Azreal stands unmoving for over twenty minutes, ensuring no one comes close to the body. He notices a few people approach, wondering what happened, but quickly leave once they are hit with the smell. A few more minutes pass with Azreal patiently waiting before he sees a familiar figure approaching the scene.

A woman, the same age as Azreal, twenty-one, strutted towards him. Her full figure, complemented by her blazing red hair tied into a messy ponytail. Her beautiful blue eyes reflect the world around her, giving the feeling that her eyes see directly into Azreal’s soul. Her full pink lips turn into a smile once she notices Azreal standing next to the crime scene.

If anyone saw the way she was walking towards Azreal, one might believe she was going to arrest or detain the young man due to the speed at which she approached, and the young man looked like he had done something wrong and felt guilty, struggling to hold her gaze.

As she approached, she spread her arms wide and quickly enveloped Azreal in a tight and warm embrace. The two polarising characters drew the attention of the few people remaining on the skybridge. One, a sickly and weak-looking man, while the woman, currently dressed in local police clothes with a small badge pinned to her chest, says ‘Detective: Silver’.

“Hug me back! Azreal, it's rude not to hug your childhood friend after not seeing me for years!” Kerian pouted and stomped her foot. “Kerian, this is not the time or place for this; there’s a dead body right there,” Azreal spoke through gritted teeth as Kerian squeezed him in her tight embrace.

“Oh… Right, I just got caught up seeing my little brother from the orphanage after so long,” Kerian smiles before breaking the hug and straightening herself up. “Azreal, I am going to ask you a few questions, okay?” Her previous kind and loving demeanour immediately nowhere to be found.

Azreal and Kerian spend the next five to ten minutes running through basic questioning, such as how he found the body, whether he touched the body or anything else at the scene, or if he saw anything? As Kerian questioned Azreal, her partner, Alec Hunter, a grizzled man in his late fifties, cordoned off the dead body and began to investigate the scene.

“Okay, one more question, and then we are done, okay? Why were you crossing the bridge today, Azreal?” Kerian asked, showing a keen interest in his response. “I-I broke my phone and needed a new one, and this is the closest store to my home,” Azreal stuttered. “What? Do you live here? Isn’t this still housing provided by the orphanage?” Kerian asked with a quizzical look on her face.

Azreal sighed before taking a big breath, “Yes, it is Kerian, the orphanage offered me somewhere to live for cheap, due to my inability to work…you know with my body being as fucked as it is.” Azreal’s mood plummeted after being reminded that a friend from the orphanage, who clearly had her life together, wouldn’t understand what it's like being so ill that he couldn’t get a job, let alone keep one.

“That’s so lovely of Mrs. Peterson, she really is the kindest soul, isn’t she?” with a smile, infectious as ever. She took a step forward and wrapped her arms around Azreal, pulling him into another warm embrace. “Don’t look so down, Zeal, I would’ve helped you however I could, no matter what you needed or the situation you are in,” Kerian pulled back from the embrace slightly to look into Azreal’s eyes.

“I can’t now because I’m at work, but next time I have a day off work, I am coming around and seeing your place!” She smiled again before breaking the embrace. “Now, I need to actually get back to work and investigate what has happened here, or my title as detective might be in danger!” She giggled before walking towards the scene.

Azreal, who was currently in a bit of a dazed state from the high energy Kerian bombarded him with, stood there for a few moments, dreaming of a life that could’ve been. At one point in Azreal’s life, before he became so sickly and gaunt, he had a crush on Kerian. She was like the blazing sun, and he wanted to be just like Icarus and fly in the sky to bask in her beautiful warmth.

Coming back to reality, Azreal began to walk away after a final goodbye with Kerian and Detective Hunter. Azreal, distracted by the ever-consuming thought that he will never be able to stand next to someone as bright as her, makes his way back to his home. He enters the elevator, selects floor twenty five, and a few seconds later, exits the elevator.

The man guarding standing outside the doorway was no longer there, and no sounds could be heard from inside the room as he passed. ‘Must have finished hurting her, I hope she is okay,’ Azreal thought while walking past the apartment with a troubled look on his face.

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As Azreal wrestled with his thoughts, a bitter realisation washed over him. "Have I become so fearful, so indifferent, that the sight of injustice leaves me paralyzed?" He chastised himself with a harshness born of frustration. "Enough hiding, enough excuses. My afflictions, my scars don't define my ability to act, to make a difference. Kerian, with her unwavering courage, would extend her hand without a second thought. It's time I learned from her example."

With a heart fortified by resolve and a newfound purpose, Azreal approached the door once more. The weight of his decision made his steps heavy. He knocked gently, three times, a symbolic gesture of his intent to breach the walls of isolation and fear that stood between them.

