Restart

The apartment was dark, save for the faint glow of streetlights bleeding through cheap blinds. Keiran shut the door behind him with a tired groan, the quiet creak of the hinges and the dim glow of his lamp rare comforts in his otherwise lifeless routine. He dropped his backpack by the entrance, only bothering to pull out his laptop.

Lazily slipping off his shoes, he walked over to his desk, gently opening his laptop and booting it up. His eyes lazily drifted over the icons that adorned his home screen as his pointer paused on the logo for Aetheron Eternum, a game which he treated like a relic of his high school years.

“Didn’t think I’d ever boot this up again,” Keiran muttered to himself, dragging a hand through his unkempt hair. “Three years and they’re still making new content?”

A new expansion, Genesis Keep, had launched a few hours ago and had taken online forums storm. It was the perfect excuse to distract himself from academic burnout, job rejections, and the slow, grinding collapse of his motivation.

As the game loaded up, he hit ‘Play’.

The client loaded up with a glowing message: “Initializing Sync… Welcome Back: Reaper.”

A pulse of light surged across the screen, white and blinding, before the screen faded to black.

* * * * *

Keiran woke to silence.

Not the kind he knew, no hum of city traffic or the buzz of old electronics, but a deep raw silence that pressed in from all sides. He opened his eyes.

He was surrounded by a city with massive stone buildings. Rolling hills in the distance. A stray breeze brushed against his face as he glanced up at the vast, expansive sky. Winged wyverns flew overhead; the warmth of the sun easily pushing past the few clouds that would provide shade.

“This… it couldn’t be, right?” Keiran whispered, his voice trembling as he tried to rein in his excitement and confusion. The texture of the cobblestones underfoot, the weight of the air, even the scent of the grass, everything felt too real for this to be a dream. “This is the starting zone.”

As he looked around, he found everyone was as confused as he was. Some were panicking, others trying to rationalize what had happened. Keiran started walking to the center of the town, where a large crowd was gathered. Just then, there was a small panel at the edge of vision:

Welcome to Aetheron Eternum: Genesis Keep.
All player data has been reset.
Please assign your initial skills.

Keiran looked at the message in contempt. Years of farming and grinding, just destroyed like that.

“What the hell…” Keiran turned to see another player, likely staring at the same message. He walked over to Keiran, “Hey, do you know what’s going on?”

Keiran looked at him, dumbfounded. “Nope, I just booted up the game; hell if I know what happened.” He waved his hand, trying to interact with the message box when the other player spoke.

“Apparently, if you concentrate super hard on the HUD, you can access parts of it,” he explained, semi-helpfully.

“Parts of it?”

“Only the skill selection section, nothing else,” he replied. "No mini-map, no inventory. Can't even find the logout button."

It made no sense though: why was the skill selection menu the only accessible one? “That's weird, what about fighting?” Keiran asked.

“No one’s figured that out yet.”

“Figures,” Keiran clicking his tongue in annoyance. “Well, should probably try to get the tutorial out of the way first.”

With that, Keiran walked away to the town square with a slight wave over his shoulder.

The town square was packed.

Keiran kept to the edge of the crowd, his eyes drawn to a party at the center of the crowd—five players, battered and pale, their gear tattered and bloodied. One of them, a woman in light armor, was shouting over the growing murmur as another of her party members tried to calm her.

“I’m telling you, Marcus is dead!” she screamed. “He didn’t log out. He was bleeding out and screaming!”

The crowd stilled. Keiran’s breath caught in his throat.

The woman collapsed to the ground in tears, and a man beside her stepped in. “He was our tank; we tried to pull him back, but we weren’t fast enough. That thing tore into his leg—bit it clean off. He begged us to save him, but the monster ripped his head clean off.”

“We tried checking at the cathedral, but there was no one there.” another member of the group spoke up.

“So he’s dead dead?” A voice from the crowd asked. “Like, no respawns?”

“We don’t know!” the woman snapped.

“That’s what we think, at least for now. And probably what we should assume,” The man next to her said.

A wave of unease passed through the crowd. Keiran felt it in his gut, a growing weight, cold and heavy.

He turned his attention to a duo behind him instead, not wanting the full grotesque descriptions that were being provided.

“They were in Sylvan’s Reach, right?” one asked.

“That’s gone, apparently,” the other replied. “The whole region’s changed, been corrupted. They haven’t found a safe zone in there yet, just hordes of undead.”

Keiran’s brows furrowed. Undead?

“That’s weird. The NPCs aren’t following their scripts either,” the first said. “I tried walking into the guild hall and the receptionist went completely off script.”

Keiran felt his stomach twist. This wasn’t just a hyper-realistic immersion update. The game had come to life. Keiran turned and started walking away from the square.

At the edge of town, an older player stood near a loaded caravan. “Convoy leaves in ten minutes,” he called loudly. “We’re headed to the beginning area. If you want to travel, we got a few open seats.”

Keiran hesitated for a moment. Whatever this place was, he wouldn’t learn much by hiding in the square. And if the world had really shifted, he was going to make the most of it.

He walked up to the adventurer. “Got room for one?”

The player looked at him inquisitively, “Filler?”

“Solo-player,” Keiran replied. “Once we get there, I go my way, you go yours.”

“Get in,” the player replied with a shrug.