I am Viraj and I am stuck in a place I have no memory of.

The thought I had in my mind fit the situation I was in so perfectly. The place I was in, I had no memory of it. In fact, it doesn’t even seem the world I live in. Everything around me is so futuristic: the capsules speeding from building to building, the outer portion of the skyscrapers made entirely of glass, roads so paved that strange vehicles zipped past. Yes, strange vehicles. To my shock and surprise, they flew rather than drove. Looking at them, I remembered the cartoons and movies I watched. Frankly, it reminded me of The Jetsons.

Last thing I remembered was the land where people were forbidden to enter according to court orders. But I had. All because of a cat, which had never existed in the first place. And then someone had come from behind me and held a white towel against my nose. I remembered swooning and seeing a joker smile.

A loud horn had awoken me from the slumber and I had found myself looking at this world that seemed not my own. Nothing about it was familiar. Where was I? What was happening to me? And like an answer to my questions, a white arrow appeared in the sky, moving from building to building, over roads and pinpointing tunnels. I frowned at the sight. That arrow looked like a mouse pointer. Intrigued and confounded at the same time, I followed the arrow, which led to the leftmost corner, after which I could not see anything. I tried but all I got was a headache.

The arrow was now pointing at a shimmering window that had suddenly opened up, right of a blinking green arrow. I looked at it shell-shocked. The very nature of it made me think of the few computer games I had played when I was a younger.

New Game. What Game? What is happening?

The arrow clicked on New Game.

Everything around suddenly went black and then in the split of a second I was transported into a woodland village. The scene in front of me played like those Youtube videos I watched every time, except there was no pause or skip button.

In front of me there was a vivid looking character standing and I could feel his thoughts inside of me.

A raven, dark as the void that surrounds the earth, perched on a branch of a thick-barked tree, its eyes on a young Kai walking past the charred remains of his erstwhile home. He was oblivious to its presence, his eyes watching tearily the black planks of wood covered with soot and ash, sensing the lingering doom that had come a fortnight ago, and his ears pricking up at the screams of those who had burned inside. Tears streamed down his cheeks, glimmering with a silver gleam that showed once before the droplets met the earthen ground which once was green but now was black. The plants that grew there had all died; not even his dog had been spared. And he...as long as he left the villagers alone, he was left to be himself, alive yet ostracized. Nobody from his village spoke to him or had any dealings with him save the occasional villager who had once been his neighbor or friend and took pity upon his condition. They would buy him food and let him take water from their wells, what little they could spare. Times had been tough. The winter had been dry and the spring had come with such a heat that had never been felt before. Not to mention, rains had been sparse since a decade.

Yet in him was no feeling of mercy for his helpers. He held no gratitude for them...they who had stood idly by when those murderers with branded logs of wood, flaming with golden fire, had surrounded the house and yelled at his father, ordering him to come outside and face justice for what crimes he had not known. Or perhaps he did. In this age of the world, praying to God was a crime punishable by death or whatever punishment the courts decided. To his shock the villagers had decided that death was apt for his family. He would have also been inside had he not gone to the next village to buy some supplies for the renovation of the house his father had been planning for a few months. When he came back he found everything burned and it was only through his friend, Manu, he had come to know of his family’s predicament. The news of their death rattled him, even now. It was tough to move on, especially since the seeds of vengeance had already been planted in his heart. He wished a destruction so terrible that the skies above thundered and the earth beneath him shook. The oath he had taken the townsfolk heard and within their walls, their bones quivered.

He stopped in his tracks, his brows furrowed at the sudden turn of the wind. It was cold and splashed against his face. The pounding sent him to the ground, falling on his back. He muttered a curse, his hands clenching a fistful of the ashen earth. Behind him the raven let out a loud caw.

Fearful, he surveyed the surroundings. All around him was a forestland, one of the few that had remained on earth, that too only because of the many dharnas his family had staged against the infamous companies. Not even that had earned his loved ones any sympathy. No, they had been burned alive just like it was chronicled in their history texts that spoke of a massacre thousands of years ago when the current age was still young in reckoning. That was when the so-called witches were burned on wooden pyres, accused of being the spawn of evil.

In the woods he thought he saw a black smoke slithering like a snake, albeit in the air, weaving in between the trees. He crawled backward towards a broken fence that still to his surprise had remained unburnt. He tried hard to get up but it felt like he had been pinned down by an unseen force that did not want to see him on his feet. Every time he attempted to stand, he was pushed down, although gently. It seemed the force did not want him harmed either.

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He had heard of asuras and danavas in the mythological books his family hoarded. What this smoke-like creature was he perhaps could tell if he could consult them. Alas, they too had burned alongside his family!

