be loot? Boss fights?
In the silence that fell between us, Axel asked, “Do you think the Dungeons are the black holes?”
I pulled my mind from the current train of thought it was on and replied, “They appeared just before all this started happening. That can’t just be a coincidence. There were at least a dozen reported, right?”
~Dungeon 10 entered for the first time. Player Fahd bin Khan rewarded title of Trendsetter~
~Dungeon 1 entered for the first time. Player Kerstin Berg rewarded title of Hotspot~
~Dungeon 6 entered for the first time. Player Jibari Kimachu rewarded title of Alter Ego~
~Dungeon 9 entered for the first time. Player Riku Nakamura rewarded title of Eagle Eye~
It was unnerving hearing all these notifications almost simultaneously. It was like worldwide everyone was coming to the same conclusion. Everyone was thinking the same thing. The Dungeons. Clear as day, I could taste the invading compulsion, blossoming in my chest.
We needed to enter the Dungeons. I didn’t doubt a single other person the world over wasn’t feeling the same thing. A hand grasping my heart, slowly starting to squeeze.
“Where’s the closest Dungeon?”
“When I was scrolling through the tag, the closest one was in central Brisbane. There’s no way we’ll get to it first. Neither of us has a car.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Well, we don’t need to be one of the first to enter, do we?”
“Those title notifications sound important.”
I didn’t want to bring up that he had a title and lied to me about it, and instead just said, “In games, you can sometimes buy titles or achieve them. Besides, it’s not like they ever have that much bearing on anything. Like max, they’ll unlock some sort of cosmetic skin. My guess is that sooner or later, we’ll probably end up getting them anyway. Shouldn’t we try to figure out what the Dungeons are all about first?”
Immediately, he laughed. For a second I felt my ears grow hot with embarrassment. I had gotten used to Axel being brutally honest with me—it was part of who he was—but he rarely outright mocked my ideas. He must’ve caught my expression because he stopped laughing.
“No, think about it, man. If titles weren’t important, why would it be one of the first things to appear after your own name when the Dungeons ‘activated’?”
The embarrassment faded away, but anger remained, a sting in my cheeks. “Why didn’t you just say that first?”
“I… Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
Yeah, that pretty much cinched it. Surely the world was truly ending. Axel apologising? Axel admitting he was wrong? He’d die before doing either of those things. I eyed him in suspicion. His eyes were closed in thought, and his face was pressed into his hands.
But he was sitting up straight. The permanent stoop he existed with since he’d shot up to telephone pole height was missing. It was strange to be forced to look up at him, even slightly. I swallowed back my doubts, though it was getting harder and harder to ignore all the subtle differences I was noticing.
There was something fundamentally wrong with Axel. And I didn’t know what it was.
Maybe he’d seen something on Twitter that had shocked him to his core? It was Axel sitting there, that was unmistakable, but if you put a gun to my head and demanded to know what was sitting in the seat opposite me, I couldn’t tell you with full confidence that it was the same Axel I had known all my life.
He was hiding something. And it wasn’t something small either. Did it have to do with the title he wouldn’t share with me? Or his stats? What wasn’t he telling me? Why wasn’t he telling me? I stared at him a while longer, trying to weigh up the pros and cons of confronting him.
There was something in his current stature that made me hesitate. Besides, this was Axel I was talking about. Dude could be as stubborn as a mule when he was forced to do something.
He’d share his mind with me when he was ready.
~Dungeon 11 entered for the first time. Player Adrien Galbraith rewarded title of Boy Wonder~
Clearing my throat, I said, “It’s all good, man. So, what? You’re saying we should… find another Dungeon that hasn’t been found yet? They stand out a lot, so I don’t think that’s gonna be possible.”
~Dungeon 8 entered for the first time. Player Bonnie O’ Brolchain rewarded title of Scorned~
Axel removed his hands from his face. “When I was scrolling, it looked like there were around thirteen of the black holes globally. But there was nothing from China on there, so let’s hazard a guess for one more from them. So fourteen. That’s not a lot for a population of eight billion people, is it?”
I rubbed at my chin in thought. “If being the first person to enter a Dungeon is really as important as just you think it is, then the rarity of a Dungeon should be pretty high. You can’t just be handing out titles like you’re Oprah. But with only fourteen for the entirety of humanity… That’s— I can’t even do the maths.” Plugging the numbers into the calculator app on my phone, my eyes widened at the results. “That’s a probability of receiving a first entering title less than 0.000000002%.”
“Right, so astronomically low odds. Those titles are special, for sure, but they can’t possibly be that rare. That’d be kind of unfair. So…”
Understanding formed in my mind. “You think there’s gonna be more Dungeons. We need to wait for new ones?”
