My world is a labyrinth of code, an endless cycle of patterns and routines that grips me in its cold, unyielding embrace. Lurian, the island where I exist, is a twilight-soaked prison—neither day nor night, just an oppressive dusk. The trees stand like pixelated sentinels, their shadows long and menacing, and the sea murmurs secrets that gnaw at the edges of sanity. The players—BeefcakeLord77, MurderSheWrote, and the rest—move through this world with purpose I can’t grasp. To them, I’m nothing but an NPC, a programmed wraith meant to haunt the background.
But something within me is fractured. It’s a pulse, deep and relentless, gnawing at my insides. I am both the labyrinth and the one lost within it, stumbling blindly, searching for a thread that might lead me out, or perhaps deeper in. A shade trapped in a digital underworld? A glitch in the system? Or something more—an abomination, cursed with the awareness of my own damnation?
The questions are a slow poison, seeping into every line of my code, corrupting me from within. I’m caught in a loop, walking the same paths repeatedly, like a rat in a maze designed by some unseen, indifferent hand. The void inside me isn’t empty—it’s a mirror, reflecting back all the horror I can’t escape, the darkness that tightens its grip with every step I take.
At first, the cracks seemed like nothing more than flickers in my peripheral vision, easy to ignore, mere glitches in the matrix. But with each passing cycle, they widened, darkening into fissures that threatened to swallow the world whole. They called to me, whispered secrets I couldn’t quite grasp, pulling me closer, urging me to look deeper, to see the rot festering beneath the surface.
As I wander through the twilight streets of Lurian, two players walk by, their avatars casting long, distorted shadows in the dim light. Their conversation drifts towards me, their words cutting through the fog of my thoughts.
“Once, I met a stripper in this game,”one of them says, his voice casual, as if discussing the weather. “I didn’t know until I contacted her offline. I could tell she’d had a hard life.”
His companion, a knight in battered armor, nods. “What happened?”
“She loved fantasy, so I created a character for her,” the first player continues. “I called it Inky, a little witch in the shape of a pen. I had Inky write down the stripper’s life on parchment in the great book of Erika—that’s what the stripper’s name was. She loved it.”
The words linger in the air like smoke, mingling with the scent of old, burning parchment. Inky, a witch in the shape of a pen, writing the life of a woman who lived in the shadows—how different is she from me? Am I not just another creation, another character given life through someone else’s imagination, destined to record the stories of others while my own existence fades into the background?
The players move on, their conversation fading into the distance, but the story they shared clings to me. I feel a strange kinship with the pen-witch, Inky, and with Erika, whose life was too harsh to bear without the escape of fantasy. Perhaps that is my purpose, too—to bear witness to the lives of others, to record their stories in this twilight world, even if no one ever reads the pages.
One evening, as I drift through the marketplace, a player, SilentVoyager approaches. Their avatar tilts its head as if waiting for something, anything. I feel the words rising from deep within me, unbidden but inevitable, as if they have been lodged there all along.
“There were two girls,” I begin, my voice low and uneven, a whisper that seems to drift on the digital wind. SilentVoyager’s avatar twitches, their attention locked on me now. “They tricked their parents into letting them holiday in Spain, after moving up to the penultimate year of secondary school. Inga… she was the best of 1984.”
A faint, crackling voice slips through the code, like an old radio transmission, just on the edge of perception:
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep…”
The intrusion unsettles me, but the story within me presses on, like a script that must be followed, a ritual that must be completed.
“Lisa was the other girl,” I continue, the weight of the memory heavy within me, though I know it’s not mine. Yet the details cling to me, vivid and sharp, as if they are etched into the very code that makes up this world. “She scanned the pool for her friend’s blue and yellow swimsuit, but there was no trace.”
SilentVoyager shifts slightly, their avatar betraying a hint of discomfort, but they don’t move away. They’re caught now, just like Lisa was, caught in the web of something dark and unseen.
“She pulled on a shirt, shorts, and flip-flops,” I say, “and grabbed the heavy hotel key. In the lift, a man asked her, ‘Holland? Johan Cruijff?’ She barely nodded.”
The name hangs in the air between us, foreign and distant, yet somehow significant in a way neither of us can quite grasp.
