Prologue

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Dark. It was dark.

The boy was staring at nothing. Staring at the dark. It had been this way for a very long time. He lay there, staring at the featureless dark. Perfect stillness, everywhere.

Yet, even though it was perfectly still, it was not perfectly silent. Sometimes, he heard the faintest vestiges of sound from somewhere far away, faded by the distance. If he could muster the energy to strain his ears, he might have been able to hear more clearly…

But he did not have the energy, that time. He could not have turned his head. He could only stare at the dark with half-lidded eyes.

Then, there was a sudden change. An unknown period of time ago, the dark was sometimes replaced with soft light. He saw blurry things he had no name for. The sight of them stirred something rusty and unused inside. That something sparked a faint want within him. A desire to move, to touch. Yet, his body refused to respond. However, the spark had been lit and refused to fade, so he kept on trying.

One day, he managed to move. It was his eyes and only his eyes, but he managed to move them. He focused on the blurry shapes and the blur receded just a little. He faintly felt another thing. It was different from the first. It made him feel a pleasant echo.

That was the beginning. The boy slowly felt more and more things, like he was a…something. A nameless thing with many moving bits inside …a…machine? Yes, a machine that was becoming aware of the many bits and pieces inside itself. Slowly, he was discovering many tiny bits of himself, piece by piece. Maybe once he discovered all the pieces of himself, he would be able to move?

Ah, that was it. He discovered another desire. He wanted to know himself. He had a name once, hadn’t he?

The faint echoes he heard seemed to get more distinct each time he heard them. They were familiar things that lit an ache inside his chest. Was it pleasant or painful? Or perhaps both? Somehow, he yearned these sensations.

Then, his dark world changed again.  A riot of colour bloomed, in shapes and curves that had meanings just out of his comprehension. If only he could remember…

So, he took his time. He watched the new shapes, letting the meanings swim back up from the murky sea in his head. Yet, each time he comprehended, an unsettling feeling grew. He could not stop comprehending, so he grew more and more restless. The moment when he realized the true form of the shapes was the moment he could identify words and images. Now he knew inside him was fear…and a wild, desperate urge.

So, even without full understanding, he redoubled his efforts to move. His body twitched madly. His face contorted with effort.

He could no longer stomach this dark place. It was a prison. If he stayed here, something terrible would happen. Each second that passed only cemented the certainty. He could remember a dark figure that loomed. White, flat teeth over red flesh, stretched in a fearsome rictus. Its hand grasped something heavy, a _____. The first time it fell in this hallucination, he remembered what pain felt like. That was when he became aware of the dull ache that plagued him constantly, slowly driving him mad.

In silent agony, he finally regained the ability to raise his arm. Fingers scrabbled at a shape(button). The words and images exploded into another world!

It was too much! Too much to take in! Too much to understand! He would scream if he could remember how!

And yet…he endured. Slowly, he fought the madness. The ache was no longer so maddening. The looming, toothy monster was no longer vivid. When did the pain start fading? Perhaps it was when he remembered how to read. At first, he recognized only single letters. But single letters built up into words. Words built into phrases, then sentences. Then meaning began to flood in.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

However, even though the pain faded, the urge only grew stronger. The visions of the monster were tied to the urge. He had to face it. Why?

Ah. How could he have forgotten? He had something to ______. If he wasn’t there, then the monster would…

Would…

…It would do something terrible. So terrible that he could feel the phantom pain in his chest.

He regained the ability to be determined (Make a fist. Clench your jaw. You will not shiver.). Why? So that the fear of the monster would not paralyze him. So that his uncertainty would no longer make him stop. Thoughts, images and sounds burst in fits and pops. He was a swirl of memories, disjointed and chaotic. But patterns were forming, rebuilding the machine that was ______.

The boy opened his eyes. He could make sense of what he saw now. He saw a man and a woman. He saw many things that could be men and women, all shapes and features. There was a term to describe such things. _____? No use, he could not grasp it yet. There were screens with texts that described the man and woman he saw. He grew frustrated at the sheer number of words in the screens. He had no time to read all of them! The monster was about to strike!

He caught sight of a box marked with a strange shape. A ____. Oh…this was a dice. What was a dice?

…Something you threw. Why? _____.

…Ah. Luck? What is luck? Still, it felt like something he should press. He had a feeling it was the right thing to do.

The moment he pressed the button, the man and woman in front of him blurred, while the rest disappeared. They seemed to melt into one figure before solidifying. The boy frowned at what was left. It was not…human? It stood upright and had the same number of limbs and fingers as a human. Male, covered in fur, features that were_______. He could not remember how to describe the male figure, save that he did not dislike it.

The moment of curiosity was quashed by the insistent urge inside him. He had no time to waste. The monster was _____. He had to stand up and ________!

He looked up and down before spotting a button that read ‘accept’. Puzzling out, its general meaning took a few precious seconds, but he managed to succeed and slapped his entire palm on it.

This time, he regained the ability to scream in frustration. Why? Why ANOTHER screen? It was blank, even! Oh, there was an accept button! Punching it caused a smaller screen to pop up. What ____ saw on it blew past his impatience.

[Please enter your name]

Ah. He…he had almost forgotten this. Wasn’t reclaiming his name his very first desire? He had neglected it. How was he supposed to answer this question? This time, unlike before, his mind was no longer shackled by lethargy. Wracking his brain brought him to a fuzzy and incomplete memory.

-He had been crying. His nose was stuffy and he sniffled. The woman knelt before him and smiled. It was a warm thing that soothed him. “Don’t cry, Isaac.” She told him, as warm arms gathered him into an embrace-

“Isaac.” He mumbled. “I’m Isaac.”

The screens all disappeared. One last message appeared.

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[Welcome to Myth/Real Online, Isaac!]

And then all was white.