Above the moon hid behind dark clouds, its lights slowly withering until an absolute-like darkness settled in his surroundings. He shivered in the increasing cold, but more so because of fear. Heaving a deep sigh, he wondered whether tonight would be the end of him. Poor Kai, his conscious mind taunted.

A pair of gleaming red eyes loomed in front of him. He tried to scream but found no words could leap out of his gaping mouth. His long black hair stood tall as if he had been struck with static. His teeth clashed against each other, making a sound like one would in a severe winter, and his eyes...they looked straight into the crimson, imprisoned within its gaze.

Behind the gleaming eyeballs trailed a smoke-filled body. The creature was shaped like a snake, a huge snake. The smoke twirled around his body like a python would its prey. Fear gripped his heart; his pulse raced and broke all previous limits. His mind conjured all manners of incantations he had learned since childhood and yet none came to his mind now in his time of need. Why had he to die like Karna?

A hiss came out of the mouth of the creature, now open and seeming like one of those black holes that the scientists confirmed were in the void surrounding the earth. It smelled foul.

He prayed to God in what seemed to be his last minutes of living, to save him from the grasp of whatever this thing was in front of him. He heard no answer though. Clenching his hands, he closed his eyes, accepting his imminent death. Perhaps this was a blessing. In death he would not have to go through the torment the death of his family had wreaked upon him for a fortnight. Today he would escape.

The darkness opened up its mouth wide and gulped him inside. For a moment he seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth, with darkness all around, and then the next moment, he stood up tall and stared at the standing ruins. His eyes now gleamed a same red as the creature had. A smile on his face, he strolled towards the woods, the moon showing its face once again in the sky. The darkness vanished in a puff as he made his way into the forests, disappearing in the swath of trees that surrounded his home.

Meanwhile, the raven let out a caw again and flew high into the sky, as if it had seen too much and grew afraid, followed by a huge pack of its kind, numbering in hundreds. Down below in the village the people looked at them and shuddered thinking that the end of the world was nigh. Trumpets bellowed and the village bard sang of the doom that was about to come, shouting out the blame that was assigned to young Kai who they had let live.

I could hear everything. The thoughts of those people. The thoughts of that young man Kai who walked into the maws of a demon. The whole cut scene had terrified me. Now that it had ended, I found myself near a wooden shack. I stood there confused.

A sound alerted me to its presence. From the right, a textbox hovered, long and stretched. It finally stopped in front of me.

I frowned and started to read the text.

This wooden shack is where you shall come every time you wish to fast forward time or save the game or store your inventory. There will be many such wooden shacks in the game, but you will have to buy them. Remember: they cost a hell lot. But this one, it is free. Courtesy of Kai. Go on...go on ahead. Take a peek inside. Perhaps you will find something interesting. Maybe an explanation.

Kai. Wasn’t he the one he had seen a vision of just before he had come here? I gave a low grunt and turned away from the shack only to find that I couldn’t go anywhere other than towards it. It was like an unseen barrier obstructed on every path save the one the funky text had spoken of. Out of options, I strode with brisk paces towards the shack in the middle of a woodland in the midst of nowhere.

The shack was quite smaller compared to his house. It was not even a 1 BHK. A single room but large contained a cot whose bedding was made of straw, a wardrobe made of redwood, and a small table upon which lay a table lamp and beneath it a small letter folded and bound together by a red ribbon. My vision shaded again. Another textbox hovered to my right hand side, this time a rectangle, and in it was written another piece of text.

This shack is your safehouse. In here, nobody shall attack you, nor can you attack anybody. Nobody other than you can come into this place unless you have invited them. However, when and if you attempt to buy other safehouses, I, Kai, shall let you know that others will be disguised. But do not worry. When your eyes shall fall upon the building, you will be able to identify it by its name. And no, it is not The Shack or Safehouse. Have you learned Japanese?

No, I did not learn Japanese.

I read the text again. Nobody shall attack you. What did it mean? If I went outside, would I have cause to worry? Would someone attack me? How would I defend myself? I hardly knew any fighting. What if this...game  needed me to know martial arts? I wouldn’t put it past this man...Kai.

There was another sound. The rectangular textbox was glowing red. Another text had appeared and the font of the previous one had grown smaller.

Here in this box, you shall receive all my messages and instructions. Perhaps even a little help, every now and then. But I wish you would not just stand here thus. Move around. There’s more to be seen in this shack, however abysmal and disappointing it must seem to you.

I moaned. ‘HELPPPPP!!!!’ I shouted at the top of my lungs.

But there was no answer. Not that I had expected it. A cool breeze gusted in through the open door with a whoosh. Save for that sound, everything else was silent.

I moved forward nonetheless, still flabbergasted about my situation. I did not understand any of it. How had I ended up in what seemed to be a computer game as every minute passed? I kept trying to answer this question and every time I did so, a buzzing pain surged through my head.

I am Viraj and I need help getting out of here.