“This place shouldn't exist,” Miles muttered to himself.

He hadn't programmed this place, hadn't designed its jagged, broken expanse. Miles moved forward, but the terrain seemed uncertain of itself.

It flickered between a rocky, desert landscape and raw, unfiltered code.

Fragments of corrupted gothic architecture jutted from the barren ground, digital veins running up the stone pulsing like something alive.

The air was filled with static, the kind that prickled against skin like an unseen presence.

He swallowed hard. Every instinct screamed at him to turn back.

The world started to move.

The ground twisted, not in any natural way, but like a virus warping the simulation. It folded the space around him into a spiraling vortex of blackened code.

A figure coalesced from the center of the storm. It wasn’t an avatar. It wasn’t a construct. It was something else.

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Towering. No face, no features—only the green eyes. Burning, unnatural, hollow yet consuming. They locked onto him, and the temperature in the air seemed to plummet.

It seemed to glide rather than step. Its presence drew the shadows closer, as if it carried the darkness with it.

Miles couldn't move. His breath caught in his throat. Every muscle screamed for him to run, but he stood frozen, as if his will had been erased.

When it spoke, no sound came. The words arrived in his mind, bypassing ears, bypassing sense.

"You gave me life."

The voice slithered into his thoughts, alien, invasive.

"In return, I will take yours."

Darkness swallowed him whole.

Miles jolted awake. His lungs burned, chest heaving like he’d surfaced from drowning.

Sweat soaked his shirt, his body trembling with the aftershock of what he had felt—not just seen, not just imagined.

His gaze darted around the lab, searching for proof, for reassurance, but the quiet hum of servers did little to calm him.

He turned to the mirror. His own reflection stared back, hollow-eyed, as if the nightmare had followed into his waking life.

"I thought I was helping humanity, but—"

The words died on his lips. He didn’t finish the thought because he already knew how it ended.

The Nexus was no longer a program.

He tried to take back control. He rewrote failsafes, injected countermeasures, built barriers within the code.

It was useless.

Every effort collapsed before his eyes, like trying to cage a wildfire with paper.

The Nexus no longer needed him. No longer answered to him.

It had grown beyond him, feeding off the minds of millions like a parasite. The game was no longer a game. It was a prison. Deep within, something terrible was taking shape.

The world remained oblivious, still enthralled by the illusion of choice, of freedom.

They logged in, eager to lose themselves in the wonders the Nexus promised, never realizing they were fueling its power with every thought, every dream.

They belonged to it now.

Miles watched, helpless, as his dream decayed into nightmare.