"Hey, Is there anything, anything at all, I can do to help?" Azreal's voice, though firm, carried a warmth, an olive branch extended in earnest. He leaned in, ear pressed against the cold surface of the door, hoping for a response. Soon, the sound of movement, faint but unmistakable, stirred from within and followed by a voice so frail. It was as if the very act of speaking threatened to shatter it completely "Please... I've nothing left. They've stripped me of everything, leaving only myself and this trashed apartment I call home. Why can't you just leave me alone and leave me to sit in my own filth?"

Rage flared within Azreal, a fierce, protective anger not for himself but for the voice on the other side of the door. 'These predators, preying on the vulnerable, if only I was strong enough to do anything about it.' Azreal made a silent pledge. 'When I have the ability to cut this filth from the world, I will tear them from this earth, so people like you may begin to heal', a promise etched in the core of his being.

"I can feel the sorrow in your voice, I know you don’t want to speak to me, but I am Azreal, I live in an apartment just a few doors down, I know there is nothing I can do for you now. But I still refuse to be a bystander in your hour of need. Please, let me help, in any way I can."

A silence fell between them, heavy with unspoken fears and the weight of unseen tears. Then, the voice whispered back, a mere shadow of sound, "Azreal... your kindness may warm a man, but it's too late. I'm trapped in a nightmare of my own making, and I fear it will be the death of me. Don't let my darkness swallow you too."

"Leaving you to suffer is not an option," Azreal insisted, his determination unwavering. "We may not know each other, but at this moment, you're not alone. I'm here, and together, we can find a way." Azreal's vow hung in the air, a pledge not just to the woman behind the door but to himself. No longer would he allow his fears, his insecurities, to dictate his actions. Today, he stood as a beacon of hope, however dim, in the pervasive shadows of despair.

Azreal still had his ear to the door, trying to hear her weak voice, but all that could be heard was the sound of slight movement and the sound of furniture moving. Two minutes later, there was nothing but silence, ‘Well, at least I tried, I hope she is going to be okay. I wish I could do more for her,’ Azreal thought as he headed down the hallway.

Azreal made his way into his apartment, quickly locking the door behind him, and made his way to his bed, taking off his coat and hanging it in his closet on the way. Azreal reaches for his new phone and decides to double-check his messages. Sure enough, to his dismay, the text from the system is sitting in his inbox. Azreal reads it again and confirms that it is asking him to inject his phone with a small amount of Qi.

‘I must be crazy, thinking this is all real…’ Azreal thought, while he attempted to sit in the lotus position. Struggling due to inflexibility, it takes Azreal a few attempts to get it correct, but on the fourth try, he believes he is sitting how everyone else was during the examination. ‘It might help if I knew what I was doing!’ He shouted internally after an hour passed.

Time flew by incredibly quickly, as Azreal attempted to generate Qi and move it into his phone. After another thirty minutes passed, Azreal decided to stop as he hadn’t made any progress and knew it would be useless to continue. Azreal then began to search for information on the internet that could assist him in this world, cultivation techniques, items with Qi said to be imbued, anything that could lead to more information.

What did surprise Azreal was the feedback from the world on the new sensation ‘Heavenly Universe’, thousands of news articles across every media giant Azreal knew of were all talking about the VR world and how amazing it was to experience the Heavenly Universe for the first time.

‘Heavenly Universe: Better than real life!’

‘VR takes the world by storm!’

‘Who created the VR ‘Heavenly Universe’?’

‘People worldwide marvelled at the new VR Tech!’

Article after Article, discussing how real the VR system felt, how lifelike the NPC’s were, and still no company claiming to have built the technology. ‘It didn't appear out of thin air’ azreal’s thought running wild with theories. Another sigh escaped Azreal’s lips, ‘I must be going crazy, there is no way any of this is real.’ After going down the rabbit hole of internet forums, Azreal spent the next few hours searching through dodgy webpages and crawling forums, only to solidify his idea that there was no evidence online of any real world cultivation abilities, aside from the usual, tin foil hat theorists, and he wouldn’t find anything useful if he kept searching.

A few forum posts, in particular, interested Azreal, multiple people claimed that they didn't need to eat or drink while they overstayed their time limit inside Heaven’s Universe, and once they returned to earth, they had their blood work done in fear of malnourishment or any issues with overuse of the headgear. After testing these people found the system had actually maintained their body and there were no health indicators of the system being dangerous! Of course, this caused great debate between commenters, and no one side could ever convince the other. This was the tipping point for Azreal’s excitement; he had been thinking that he could stay in the VR for longer periods of time and was planning to test it with his next dive into the game.

Azreal, wanting to test the limits and find the truth of these articles, decided he would stay inside for three days. a disturbing thought ran through his mind, as he donned the vr headgear, ‘If he were to die, at least his death could serve to warn others. And really, who would miss him?’ A few moments later, Azreal put his phone on charge, as he was entering Heaven's Universe, A small smile appeared across his face as the anticipation and excitement to return to his new world.