I pulled the glasses from my face: cracked and crooked as they were, and tossed them to the ground, stomping on them until there was nothing left but glass shards and bent plastic.

After that brief moment of cathartic release, I looked around. The door that had been there had vanished, and in its place were all the items I had tossed through. I gathered them up and put them inside of my car out of the rain.

“Where is the money?” I asked my Patron as I was setting the last of the things into the back seat of my car.

There’s a wallet function on the Shard.

“Really?”

I pulled the Shard out of my pocket, as I sat in the front seat of the car. I put my bag down in the seat next to me, went through it, pulled out a snack, and ate it. $230 was the amount shone on the Shard.

“How do I take it out?”

Just say the amount of money you want, and it will appear in front of you.

“So if I say, ‘I want a single quarter,’ it will ap—“

Before I even finished the question, a single quarter materialized in the air in front of me and fell into my lap.

“...do you know how much this will affect inflation?”

Who cares. The world’s ending.

I suppose that’s a pragmatic attitude to have. I set the quarter in one of the cup holders, and press my head against the steering wheel. The rain battered the old metal roof incessantly. I pulled out my phone and entered the word, “Efra,” into the search engine.

To my surprise, several threads had already been made on Reddit and 4chan talking about having strange dreams or getting strange messages on their phones or computers.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Most people thought it was some sort of ARG; those who didn’t receive the message, and weren’t chosen. I searched around for a bit until I found a subreddit someone had set up: r/WarEfra. There were a couple dozen people online at the time. I’m sure that number will grow over time. Most of the threads were people asking questions about the supposed game

“What is this?” Was the most common thread type

“What build should I do?”

I opened this thread and several people were berating the asker, ‘How would we know,’ ‘Game’s not even out yet,’ ‘It’s not a game,’ the little, dumb arguments that seem to spark from nowhere.

“Has anyone actually gone in?”

‘Too scared LOL,’ or some variation thereof was the most common answer. ‘Gone in where?’ Was the other most common answer.

I decided to create a new account under the name, ‘burgeoningmage,’ and submitted my pictures.

“I went in: here are some pictures.” That was the name of my thread.

It would probably take a while before my post was accepted.

“Hey, did I level up?” I asked as I noticed I wasn’t near as exhausted as I was when I left the door.

You did.

“Then dump all the points into magic.”

My magic stat increased to 7, and I felt a burning in my core momentarily.

“One more level until I can get another skill?”

Yes.

“So, are you the one who notifies me whenever I complete a quest or gain a stat point, or is that something else?”

No no. The quest, leveling, and skill leveling are all automatic. It’s more like I’m using a chat function to speak to you.

A chat function, huh? I suppose that means that I’m actually speaking to an individual being. I toyed with the thought that whatever was speaking to me was a collection of spirits. Like a group call center or something similar. I dismissed that notion then.

“So...can you change it so that I know when I level up? Simply relying on intuition could be detrimental.”

I can.

"Thank you."

I scroll through the phone for a bit, before I stretch out my back.

“I suppose it’s time to head back out, huh?” I muttered to no one in particular.

I take a deep breath and finish off the food I had taken out before repacking my bag, and take another deep drink from the water bottle before pulling up my hood and stepping out of the car. I look up and down the street once more. From all these doors, countless monsters just like the ones I had faced would pour out. Would Earth end up like Efra? Shrouded in that ever fog? Would the people of Earth end up like the cat creatures I had seen? Dead, and left to rot where they died?

In my mind’s eye, I see a great army of monstrous forms sweeping through Porterville and all my neighbors; the children that would play basketball up and down the street, the young couple that would walk their dog occasionally by my house. Even my mother and father. My brother, and sister-in-law. All would die. All would end up like the inhabitants of that city.

I was tired. That was true, but I didn’t have the benefit of time on my side. A little over two years if all things go correctly. I pulled my bag out of the front seat, and toss it on, and took up one of the spears in the back; using it as a cane to lean on as I walked to the closest door.

It’s a level three, embedded into the concrete pole of a streetlight. It was a solid door. Made of stone and iron. As I stood in front of it, I pulled the wand out of my pocket and tapped my head.

“You that bind them all, protect me from all that might do me harm.”

I could see clearly now, the circle carved into the wood glowed a dim white. As the invisible shield of the Repel formed, it caught the yellow light of the street lamp and reflected it back a brief flash of gold.

The plan was to close them all on one side of the street and move to the other after that. Two days. That’s the internal time limit I set for myself to finish this street. I steeled myself and stepped back into Efra.