The revolver barked.
Flint spat a round and the nearest corpse went down hard, skull snapping back like it had finally remembered it was dead.
Flint could load ordinary ammo. The difference was that ordinary rounds didn’t “blend” with the Relic’s power—no bonus effects, no special triggers. But Ethan had already pushed his Bond with Flint to ninety percent. At that point, he wasn’t borrowing a trick or two; he was carrying most of Flint’s teeth.
Still, a revolver was a revolver. Great for control. Terrible for crowds.
And the cemetery outside Windrest City was turning into a crowd.
The graveyard wrapped an entire low hill—rows and rows of old stones, family plots stacked like history had been layered on top of itself. The moon hung high, the air heavy with summer heat, and the soil kept moving. Bodies clawed their way up from the ground with the slow patience of rot.
At this rate, there would only be more.
Ethan holstered Flint and drew his knife.
He wasn’t clumsy—some instincts never really died—but every step through the tombstones felt like time sliding through his fingers. Behind him, more hands broke the earth. Ahead, deeper in the cemetery near the hilltop, a patch of trees had shaken violently. Something had moved up there, something big enough to make branches whip like grass.
Came the sound.
A roar rolled down from the hilltop—wet, bone-deep, wrong in a way that made his teeth ache. For a second, Ethan’s vision swam. His heart stuttered.
Why am I in a cemetery?
The thought hit him like a slap, sharp and stupid. Another thought followed, even worse.
What am I doing here?
His memory felt… pressured. Like something invisible was leaning on it, squeezing the edges until his thoughts slid out of shape.
No time. Not with the dead walking.
Ethan forced himself to move, using Shadow Traverse in short bursts to break contact. The Infiltrator’s real vanish—slipping into the Shadow Realm—required a clean disengage. If you tried it while the fight still had its claws in you, the Shadow Realm pushed back. Hard.
Tonight, shadows were everywhere. Cloud cover hid the stars. Trees threw black lace across the graves. He could work with that.
He darted to the cemetery gate and the caretaker’s shack—a cramped wooden place that smelled of ash and old smoke.
Another roar tore through the night.
This time it hit him harder.
His stomach dropped. His thoughts scattered. For a few terrifying breaths he couldn’t remember the word “zombie,” couldn’t remember why the world had zombies, couldn’t remember why his hands were sticky with gore.
Ethan gritted his teeth until it hurt.
Move. Act. Think later.
He slipped into the caretaker’s shack. The inside was a mess—splintered kindling across the floor, torn cloth by the stove, scraps of bedding half-burned like someone had tried the same desperate idea and failed.
Or succeeded.
Fire.
In his old life, when the world had broken, fire had been both beacon and weapon. It drew the dead. It also erased them.
Ethan yanked the remaining blankets off the bed and fed them into the stove. The weak coals flared. He dragged the burning fabric out like a torch and slapped it onto the wooden frame, the table, the chairs.
No more spare kindling. Fine.
He’d burn the whole shack.
He kicked a flaming chair out the door, then another. Furniture rolled into grass, under trees, into dry brush. The night wind took it greedily. Flame crawled outward, spreading through the cemetery like an angry rumor.
Orange light flickered across headstones.
Ethan watched his handiwork and, for one stupid heartbeat, felt satisfaction.
He realized what he was feeling.
Excitement.
A bright, dangerous spark under his skin, like he’d just found a new toy.
Ethan’s smile died.
“What the hell is wrong with me…?”
He stared at the undead circling the firelight. His thoughts slid again.
What was my plan?
The answer should’ve been obvious. It wasn’t.
The roar. That roar—
Something was scraping at his mind.
Ethan didn’t hesitate. He pulled Water Element Essence from his pack and invoked his fishing talent on it, forcing the system’s clean numbers to overwrite the smear in his head.
[SYSTEM] Sanity restored +1%
[SYSTEM] Sanity restored +5%
[SYSTEM] Sanity restored +3%
…
He burned through almost a hundred essences. The nausea eased. The fog thinned.
It didn’t clear.
His Sanity refused to climb back to full.
Panic tried to bite. Ethan swallowed it down. Fear was loud; survival was quieter.
Leave.
If he couldn’t trust his memory, he could at least trust a rule.
Ethan started saying it out loud, under his breath, again and again—like a key pressed into a lock.
“I need to leave.”
“I need to leave.”
“I need to leave.”
Knife in hand, he fought while retreating, carving a path between headstones and shambling bodies. Soft earth sucked at his boots. The cemetery finally spat him out onto the road that led toward the outer district.
And he stopped.
Because the rats were back.
Earlier, the undead rats had spilled out and scattered. Now they returned in a tide, and they weren’t alone. They had brought people with them—figures in cleaner clothes, skin not fully rotted, blood smeared like fresh paint. They moved with the same hunger.
Zombies. Just… newer.
Ethan couldn’t decide whether he was lucky or cursed. The Governor’s banquet meant many residents had packed into the inner city to watch fireworks and pretend the world was safe. That had thinned the outer streets.
But it also meant the inner city was a net full of fish.
The two roars from the cemetery hilltop weren’t random. They were a call. A summons.
