CHAPTER 1 — Ashes of the Old World
The real world had stopped pretending to care.
District 12 sagged under its own exhaustion, a knot of crumbling towers and washed-out lights buzzing like insects trapped in dying glass. Smog clung to the sky in a permanent bruise. Streets echoed with the dragging footsteps of people too tired to be alive but too stubborn to die.
Wade walked through it with the calm of someone who had long accepted reality's failure. Not cynical—just logical.
Hope was an inefficient investment.
He reached the capsule-housing block, a towering graveyard of metal pods stacked like coffins. Most of the pods were occupied, their inhabitants already asleep inside Nexum—the virtual world humanity now clung to like a lifeboat. Nexum promised sensation, escape, meaning. Reality offered none.
Wade entered pod C-402 and picked up the neural band. Cold metal. Sharp needles.
He didn't hesitate.
The band locked around his skull, and the world went black.
"CONNECTING TO NEXUM…NEURAL LINK ESTABLISHED.WELCOME BACK, WADE — CLASS: ASSASSIN"
When vision returned, he was no longer in District 12.
He stood on a rooftop overlooking Duskmire, one of Nexum's darker cities—where fog rolled like something with intent and neon lanterns flickered between colors that didn't quite exist in the real world.
Wade's cloak hung around him like a breathing shadow. His daggers sat at his wrists, waiting.
A whisper crackled through his private channel.
"Contract for you," the broker said. "Warrior in gold armor. North market. Should be easy."
Wade didn't respond. He simply leapt.
The rooftops blurred beneath him. Rain slid over his hood as his mind mapped every angle, every escape route, every variable. The warrior plowed through crowds below, loud and oblivious—an easy equation.
Wade landed behind him without disturbing a single drop of water.
A single measured slice.A soft gasp.
The warrior burst into blue particles.
TARGET ELIMINATEDREWARD ACQUIRED
Wade barely looked at the notification.
But then the sky tore open.
A blazing fissure ripped through the clouds—white light spilling like a wound in reality. The city froze. Even the NPCs halted mid-breath.
A metallic vibration rolled through Duskmire, deep enough to feel in the bones.
And then the message appeared:
SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT:PERMA-LINK ENABLED.DEATH IN NEXUM WILL RESULT IN REAL-WORLD NEURAL SHUTDOWN.
Players screamed. The sky flickered.Reality bent.
Wade stood still, absorbing the data, analyzing probability, discarding panic.
Then he saw her.
A girl wrapped in white fire at the far end of the street—looking at the broken sky with the same unsettling calm he felt.
A glitch juddered through Nexum.
And Wade understood something instantly, sharply:
Someone had changed the rules. And Nexum had just closed its hand around every player inside.