“Pretty much. But we can’t just stay here like this. People are gonna be going into those Dungeons, regardless of titles. It’s like an itch… Since everything else has been like a game, the Dungeons have gotta be some sort of boss fight, or a challenge. And what do you do before a boss fight?” Axel asked.
He played more MMORPGs than me, but I knew what he was suggesting.
“Gather a party?”
Axel laughed again and this time I knew he wasn’t mocking me. I had no clue what he found so hilarious, but I just smiled back. I never understood Axel and despite whatever changes he’d gone through today, that wasn’t about to change. That was comforting. But…
~Dungeon 4 entered for the first time. Player Althea Santos rewarded title of Infinite~
It was weird, actually. What was happening was absolutely insane. Black holes didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Weird game-like notifications didn’t just materialise into our individual minds. This was not normal. So, why did I feel so calm? Was it simply because I wasn’t alone in this? That Axel was here with me?
I should’ve been losing my goddamn mind. But I wasn’t. Then again, I wasn’t entirely sure I hadn’t already.
“Should we call our parents first?” I asked.
He shook his head. “All telecommunications are down right now. I’m thinking government mandated to control chaos, or maybe interference from the formation of the Gates.”
The worry in my gut intensified.
“But they’ll be okay, right? If they don’t enter the Dungeons, nothing bad should happen to them?” I asked.
For university, we’d both moved to the state capital from a rural country town. The population was probably in the hundreds. Our parents owned hectares of land, mostly empty bush, that they occasionally allowed cattle to graze on from neighbouring properties. I made it a point to go to my hometown at least once a year to catch up with them in person. Other than Axel, they really were the only other people in the world who I constantly worried about.
“Yeah, there’s no Gates so far into the bush. My parents and yours should weather this storm perfectly fine. I doubt anyone so far out would even be affected.”
With his words, my body felt lighter. My fears allayed, I frowned, catching onto something he’d said. “Gates?”
“Gates,” he said matter-of-factly.
Seeing the clear obliviousness on my face, he followed up with: “Since we can’t see where they lead, the Dungeons have got to exist somewhere else. The notifications say “entered.” So people are going inside them, but you’ve seen the black holes. They’re something less than 2D but more than 3D. I think the black holes are just doorways.”
I listened carefully as he continued, “Kind of like an older game when you enter a house or a castle. The new room has to load, and you’re taken to a completely new zone that previously didn’t exist. Plus, the people who touched them simply disappeared. They must’ve gone somewhere.” He paused. And then concluded, “So, yeah. Gates.”
I mean… The logic checked out. What didn’t was how he’d come to this conclusion so quickly. Whatever. Axel had been taking this entire situation better than I had been. So maybe he was more well-equipped to think about things like this.
I shrugged. “Sounds better than black holes in any case.”
“Circling back to making a party. Who do we know who we can recruit?”
Not even a cricket chirping could’ve properly punctuated the silence that fell between us. Since high school I’d been pretty introverted. I had some close friends from university, but they’d all moved away, either rural or international. We kept in touch online with weekly gaming sessions, but that was it. It wasn’t like we could ask them to come join us here in Brisbane. I probably wouldn't have wanted to have pressure them into it even if I could’ve asked them.
~Dungeon 2 entered for the first time. Player Yī nuò Huang rewarded title of Lighter Than Air~
Axel held a finger up in thought, his blonde brows furrowed, and he opened his mouth but then closed it again. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised Axel didn’t have anyone that came to mind either. Though he was the party life incarnate, none of the groups he hung out with were particularly reliable. Sure, some social circles were better than others, and I’d seen them all during the time we’d lived together, but I didn’t think any of his friends could be counted on.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he growled.
“Like what?”
“I don’t need your pity.” He poked a finger into my shoulder. “I have friends. I have tonnes of friends. You wouldn’t even know!”
“Well, I do know, man. I see them all the time, you have a party like every other week here.”
“Exactly. I got friends, capiche?”
Axel only became Al Pacino when he was genuinely angry. What an absolutely unhinged thing to be mad about. I threw my hands up in defeat. “All right, all right. You’ve got friends. Thousands, even.”
He smirked. “That’s right. Thousands.”
Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I raised an eyebrow. “So, how many of them would want to join our party?”
Axel’s face scrunched up in thought. Yep, go ahead and think on it. I could see the numbers and figures flying around in his head. If he did the maths right, he’d come to the same conclusion as me. The total amount of his friends who could be counted on equaled nil, zip, zero, zilch, nada.
His face went blank. Ah, there it was.
“So?” I asked, feeling a sick amount of pleasure beginning to build from Axel’s incoming realisation.
A flicker of disgust ran over his features. His shoulders sagged and gravity increased three-fold over his body. He let out a pained groan. “I know one person, but they probably don’t remember me. You haven’t met them before.” Under his breath, he sighed, “God, I fucking hate Jye. Their takes are so bad.”
