Whoosh, whoosh.
A man in a yellow hazmat suit, lungs heaving like a bellows, sprinted through a nightmare of architectural monotony. The space was a labyrinthine sprawl of rooms draped in moldy, jaundiced wallpaper. Overhead, fluorescent tubes hummed with a nauseating electrical buzz—a sound that usually signaled the onset of madness. He had no time to worry about the sensory assault, however, because a three-meter-tall Entity was hot on his heels.
Damn it, why is there an Entity here?!
The creature was a grotesque mass of wire-like tissues, its spindly, metallic "hands" clawing desperately at the air behind him. A piercing, distorted scream erupted from its head—a black, wooden-fish-shaped void that lacked any visible throat.
He didn't dare look back. He didn't dare slow down. Adrenaline acted as a temporary shield against exhaustion, but the sheer hopelessness of the escape made him feel as if he were about to be swallowed by the void. Just as his heart reached its breaking point, a wooden door appeared in his line of sight—an anomaly set against the endless yellow wall.
A door?!
A final surge of survival instinct forced his leaden legs into a frantic sprint. Entering an unknown door in the Backrooms was a gamble with death, but staying in this hallway was a certainty. He threw his entire weight against the wood. In an instant, the roar of the Entity vanished. He crashed onto the ground, the impact rattling his bones. Lying on his back, he stared up at a hazy, pixelated sky through the fogged lens of his mask.
"I survived..."
The throbbing ache in his muscles pinned him to the floor. "What is this place? There's no record of this in the database... Is it a new Level?"
As he struggled to catch his breath, a voice thick with dramatic, suppressed anger drifted from behind him.
"I was imprisoned for ten thousand years... and then banished from my homeland."
The man froze.
"Now you dare to trespass into my territory? You are seeking your own death!"
Hearing the chuunibyou theatrics, the man in the yellow suit remained motionless. A young man stood over him—an Asian male in his early twenties, dressed in a simple blue T-shirt and ordinary jeans. He looked down with a terrifyingly calm expression.
The man didn't laugh at the edgy speech. He didn't even breathe. For no other reason than the fact that a longsword—constructed from jagged, gray-white cubical blocks—was pressed firmly against his throat.
"Let me introduce myself. My name is Sylas, and welcome to my Minecraft."
Being welcomed with a blade to the jugular was a first for the survivor, and he hoped it would be the last. Yet, something was deeply wrong. The youth wasn't speaking English—it was a language the survivor didn't recognize—and yet, the meaning was transmitted directly into his mind with perfect clarity.
Careful not to nick his own throat, the survivor adjusted his mindset. "Are you a Wanderer? What Level is this?"
The environment was a stark departure from the endless corridors of Level 0.
"Wanderer" was the common parlance for those poor souls who accidentally slipped out of reality and into the Backrooms—the "Inner World" relative to the Frontrooms (the real world). Whether by no-clipping through a solid wall or an unfortunate stumble into a localized glitch in space-time, they all ended up in the same yellow hell.
Sylas looked at the "Little Yellow Man" with suppressed excitement. He had been "kicked" into this strange dimension a week ago. He had tried everything to escape this gray, mist-shrouded Biome, but the Bedrock beneath his feet was unbreakable.
It was a literal Minecraft mechanic: a block that could not be destroyed or mined in Survival Mode.
Sylas wasn't just a survivor; he had become a living avatar of Steve. He had a Health Bar, a Hunger Meter, a Backpack, and a Hotbar. He possessed every capability of the legendary game character, except he wasn't made of blocks himself.
"Where is this? I told you already. This is my Minecraft."
Sylas looked at the protective mask obscuring the man's face and smiled thinly. "Now, sit up. Remove the mask. I need to see if you're actually human."
From the moment the man crashed through the door, his hazmat suit had triggered a sense of recognition in Sylas. When the stranger used the term "Wanderer," Sylas's suspicions were nearly confirmed.
The man hesitated, then slowly reached up to pull back his hood and mask. He was a handsome European-American in his thirties with blond hair and blue eyes, though his face was deathly pale and his eyes were webbed with broken capillaries.
"Very good. Now, I ask, you answer. Don't make this difficult." Sylas kept the Stone Sword pressed against the man's neck, his eyes calculating. To Sylas, this man wasn't just a survivor—he was a potential resource node.
"What is your name? You can lie if you want; I just need something to call you. And where do you come from?"
"Eri. You can call me Eri," the man stammered, his eyes locked on the pixelated edge of the blade. "I came from Level 0. I was being hunted by an Entity and found the door. If I've trespassed, I apologize."
Level 0. Sylas's eyes narrowed as the pieces clicked. So, the Backrooms aren't just an internet creepypasta.
He remembered the 4chan posts—the yellow wallpaper, the hum-buzz, the warning that no-clipping out of reality would lead to a place of "six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms."
I've already become Steve, so traveling to the Backrooms world doesn't seem so far-fetched. The only problem is which version of the lore this is…
The various interpretations—the Wikidot archives, the Fandom lore, the Kane Pixels tapes—all had conflicting rules. "Little Yellow Men" usually pointed toward the Kane version, but the Kane version didn't use the "Level" system. The overlap was an anomaly.
The Stone Sword in his hand suddenly vanished into his Inventory.
Sylas extended a hand toward the survivor, his expression shifting from a cold strategist to a welcoming host—though the dark ambition in his eyes remained.
"Eri," Sylas said. "It's a pleasure to meet you."