THE FALSE EMPTINESS AND THE FALSE HERO

Asimil felt like a grain of sand on that beach of light and sound. Here, far from the epicenter, the air should have smelled of fresh digital grass and tranquility. But something stank. Something metallic, sour, like rust mixed with the static of an old television. A smell that didn't belong in the world of Lover Online.

They had reached the center of the map, and for a moment, the calm seemed like a promise. The air smelled of digital grass and the static of a recovering world. Ikel and other survivors were nearby. Asimil let his guard down.

Serious error.

He watched as a nearby elf archer writhed. His code was squeezed by an invisible hand, his face turned into a pixelated mask of pain. From his skin gushed a thick black liquid that smelled of burnt metal and a bitter aftertaste that stuck in Asimil's throat. This was not a death of the game. It was an erasure.

He recoiled, horror propelling him backward. The floor vibrated like a computer screen about to collapse. From the black puddle left by the elf, a tentacle of corrupted darkness emerged, then another, and another. A cancer of visual errors began to rise. A virus taking shape.

— Run, Asimil! — Ikel's scream sounded strangled by a primal terror.

But he couldn't. His legs were blocks of concrete. It wasn't just the fear of the moment. It was the ghost of a thousand past paralyses... and one that ruled them all: the phantom memory of a burning world, of a broken promise, all because he froze. His chest burned, an unbearable pressure. His body, once again, betrayed him.

The creature roared, letting out a blast that seemed to destroy everything in its path, and pounced. He was the target. Time slowed down. He saw every glitch on its surface, knowing it was going to erase him.

Move...Move, damn you... The thought was a muffled scream in his skull. He closed his eyes, waiting for the impact that would end it all.

But it didn't come. Instead, the cold came.

A burst of bluish frost materialized between him and the tentacle. A vortex of ice crystals slowed the creature's deadly advance. Then, a whip of crimson fire, thin and concentrated, impacted against the tip of the tentacle. It was Noelia. He saw her out of the corner of his eye, her face contorted with effort. There was no arrogance in her expression. There was a fierce, protective desperation, as if she wasn't defending a useless rookie, but a precious memory she refused to let die again.

The tentacle, brittle from the cold, pulverized. The creature let out a shriek of digital fury and recoiled, but the pain seemed to force it to reveal itself.

The black puddle from which it emerged began to boil. From it rose a grotesquely humanoid silhouette, ten feet tall, made of smoky blackness. Its head was an amorphous mass with two white slits for eyes and a mouth that was a whirlwind of broken code fragments. It was a blasphemy against the world, and the eclipse in the sky seemed to beat in unison with it.

In that moment of horror, a second tentacle emerged from his blind spot, silent as death. Noelia was exhausted. This time he was going to die.

And then, the world tilted.

An invisible, massive force threw him out of his paralysis, displacing him brutally to the right. The tentacle dug into the ground where his heart had been beating. It was the hooded man. Saitras. He had one hand outstretched toward Asimil, fingers twitching in a brutal struggle, the other on his temple, as if bending gravity caused him excruciating pain. He... had saved him. But in his gesture there was not the ease of a god, but the agonizing effort of someone struggling against his own destiny to right a wrong.

Asimil fell to the ground, panting, the image of that nightmarish mouth etched in his retina. He watched as Noelia and Saitras shared a fleeting glance, of perfect coordination, but also of shared fear at what they had helped unleash. They were exhausted. They were trembling.

They had saved him. Twice. Not by chance, but at an obvious cost. Relief mingled with burning shame. He was still here, unharmed, because of their effort. And they were paying the price.

The creature roared, a sound that was the void itself screaming. Its gaze of white slashes rested on them again.

The danger was not over. It had just begun in earnest.