Hinesia's heart hammered against her ribs so hard it hurt. She stumbled toward her desk, half-tripping over a trash bag she hadn't yet taken out. Her hand slammed onto the mouse, shaking. The screen lit up instantly.
Masquerade of Dreams: Shattered.
The game loaded smoothly. The logo pulsed faintly in that blue glow she remembered. The characters, the profile, her name, everything was still there.
She saw her party. Xaessia, Verdamona, Thales and Haruno, one of the meta teams in MoDS, was in front of her.
She stared at their little avatars standing idle in the main hub of the game but there was something wrong. The characters didn't blink in their idle animations like they usually did. They stood still, frozen in faint, pixelated motion, as if waiting for her.
"This can't be real…"
She turned away from the monitor and looked around the room. The faint honk of a taxi outside, the humming of her fridge, it was all Tokyo. She really was back. She grabbed her phone. Notifications flooded the lock screen. Her thumb trembled as she opened the first headline.
"GLOBAL EVENT: 110,637 PEOPLE VANISH SIMULTANEOUSLY AT 12:00 GMT."
Her chest constricted. She scrolled down.
'At exactly 12:00 noon Greenwich Meridian Time, in every city, street, and village across the world, 110,637 people have vanished. This is an unprecedented event that has the world in shock.'
Her lips parted slightly as her pulse roared in her ears. 110,637 people were gone.
The next article showed blurry videos from cities she recognized. New York, Nairobi, Seoul, Cairo, even Tokyo. CCTV footage froze in mid-frame as people blinked out of existence, leaving behind their clothes. Chairs still rocked slightly where people had been sitting. Steam rose from unfinished meals.
She saw another video where someone was screaming inside a gaming café as every player at the back of the room suddenly disappeared at once, headsets dropping to the floor, the keyboards still clacking from ghost inputs. The headline below made her blood run cold:
"THE MASQUERADE CONNECTION — GAMERS VANISH AFTER PLAYING M.O.D.S."
She clicked.
'Unconfirmed reports indicate a large portion of the vanished individuals were logged into Inscoer Interactive's hit game, Masquerade of Dreams Shattered, minutes or hours before disappearance. Authorities are currently questioning company officials. The developers have since been arrested and are under investigation.'
She stared, her hand covering her mouth. She felt like her insides were hollowing out.
Inscoer… that was her favorite studio. It was the company she had defended online countless times. Now they were under investigation for mass disappearance.
She scrolled more. The entire internet had turned into a battlefield of theories:
The Rapture. Quantum migration event. Government experiment gone wrong. A digital curse. Parallel reality recall.
She scrolled past live chat, news anchors speaking with trembling voices and pastors claiming prophecy, scientists pleading for calm, but none of it made sense.
Then, one line from an eyewitness quote made her freeze.
"They were all smiling before they vanished. It was like they saw something beautiful."
She stared at that line for a long time.
Her hand dropped from her phone. She looked down at her trembling fingers.
"I… I was one of them."
She backed away from her desk, breathing hard. She had spent five months in Masquerade of Dreams Shattered training, bleeding and laughing with Phaser and her sisters and enjoying herself as a princess.
And yet, she looked at her phone again. Only twelve hours had passed in her world.
The math didn't even make sense. Her mind tried to reject it and tell her this was a coma dream, or a psychotic break, or some lingering hallucination, but her senses were too clear.
She was back home in Tokyo.
She stared at her hands again. They trembled. Her skin looked pale compared to her dark brown skin, but she could feel the faint thrum of power she had learned to control in Altera Earth.
A flicker of warmth gathered in her palm. It was golden-orange at first, then brightening into living flame. It burned quietly, casting an amber glow across her clean floor.
"No way…"
She could still use Xana. Her throat tightened as the realization set in. The laws of Flux didn't exist here. Earth didn't have powers so how can she use Xana?
Yet… she could still summon fire. That shouldn't be possible.
"So… I brought it back with me."
The flame flickered at her words, responding to her emotion. She closed her hand quickly, extinguishing it. Her palm was fine. Her knees gave out and she sank to the floor.
For a long moment, she just stared at nothing. She was Hinesia, the first princess of the House of Rameses. Now, she ewe the tired, lonely college student in Harajuku with no friends, no direction or reason to get up some days.
Tears filled her eyes.
"I'm really back. I actually made it out..."
But the laugh didn't last because underneath it all was gnawing emptiness. She remembered her companions.
Were they still there? Were they alive? Or were they all gone, like the other 110,000 who never returned? Her chest hurt just thinking about it.
"Maybe this is my trial. Maybe… I'm supposed to choose."
She had to choose between the world that hurt her and the one that gave her meaning. She leaned back against the wall, staring at the ceiling.
"Why would I go back? I have food here. I have powers. I missed this life."
She looked down at her hands again. Power still hummed quietly within her. She could burn through walls and fly if she wanted. She was the only human on Earth who could do that now.
She could be a god here.
"Why would I ever go back to that cursed world?"
Silence answered her and yet, her hands still trembled because deep down, beneath the fear, the loneliness and the safety, she missed them. Home was safe, yes. But it was also empty.
And as she sat there, the faint blue glow from her monitor flickered once more, lighting her tired face. The Masquerade of Dreams: Shattered login screen pulsed faintly again.