CHAPTER 1 — CONNECTION LOST
"No, no, no—DON'T PUSH, YOU IDIOT—"
Noctis slammed his keyboard, chair creaking as his character ragdolled off a cliff.
The screen flashed:
YOU DIED.
"MAEL!" Noctis yelled into his headset. "I said pull back! That was a Souls boss setup!"
Mael's laughter crackled through Discord.
"Skill issue."
"Skill issue my ass. That boss had more phases than my depression."
They were playing—what else—some brutally unfair survival game. Hunger meter. Sanity meter. Permadeath. The kind of game Noctis loved because it punished stupidity.
And rewarded preparation.
"Run it back?" Mael asked.
"Yeah," Noctis sighed, rubbing his face. "One more. Then sleep. I've got work tomorrow."
The clock read 11:59 PM.
The loading screen froze.
"…Uh," Mael said. "You lagging?"
Noctis frowned. His monitor flickered.
The room went quiet.
Too quiet.
Then—
The sky outside his window turned red.
Not sunset red.
Not warning red.
Blood-red.
The color of an open wound.
"What the fu—"
The first drop hit the glass.
Then another.
Then thousands.
Blood.
Rain.
Actual, viscous, streaking blood pouring from the sky like the universe had been gutted.
Noctis stood up so fast his chair fell over.
"MAEL," he said sharply. "Tell me you see this."
"…Noctis," Mael whispered. "Why is the sky—"
The world detonated.
Not with sound.
With light.
For less than a second—less than a frame—Noctis saw something impossible burn across his vision:
A supernova, erupting somewhere deep in the Milky Way Galaxy, space folding like paper, radiation screaming outward faster than thought.
Then—
Everything changed.
No countdown.
No warning.
No transition.
One second: gamer, human, bored.
Next second:
Reality had updated.
The power went out.
The rain stopped.
Silence fell—heavy, suffocating.
Noctis's monitor was black. His phone was dead. His headset crackled once—
"—Noct—"
Then nothing.
He stood frozen, heart pounding so hard it felt like it might burst.
"…Okay," he breathed. "Okay. This is either a nightmare, a cosmic prank, or the worst patch notes in human history."
He moved to the window.
The streets below were… wrong.
People stood still.
Not frozen.
Waiting.
Then one of them twitched.
Another bent backward at an angle joints were not supposed to bend.
A scream ripped through the night.
Then another.
Then many.
Noctis backed away from the window slowly.
His gamer brain kicked in before panic could.
"Rule one," he muttered. "If the cutscene looks like Resident Evil, don't fucking investigate."
Something slammed into the building across the street.
A man—or what used to be one—climbed the wall with jerking, insect-like movements.
"…Yeah," Noctis said hoarsely. "Definitely not a mod."
He grabbed his bag.
Knife.
Crowbar.
Water.
Notebook.
He hesitated, then shoved the notebook inside.
"Congratulations," he whispered to himself. "You wanted a hardcore survival experience."
A distant roar echoed through the city.
Noctis swallowed.
"…You just forgot to turn off Ironman mode."
Outside, the red sky pulsed once—then darkened.
The apocalypse had begun.
And it had taken less than a second.