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It didn’t take long for Maya to find what she was looking for. With most of her belongings stored digitally these days, there was little need for any major cleaning.

She felt like an archaeologist unearthing a fossil, the black hard drive still bore the numerous sticker codes she’d haphazardly peel off her apples, chaotically bordering around the printed sticker of the title in small lettered text – Wayforge Chronicles. The title of the project she joined through a college club almost 5 years ago.

As if she didn’t need another reminder that only 5 years later she would be hitting her 30’s.

She struggled registering that it was only half a decade ago, Maya could vividly recount the endless nights she had spent juggling her assignments with the game, right up until it was live on Lag.io – one of the most popular websites to upload indie creations, and seeing the rush of support those first few days online.

Guess that showed how much drive she had for the project.

‘But of course, we never managed to reach that goal. The signs were there and we all had a lot on our plate at the time, and never really looked back. Perhaps the real Wayforge Chronicles were the friends made along the way… or something.’

There was still hope for her in the present though. The experience of working in a project (albeit not a super professional one) served as a solid springboard for her programming degree – and it's the very reason she was tasked to dig up this archaic block in the first place. This small indie company had personally reached out to her in inquiry further on her portfolio, specifically the programming she had done for this very game.

Oh and I guess she scored a long-term-friend from-the-project-now-roommate Abigail. She’s a sweetie.

Maya grabbed a spare cable to plug the drive to her PC before taking a seat at her desk. She boots up her monitors - all three of them, before sifting through the drive for her script which didn’t take too long considering how organised the folders were.

It didn’t take long for Maya to draft the formal email containing the links of appropriate file scripts. With that being knocked out, she’d begun closing the tabs but stopped as her eyes lingered on the game’s pixelated badge. It was an 8-bit icon of a shield that was dotted with 5 coloured jewels, each a primary colour of the rainbow. A design that was made in 45 minutes by your humble protagonist.

‘Well I have nothing else to do at the moment, why not.’ Maya decided to launch the software out of interest to see how the game held up all those years ago. The page opened up with the transition of a flat pixelated meadow as the background and the four playable characters in their sprite form walking along the endless road with the title fading in moments after.

The young girl then reached for her phone on the desk, wanting to share her current status with her roommate. She positioned the camera to snap a picture of the screen monitor with the game open followed by her hand flashing a peace sign in the foreground before she directly messaged it.

“Guess what.”

“Eyooo?” A message was by the icon of a smiling cartoon frog, followed by another: “The UI design is so sexy I wonder who made it.” The end of the text included a thinking face emoji followed by an emoji with a smug smirk and knowing gaze.

“Pfft.” Maya couldn’t help but grin from Abbie’s reaction.

Another notification popped up soon after.

“Damn fun tho, don’t cringe too hard at my old art tho I still got a whole 8 hours of my shift left.” The end of the text contained a string of crying emojis.

Maya messaged a quick ‘you too GLHF’ before focusing back to the main one with the game still open.

She selected the Start Quest option and was met with opening visuals and thrilling prologue to hook the players of the world and its lore. The image that spun transitioned displayed a map of Vale: a town with a bordered wall and a kingdom perched high atop of the hill. Further down to the right corner showed a forest where the players would get to explore the segment and face off against the only boss they implemented in the game: a mighty dragon.

Maya hummed as memories of the script she had helped edit for the story resurfaced. The player was to follow a teenager who had just recovered from pneumonia, only to be tragically struck and run over by a truck right after being discharged from the hospital. God pitied the boy's state of being, and granted his wish to be reincarnated into the video game he last played in the appearance of Roland Spires: the main character.

Despite being in a healthier physique, his early misadventures caused chaos to those in his vicinity, resulting in the townspeople fearing and hating him. So to earn back their trust he started with small errands – which doubled as a tutorial for the planned game mechanics – before eventually he banded enough party members to take on saving the world. However what the boy never knew, since he never actually finished the game, was that the late game revealed that Roland is actually a half-dragon.

‘Well the players never got to know either, because we never got that far past the beta anyway.’

Maya couldn’t deny how excessive the lore was with the tangled reincarnation and intricacies of the protagonist, but the Head Writer and Leader, Jeremy – better known by the nickname Maya and Abigail bestowed upon him: Germy – swore up and down that the plot hints sprinkled throughout the beta and the later executed full version would've turned out to be absolute cinema. ‘Whatever kept it separated from the bloat of overpowered reincarnated protagonists, I guess...’

As Maya clicked to read on the next lot of text, she couldn't help but think that the amount of text slides became a bit distracting to the eye. She then recalled how much Germy wanted to implement text transitions, in turn not really considering how gaudy it made the presentation feel.

As the cutscene ended, the scene transitioned into gameplay with Maya finally able to control the pixelated Roland, she was confronted by a black screen.

‘Eh.’

This was certainly odd. No one had reported this kind of bug online, back when it was released. Nothing in its current state should have warranted it for the screen to suddenly black out. “Did the game seriously crash on me, or-”

Function disabled for unlicensed version. System integrity compromised. Please close the game and check for lost system components.

The young woman stared in disbelief at her monitor for a good moment, adjusting her glasses being half convinced that she was hallucinating it all. But no – the text was in-fact written in the game’s dialogue box; it wasn't some random outside notification. She was getting wary now. “What do you mean the game is unlicensed?!” She literally programmed this game!

Right before her eyes, the text glitched into a different message.

Conflicting game files detected. Monitor performance at risk. Please restore all files to their original copy before continuing.

‘What.’

Her brows furrowed as she tapped the escape key, trying to figure out what the hell was happening, then, without warning, a searing white light blared from the screen that engulfed her vision like a flashbang.

Disorientated, her body felt weightless like she was floating, except without any sense of direction or speed.

‘Is this the feeling of being astral projected?’ A question she couldn’t fully register before suddenly being seized by the weight of gravity once more.

“Gh.” She lands with a thud on her knees on the surface beneath that felt like grass. The strain was there from her vision being obscured, she rubbed her eyelids in recovery and adjusted the spectacles perched on her nose.

Taking note of her surroundings, she was sitting in the middle of a rather lush garden, the bushes pristinely trimmed and each adorned with ivory roses. Inhaling, she smelt the fresh scent carrying a faint sweetness from the flowers and the neatly kept pathways gleamed as if untouched by dust. Sunlight filtered softly through the leaves, painting the ground in delicate golden patterns.

Maya flinched out of her trance by the rustle of the bush parallel to her before a lime green slime emerged, its mass bobbing as if to tilt its gaze up at her. Maya could only blink dumbfoundedly in return at the gelatinous blob... its mass jiggled with every bit of movement.

Maya's hand twitched, eager to feel the squishy texture of the slime under her palm without wanting to alarm it. Being, well... a slime, she had no idea what was going through its goo, but since it seemed calm enough, she cautiously hovered a hand over it.

The slime quivered for a second, causing Maya to pause before it wiggled and bounced up to gently headbutt her palm with its head. She blinked in surprise that the slime closed the gap, thinking the gesture was endearing until a sudden, intense pain shot through her body as it knocked the air out of her lungs.

Maya's consciousness instantly caved from the blow and went out like a light right in the middle of the garden. Her vision met with darkness instead of the blinding white.