I took a single step away from the desk.
And the universe decided to conspire against me.
The floor was just... gone. No slow dissolve, no dramatic effect. One second, carpet. The next, nothing. I was falling. The office shot up into the sky, becoming a tiny square of light that vanished in a heartbeat. Just a straight, express elevator down to hell.
My back slammed into something hard. Concrete. The kind that doesn't forgive.
"Son of a—" I gasped, the air getting knocked out of my lungs. I tried to push myself up, but my hands slipped in something sticky. Great. I hoped it was beer.
I looked up. I was in a giant, round room. The kind of place that made you feel small and insignificant. A voice, one I'd hoped to never hear again, was echoing from the ceiling.
[ Please Register ]
[ Please Register ]
"Oh, for fuck's sake," I groaned. "Not this again."
I scrambled to my feet, wiping my hands on my pants. I was back. Right back in the stupid Rebirth chamber from day one. The dome, the perfect light, the whole "welcome to the afterlife" scam. But outside the archways... things were messed up. The beautiful city looked like a broken video game. Buildings flickering, people walking into walls, the sky stuck on a loading screen. A real fixer-upper.
"See? I told you they were a mess." A familiar, miserable voice cut through the nonsense.
I turned. Koshva. Of course. He was here, dressed like a mechanic, holding some kind of scanner that was whining like a sick dog.
"I might have known they'd drop you back in the worst part of the city," he said, glaring at his scanner. "This is Error Zone 734. They named it after you. Lucky you."
"Error Zone? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?" I shot back. "So you're the janitor assigned to clean up my mess?"
"Worse," he grumbled. "I'm here to catalog how much reality you broke. The Prime Warden's little stunt didn't just teleport you. It created a new fracture point. The spatial seam you came through is still open. And things are getting through."
"Things?" I asked. I had a bad feeling about this.
"Data-phantoms. Echoes. Bits of broken code from other planes," he said, finally looking at me. His one good eye was wide with a fear I recognized. It was the 'we're all gonna die' look. "The tutorial didn't just fail you, Dokja. It shattered. The walls between here and... wherever else are thin here. And now, they're thinner."
Right on cue, a see-through guy popped into existence near the exit. He was blue, glowy, and had no face.
My blood ran cold. Every sarcastic reply died in my throat. My heart, which had just started to slow down, kicked into a frantic, panicked rhythm again. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. It was just a stupid, glowing shape, but every instinct in my body, every leftover fear from a hundred campfire stories and late-night horror movies, was screaming at me to run.
The thing in Koshva's hand started screaming.
"Easy now," Koshva muttered, like he was talking to a stray dog. "It's just a remnant. A soldier from a war that ended three thousand years ago. His echo got snagged on the fracture."
The ghost-thing shuffled towards us, all jerky and weird. It didn't seem angry. Just... lost. And it was coming right for me. I wanted to back away, to put Koshva between me and it, but my feet were glued to the floor.
"And when one of these 'remnants' isn't so friendly?" I heard myself ask, my voice sounding thin and reedy.
"Then we have a containment breach," Koshva said, his hand slapping the empty space on his hip where his gun usually was. "Then I have to file a lot of paperwork. Right after I get eaten."
The phantom stopped. It tilted its head, which was creepy since it didn't have one, and pointed a shimmery arm right at me.
"Wait," Koshva said, squinting at his scanner. "That's not right. Its signature is... resonating with yours. It's not seeing you as a threat. It's seeing you as a... beacon."
The phantom took another step, its bony finger still aimed at my chest. And a word echoed out of its static-filled core. A voice made of ghosts and bad radio reception.
"...Anchor..."
Oh, hell no. I was not being an anchor for a ghost. I was a god. A king. A guy who was really, really not okay with this. I took a shaky step back, holding up my hands.
"Nope," I said, my voice cracking. "Nope. No. You can find someone else. I quit. I'm out."