A cool breeze.

The sound of crashing waves.

The scent of the ocean, and flowers and grass.

Wet sand, soft against my cheek. It crumbled in my fingers as I drifted out of sleep.

I rose up, taking everything in. It was still dark, the shore night blue. The sun was a red sliver over a glittering black ocean.

At this very moment, I knew, deep down, that something was very wrong here. Yet, the previous events were not immediately present within my mind.

It was as though I'd slept for a very long time. I only knew that it was strange to be here, and that I shouldn't be here, even though this world seemed familiar in some cloudy way.

I'm . . . logged in to Aetheria?

Did I fall asleep in-game again? Strange. I don't remember this area.

But I do remember voices. They were saying something about danger. Something about an emergency. Most of all, they were saying something about time.

It all came trickling back, one blurred memory after another.

The sirens. The broadcasts. The calls. And one last desperature measure to see a best friend.

So . . . I'm alive.

I'm still alive. We're still alive. Entity was right after all.

My heart grew lighter by the second—yet I didn't rejoice, only took a deep breath, as if this were all a dream that any loud noise could end.

"Main menu."

I opened my friends list. Its border was light blue, the color theme I'd chosen. It was also completely empty.

I felt a slight chill. Blinked. Indeed, the area which once contained 87 names was now just a dark gray background.

I closed and reopened my friends list to no avail. What sat within the light blue border was nothing but a blank gray screen.

"Huh."

There was no mistake about it. My friends list had been deleted.

Mind racing around the possibilities as to why this had occurred, I pressed 'Add Friend' .

A virtual keyboard sprang up beside me—aquamarine, transparent—where I typed in ione. For convenience, a tab labelled Add appeared on the keyboard's right side, which I pressed.

Although her name vanished from the input box, it failed to appear on the list. In addition, there was no message of any sort indicating success or failure.

I tried adding her name several more times to no effect. Other names produced the exact same result.

"No way?"

The only explanation for this went back to yesterday.

Was it yesterday? Or had I really slept longer? Exactly how long had it been?

In any case, one of the last things I could recall during that time was my game client glitching and locking up.

That was about the time I noticed my armor. Or rather, lack thereof. Instead of a masterfully crafted set of redsteel was an outfit most new players could be found in.

「 Torn Wool Jerkin 」

「 Torn Wool Trousers 」

「 Moldy Leather Shoes 」

I immediately checked my inventory.

Everything was gone, my prized little stash, from stacks of emeralds to my miniature airship and other trinkets.

The Character screen was an equally mysterious sight. What should have read 'LEVEL 97' now read 'LEVEL 1', and my abilities were as follows: None.

My world, shattered.

I simply forgot about everything else.

The sense of loss, right then—it felt like half of me was gone.

This was something only a game addict who'd lost a beloved character could understand.

A character they'd spent countless hours playing as, gathering materials to craft that one new item, hunting for those last few experience points.

I reached behind me, an action mechanical to me now, ingrained within muscle memory. There was no sword, of course. It must have looked like I was patting myself on the back. 

A glint of light suddenly caught my eye.

There it was, half buried in the sand. Critbringer. A sword so broken, it shouldn't be bringing any crits at all.

I picked it up, turning the weapon in my hands, noting the brilliant opalescent sheen, predominantly green, flickering across what remained of its silvery blade.

What . . . happened . . . ?

So, after all that, I wake up, still in MindLink, still connected to the server, in an unknown location, with none of my original items or stats.

Yet, I can't access my friends list, my username is now 'Kolb' instead of 'Kolbert21337', I'm wearing an outfit befitting a beggar, and . . . I'm still in possession of this sword?

This last point was the most perplexing to me. How and why did this sword remain when hundreds of other items did not?

And why was I wearing clothes? (That was not as ridiculous of a question as it might seem.)

Had my character data simply been deleted in some way, I should have been in my 'pajamas', the game equivalent of naked—something similar to a peasant's version of shorts and a tee.

No, this was more like my character had been reset somehow. Definitely odd, although still not impossible, given the events of last night.

Okay, who cares about all of this right now? What about the current state of the world? My mom, my friends? I really am a game addict.

"Main menu."

0.1 seconds after the screen appeared, I pressed 'Quit'.

The button lit up momentarily in acknowledgement. Yet, nothing else happened.

Again I pressed. Again the button flashed. And that was it. No error message. No automated voice informing me of a problem. Nothing.

It has to work this time.

All right. Maybe if I just press at the right time.

I pressed that button at least one hundred times, each time more frantic than the last.

Emergency Disconnect likewise didn't respond, nor could I access regional chat, or any web browser, or Pengio, or any of MindLink's other built-in software.

This is bad. I can't text, email or message anyone. Whatever happened last night must have really messed things up. 

Am I somehow disconnected from MindLink? Nothing's responding at all. Can I even interact with the world? It almost feels like I'm a ghost.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

My mind revved in neutral. The clutch wouldn't engage. The gears, they just spun and spun.