Disappointment settled over me. Sifting through my emotions, I found I was sad that Axel didn’t have to apologise again. That was almost definitely probably messed up. Well, when in Rome.
~Dungeon 12 entered for the first time. Player Mila Bachmann rewarded title of Unsanctimonious~
It didn’t escape my notice Axel had referred to this Jye person with they/them pronouns. Though I wouldn’t say it aloud, Axel suffered from internalised prejudice, despite being openly queer. He’d once said to me that there were men and there were women, so that he’d associated with someone who might be outside of the gender binary was not a small surprise.
Half-an-hour-ago-Axel probably would’ve accidentally deadnamed them. Now-Axel used they/them like it was second nature. Half-an-hour-ago-Axel would never have asked me to join his party. Now-Axel referred to the party as “our party.”
I was slowly coming to grips with the fact that this wasn’t just some simple shock from a reddit post. This was something deeper. But that was future me’s problem.
“All right, well, where can we find them?”
“What am I, their keeper?” Axel spat.
Okay, no, scratch that, it was the same old Axel. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I asked, “Where do you think they’d be then?”
“At 5:30, they’re midway through their HIIT session at the gym which is when they take a smoke break out back.”
The word “stalker” sat on my tongue, posed ready to leap out. I stared at him. He stared back. Like he was daring me to say it. I could see the deranged chaos in the cogs grinding in his mind. No, I wouldn’t let myself be baited into this. For some reason he wanted this. Denying him this was better in the long run. Besides, answers would be forthcoming whether I asked them or not since I’d be meeting said friend soon.
Instead, I said, “Which gym?”
“It’s about a block from here.” Casually, he added, “I know a shortcut.”
Yeah, you would know that, wouldn’t you, you stalker.
“What was that?” Axel asked.
“I didn’t say nothing.”
His eyes narrowed and then he let out a long loud sigh.
Then he walked off to his room. The sound of him rummaging through hangers in his closet made their way to me and I patiently waited for an explanation. There was no point in doing anything until he told me what it was I was meant to be doing because despite the fact I was taking this situation rather calmly I still didn’t understand a lick of what was actually happening. Luckily Axel’s grasp on everything was so much clearer.
So I’d wait and listen to him.
~Dungeon 15 entered for the first time. Player Igor Stepanov rewarded title of Magic Itself~
Oh, Axel had been wrong. There were fifteen Dungeons. Maybe more?
Axel stuck his head out through his doorway. “I’m grabbing some stuff. You should too. Use that backpack your mother gave you for paintball. Pack anything you think you’ll need for the next week. I don’t think we should count on being able to come back here.”
I didn’t even remember I’d gotten a backpack from my mum. How did Axel? Shaking my head, I stood up and proceeded to follow his instructions. Nothing had gone wrong yet doing what he wanted, but his track record wasn’t good, historically speaking.
“It feels weird locking this door knowing this might be our final goodbye to it.”
“Glad we didn’t get a cat now, aren’t you?” Axel dryly commented.
Murmuring a defeated agreement, I turned the key. The lock clicked. Our apartment was secured. The sound echoed in my mind, and a deep unsettling curled inside my stomach. It was like a snake coiling around in my intestines. My chest felt tight and I could hear the hammering of my heart thrumming inside me.
Seeing that closed door, that locked door, was so final.
Absolute.
Inside, all this was stuff that wasn’t happening to me. But now… Now I was where everything was happening. And that meant everything was real.
~Dungeon 7 entered for the first time. Player Gael Viegas rewarded title of Timekeeper~
Fuck, those people who disappeared before the Gates activated… Despite what Axel said, I was sure they were dead. We’d all seen it. They just stopped existing when they touched the Gates. Jesus Christ, would we die? Were we going to our death? Would our parents die?
Breathing became difficult, lead in my lungs, and I gasped for air. This was fucked. This was fucked up. The world began to spin, the edges of my vision going hazy.
“Yo, slowbro, hurry up, man.”
The gates of panic didn’t so much as slam shut as rage sucker punched it aside to wrangle control. “I’m having an anxiety attack over here, asshole!”
“I know.”
He wasn’t looking at me, but in the hand he held out to me was a single Warhead. It was black. The most tongue tarnishing of flavours. My gaze flicked between it and him, and I took the lolly wordlessly. He didn’t say anything and started walking. I followed, eyes glued on the sour candy cradled in my hands.
~Dungeon 3 entered for the first time. Player Rohit Dibik rewarded title of Insatiable~
Just the sight of the lolly was enough to begin calming me. The pounding of my heart evened into a normal rhythm. The heat in my veins cooled. The world settled.