Eran Veyl had always known the world wasn't quite right.
Not in the obvious, sky-is-falling kind of way. More like the quiet, suffocating wrongness that settled in the bones—like gravity pulling just a bit too hard, or silence lingering a second too long.
He sat alone in his dimly lit room, the soft hum of his monitor the only sound that kept the night from swallowing him whole. Three empty coffee cups lined the edge of his desk, long since cold. On the screen, a single message blinked in sterile white text:
[Simulacrum Scenario 999: COMPLETE]
Eran didn't move.
He'd spent the last three years diving into this hidden simulation—a blacklisted project he'd discovered by accident while poking through abandoned server nodes on the deep net. It wasn't a game. Not exactly. The scenarios it presented weren't scripted quests or boss battles.
They were… lives. Real. Tangled. Brutal.
In one, he'd witnessed a plague dismantle an empire. In another, he'd lived through the collapse of time itself. People had died. Cities had burned. Empires had crumbled. And through it all, he was just the observer.
But now, the screen was blank. The simulation was over. And for the first time in months, his hands trembled.
He reached to shut down the system when he heard it—
A sharp, slicing crack.
Not from the monitor. Not even from inside the room.
From behind reality.
Eran froze.
The air itself had split, like paper torn along a fault line. A cold pressure surged through the room. He turned his head slowly, scanning the shadows—but saw nothing.
Until he looked up.
A black seam had formed on the ceiling, jagged like lightning frozen mid-flash. Through the crack, a dim violet light leaked into his world, pulsing like a heartbeat. The hum began low, barely audible, but it vibrated through his bones.
> "This isn't part of the program…" he muttered.
The seam widened, revealing something behind it—something vast and watching. The shadows in his room twisted unnaturally. His screen powered off on its own, plunging the room into darkness.
Then came the glyph.
It floated down from the crack—blood red, shifting, ancient. Not made of light, not exactly. It burned without heat.
[Codex Detected: Initializing]
[Codex Zero – Unranked]
Eran stumbled backward, nearly tripping over his chair. He had memorized every file, every scenario in Simulacrum. There was no Codex Zero. No record of it. Nothing even close.
The glyph pulsed once—then darted straight into his chest.
His heart seized.
He collapsed to one knee as a freezing sensation tore through his veins, like something rewriting him from the inside out. The world tilted. His breath hitched. And then—
A soft voice echoed in his mind.
> "Simulation begins."
Eran's eyes flew open.
His computer stayed dark. His phone was dead. The world outside his window stood unnaturally still, like time had pressed pause.
And deep in his chest, the Codex pulsed.
> It wasn't a game anymore.
It never was.