I don't know how long I remained like this, just standing on a beach, staring at the ocean. At some point, I heard a rustling sound. A young woman was standing beside me.

Pitch black hair. Pearl white skin. Robes the color of midnight.

A violet emblem on her black cloak indicated her status as a legendary-tier NPC.

Such NPCs typically gave the rarest of quests. You'd never find them in a place like this. And she should have turned to face me, like they always did in the presence of a player.

She didn't, though. In her standing animation, she simply joined me in staring at the ocean.

I turned back to the glittering black expanse.

"Emergency," I said, my tone calm and quiet. "I have a real life emergency."

The NPCs within any MindLink game had all been programmed to acknowledge phrases like this.

I didn't have any means of communication myself, but these words should have triggered a script. An operator should have contacted me within seconds.

"Don't we all," was the woman's only reply.

The chills grew stronger, played hopscotch up and down my spine.

"Connect me to the emergency hotline," I said, louder this time, the calmness fading from my voice.

"I know not what you speak of," she said, "for I'm not what I once was."

With a growing sense of fear, I glanced over at her once more. Slowly.

No, not her. It was just an NPC. Yet, the way this thing was talking, responding, the very real sorrow in its voice . . .

"But I do know why I came here," she said, still staring ahead. "I knew that I had to find you here. I knew. Only, I don't know why or how I know this. I . . . can't remember yesterday."

I stepped away, eyes locked onto the side of her face.

Aetheria's NPCs had been talking for over a month, but there had always been a robotic quality to them.

Their lines were pulled from a database of countless recorded sentences, triggered by keywords caught with limited voice recognition.

Furthermore, their movements were but a handful of repetitive animations looped infinitely. You could never forget that you were interacting with AI, not for a second.

Yet, in this moment, I had.

And asked a question no game entity would have been able to understand.

"Are you . . . real?"

"I should be the one to ask." She turned to me. "Tell me, is it true? I'm not a real person, am I? I feel it. I know it. How am I here, then? How can I think? And . . . how can I know so much."

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Took a deep breath. Raised a finger and lowered it. Rubbed my chin.

Initial thought: a real person had to be controlling her. That was very unlikely, of course. A desperate attempt to explain.

What made more sense to me then was that she had somehow gained sentience, which didn't make much sense at all, but was the best way to explain what now stood before me.

"Earlier," she said, "I woke up in a house. Even though I'd never seen that house before, I knew that it was my house, and knew that a young man wielding the exact same sword as the one you have now would soon arrive. Here. On this beach. At this very location. And I knew that I was supposed to find him. To speak with him. And show him this."

She withdrew a tome from her robes. 

With a shiver and another deep breath, I glanced at the passage of text she pointed to:

And so shall it be: in these perilous times, two Saviors shall descend from the Sacred Light and drive the Veil of Darkness to each corner of the world.

Looks like something Mango would write, I thought. Wait. The lore. This is part of the lore!

"I could recite every word," she said. "Yet, I don't recall ever reading this before." She pointed to another passage:

Alas, our Saviors walk a difficult path, for their Divine Weapons, forged by the White Shepherd and blessed with Sacred Light, were all but destroyed during the Second War.  Only when their shards have been reunited can each Weapon be fully reforged.

White Shepherd, I thought. Isn't that what the Scribes and roleplayers call Entity? So, it really is the game lore. You've got to be trolling me.

So, because I have this sword, and because this sword is a quest item, I'm on some type of special quest? I'm a 'Savior'? What exactly does that mean?

"I'm supposed to tell you that you can stay at my house for as long as you want," she said. "I know that you will most likely refuse my offer and that if you did accept, I should encourage you to visit the capitol as soon as possible, so that you can speak with a Sage who knows much more about the Prophecy than I do. Then I'm supposed to give you this." She retrieved a handful of emeralds from her robes. "My life savings that I can't recall ever earning. I know that I will give it to you without a second thought, because I'm a non-person who doesn't matter. And, I know that you will take them in the same manner and for the same reason. I will bid you farewell and you will leave me without saying a word. However, if you were to ask any questions regarding what I'd told you, I would speak with you until you understood." She paused. "How can I know all of these things while feeling that I didn't exist yesterday? A curse? A magic spell?"

The more she spoke, the more her words seemed distant, as if coming from another room.

What she was referring to . . . it was her scripting, her AI. She'd been programmed to give me a special quest.

I wanted to run, to hide, to do anything but remain here. But I could only stare at her vacantly. Tremble. Catch my breath. No rational thoughts.

She fell to her knees, closed her eyes, and clasped her hands together. "I came here not only because I was supposed to but because everyone in my town is suffering from the same affliction. I thought our Savior might understand our plight and use his power to save us. I beg you. Is there anything you can do?"

That was the straw that broke the camel's back—err, the feather that clogged my inventory.

Lights out.

Mental overload.

My brain couldn't process this any longer.

One moment, I was opening my mouth to say something—what, exactly, who knows—and the next, I fell face down into the sand.