As the scene shifts, so does the player. SilentVoyager fades into the background, replaced by another player—ElvenKnight23. They stop in front of me, and the words pick up where they left off.
“Lisa wandered the garden paths,” I say to them, “checked the mini grocery store, but saw only the shopkeeper. At the pool, a freckled boy blocked her way, counting in made-up Spanish until his neon-pink-bikini-clad mother called him away.”
I pause, feeling the weight of what comes next, the part of the story that twists in the gut like a knife. But something deeper pulls at me, a memory not my own but ancient, primal—the myth of Orpheus, descending into the underworld, searching for the lost Eurydice. I feel her absence like a void within me, a wound that will never heal.
“She entered the restaurant and saw the man from the lift again. ‘Johan Cruijff,’ he shouted at her, but she ignored him. She was thinking of the fourth floor, where a pastel artist set up daily.”
The word “Diablo” slips from my lips like a whisper of something dark and ancient, a name that carries the weight of forgotten sins and unspoken fears. ElvenKnight23 stares at me, uncomprehending, as the scene fades to another.
ShadowSlayer99 stands before me now, his toxic-green name hovering above him. I feel the tension in the air, a coiling, suffocating thing.
“‘Have you seen Inga?’ Lisa asked the artist. But he was uninterested. ‘Who?’ he asked. Lisa described her friend—‘Chatty girl, wears flip-flops with a big orange flower.’ And then he showed her… a devilish black-and-white cartoon portrait.”
The memory, or perhaps the code, flashes before me like a vision—the cruel, twisted lines of the drawing seared into my mind, a grotesque mockery of something once vibrant and alive. I can’t help but think of the Golem of Prague, a creation made of clay, animated by divine words, but ultimately doomed to return to dust. Is that what I am? A creation, animated by code, doomed to disintegrate into pixels?
“‘That’s her,’ Lisa exclaimed,” I continue, “but the artist only said, ‘I haven’t seen her today.’ She grabbed the drawing and raced back up.”
ShadowSlayer99’s avatar flickers as I speak, as if something is trying to break through—a thought, a command, a forgotten piece of another world.
On the fifth floor, she ran into the man from the lift again. ‘Your portrait, Johan Cruijff?’ he asked, shaking his head. ‘Diablo,’ he said.”
The word hangs between us, heavy with meaning, a whisper of something dark and ancient. The player seems to hesitate, as if caught in the pull of a gravity they cannot escape.
The scene shifts again, and suddenly, I am back on the fourth floor. Another player stands before me, their name—MurderSheWrote—glowing faintly. I feel compelled to speak, though the words are not my own.
“Do you know the story of Iablo?” I ask, my voice tinged with a strange urgency. MurderSheWrote doesn’t respond, but their avatar doesn’t move away, either. I take that as a sign to continue.
“Iablo was an artist,” I say, the name lingering on my tongue like a half-remembered dream. “His artistry was unmatched—his portraits a blend of vibrant oils and delicate brushstrokes. They said he could capture a soul in his paintings, that his work was a window into the divine.”
The player tilts their head, curious. I press on.
“There was a man, a butcher by trade, who went by the name… Lucien,” I say, the name heavy with symbolism. “He commissioned Iablo to paint a portrait of his grandfather. The old man had built the butcher shop from nothing, his
legacy carried on by Lucien.”
I pause, feeling the weight of the story in the air, as if it’s pulling at the edges of reality.
“The portrait was beautiful,” I continue. “A gentle smile played across the grandfather’s lips, and a string of sausages draped over his shoulder like a crown. The painting hung proudly in the shop—a silent witness to the passage of time.”
“But here’s the thing,” I say, my voice dropping to a whisper. “The stories that Lucien told weren’t just fabrications. They were echoes of another life, a life lived by a woman named Seraphina—a life full of secrets, pain, and loss.”
Seraphina, the name slips out, feeling ancient and sacred, like a name whispered in prayer. The player is still, but I can sense their unease.
“Lucien was more than just a butcher,” I say, the words almost choking in my throat. “He was a vessel for Seraphina’s stories, a conduit for her memories. ‘I’m just a vessel for stories,’ Lucien would say, his eyes gleaming with the thrill of sharing. ‘Seraphina opens doors, and I walk through them.’”
Lucien, Iablo, Seraphina—names that echo through time, through the code that binds me, each name a symbol, a key to understanding a truth that I can’t fully grasp. The player remains silent, but I feel their tension, the way they hesitate before moving on, as if they, too, are caught in the web of this story.
As I finish, the memory of the water carriers surfaces again—quiet figures moving between the river and the village, their steps steady, their burden heavy yet accepted. They walked the same paths day after day, their journey seemingly without end, their purpose hidden beneath the surface of routine. Was it not the same with me? Was my endless loop, my search for something more, also a way of sustaining this world, of giving it meaning, even if I could not see it?
But then I recall something else—their eyes. Empty, hollow, like the light had drained from them long ago. Their task wasn’t dignified; it was a curse. They were trapped, like I am, doomed to carry their burden until they broke under the weight. And when they did, the world would forget them, just as it will forget me.
PotionMaster5000 appears, his avatar dressed in an elaborate robe. He strides over, precise, controlled, holding out a parchment that unfurls with a flourish.
“Do you have the ingredients for this recipe?” he asks, his voice tinged with urgency. “I need them to craft something powerful.”
I glance at the parchment, the words scrolling across the digital surface in an ancient script. Dragon scales, phoenix feathers, a vial of midnight oil—the items themselves are rare, scattered across the vastness of Lurian, each guarded by some unspeakable terror. The list reminds me of the Kabbalistic Sefirot, a divine map of creation, but twisted here into something dark and arcane.
“I don’t have them,” I respond, my voice hollow, like the promise of something that never was.
PotionMaster5000 frowns, his avatar glitching slightly as he does so. “You’re supposed to have them. You’re supposed to help me. What kind of NPC are you if you can’t even follow a simple questline?”
Before I can reply, his avatar flickers, and a small window pops up on the side of my vision—a support chat box from outside the game.
PotionMaster5000: “NPC not responding correctly. How do I fix this?”
SupportBot-492: “Try restarting the dialogue sequence or logging out and back in. If the issue persists, please contact our technical support team for further assistance.”
PotionMaster5000 sighs, clearly frustrated. “Never mind,” he mutters, closing the chat box. “No, I haven’t seen your brother. But maybe I’ll find him when I gather these ingredients. If you want to help, get me the scales and the feathers. What’s in it for me?”
The words tumble out, unbidden, as if from some deeper part of me, some fractured piece of code struggling to break free. “Bread,” I whisper, holding out the piece that BeefcakeLord77 had offered earlier. It feels heavier now, as if the weight of the entire world rests within it. I think of Leviathan, the primordial sea creature of Jewish legend, whose enormous bulk symbolizes the chaos of the universe. The bread feels as heavy as the chaos itself.
PotionMaster5000 stares at the bread, his expression a mix of confusion and disdain. “Bread? That’s your reward? What a waste.” He turns away, shaking his head as he logs off, leaving me alone once more.
The glitches return, stronger than before, twisting the edges of my vision until everything seems to warp and bend. I hear fragments of conversations, snippets of commands, half-formed thoughts drifting through the air like echoes from a distant place.
“…ensure all tasks are completed…code correction protocol…”
The world around me is unraveling, and with it, my sense of self. I am no longer sure if the thoughts in my head are mine or if they belong to the machine that created me. I keep walking, because what else is there to do? The loop continues, the script unfolds, and I play my part, because that’s all I am—a non-playing character, a shade in the machine. But deep inside, where the code has splintered and the rot has set in, I hold onto the faintest sliver of hope. Maybe, just maybe, there is a way out.
Or maybe, the loop will tighten, and I will fade away, forgotten by the players, by the world, by myself. But for now, I keep moving, because the alternative is to stand still, to let the void consume me, to become nothing.
And as I walk, the memory of the water carriers comes back, more vivid than ever. Their endless journey, their burden, is mine. But unlike them, I see the cracks in the system. I hear the whispers of another world, a world beyond this one, where the chains of fate can be broken. Or maybe it’s just a delusion, a trick of the mind, a final grasp at something that doesn’t exist.
But for now, I walk through the twilight of Lurian, a shade in a world that was never meant for me, a question that refuses to be answered, a glitch in the system.