More corpses drifted onto the road from side streets. The undead were knitting together into a moving wall.
Ethan’s head buzzed again. The fog wanted back in.
“I need to leave,” he whispered, and the words kept him anchored.
He tried to Slip into the Shadow Realm.
No clean break. Too many eyes. Too many teeth.
He Shadow-Traversed once, twice—popping from one patch of shade to another—but every time he surfaced, a new corpse stumbled into him. The road was becoming a cage.
The sky was starless. The moon sat dead-center, pale as bone.
Midnight was close.
The system forced itself into his view.
A timer—less than a minute—counting down with cold certainty.
[SYSTEM] Time until Cycle 1 ends: 00:59
[SYSTEM] Time until Cycle 1 ends: 00:58
…
Ethan almost laughed. “Of course. Now you show up.”
He couldn’t afford to wait the undead out. He was exhausted—arms heavy, breath ragged, knife slick. He kept backing up, fighting for inches, while the countdown bled away.
Ten seconds.
A small firework cracked over the inner city—part of the banquet’s show.
Nine.
Another pop.
Eight.
One burst per second now, little blossoms of light that painted the clouds.
And the undead around Ethan… turned.
Heads snapped toward the sound, bodies shuddered, and the crowd began to drift away from him, pulled by something brighter than hunger.
Ethan froze as the truth landed.
Tonight. The banquet night.
Not just cover—bait.
Attack when the city gathered. Let the fireworks herd the dead. Trap the living in the inner walls and harvest them.
A beautiful plan, if you were a monster.
The countdown kept falling. More fireworks. More undead peeling off the road, shuffling toward the glowing sky.
Ethan stood there, suddenly alone in a widening circle, watching the inner city light up like it didn’t know it was dying.
[SYSTEM] 00:03
[SYSTEM] 00:02
[SYSTEM] 00:01
Midnight hit.
The “warm-up” fireworks ended and the big ones detonated—full blooms of color over Windrest’s inner district. Cheers rose. Farther out, zombies answered with howls.
In that warped duet of celebration and screaming, Cycle 1 ended for every player.
Ethan’s vision went black.
Something heavy tugged at his head. He pitched backward—
—and didn’t hit stone.
He landed on something soft, warm. Clean air filled his lungs. The cemetery’s rot vanished as if it had never existed.
Ethan’s eyes flew open.
A dazzling beach. A mermaid silhouette. A polished login screen hovering in midair.
And the familiar button:
Enter Game
He ripped off the headset.
His bedroom came into focus—neat sheets, familiar walls, the quiet hum of a safe world. He grabbed his phone with shaking hands.
July 1. Exactly 00:00.
The moment he’d put the headset on.
Fifteen days in the Endless Sea… and the player world hadn’t moved at all.
The system answered his spiral before it could become a scream.
[SYSTEM] Cycle 1 (15 days) in the game world has ended.
[SYSTEM] Player has returned to the player world.
[SYSTEM] Cycle 2 (15 days) has begun in the player world.
[SYSTEM] Supernatural abilities are retained. Inventory items are retained.
[SYSTEM] After Cycle 2 ends, player will return to the game world for Cycle 3.
[SYSTEM] Cycle 2 is the consideration period for faction selection.
[SYSTEM] Faction selection begins in Cycle 3.
[SYSTEM] New players will enter in Cycle 3.
[SYSTEM] Please continue to obey the game warnings:
[SYSTEM] You only have one life.
[SYSTEM] Do not reveal your player identity.
[SYSTEM] Do not disclose game content to any non-player.
[SYSTEM] Every gift has a price.
Ethan sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the lines until they burned in his eyes.
So it wasn’t “going back.”
It was logging out.
A game that played like a second life—and then yanked you out on a schedule.
He opened the chat channel. It was already a flood.
[CHAT]
Player 0127: “What the hell—I’m back in my apartment.”
Player 0439: “Fifteen days in-game and the real world froze? Are you kidding me?”
Player 0088: “Guys, it’s a game. Taking a break is normal.”
Player 0914: “I’m uninstalling. I’m not going back.”
Player 0672: “What happens if you didn’t finish the task?”
Player 0301: “Nothing. You just don’t rank up.”
Player 0550: “There’s another way—be like the locals. Believe in the Seven Gods for real and get their ‘response.’”
Player 0206: “How am I supposed to ‘truly believe’ in a god? I’m a modern adult.”
Player 0740: “Whatever. I’m done. Let it burn.”
Player 0109: “Real question: isn’t our system stronger than the Seven Gods?”
Player 0508: “Yeah. It turns power into stats and ranks without needing a god’s response.”
Player 0024: “And it lets us move between worlds. So what IS it?”
Ethan didn’t have an answer. He only had the same uneasy thought gnawing at him:
If the Endless Sea was a “world” and his home was a “world,” how many worlds were there?
And what kind of thing sat above them, wearing the system like a mask?
He paced through his apartment just to feel real walls under his fingers.
His mind snapped back to Windrest City—back to the cemetery fire, the roar on the hill, and the inner district packed shoulder-to-shoulder under fireworks.
When he’d left, demons and the dead were about to tear that city apart.
He hadn’t had a way out. Even the Shadow Realm wasn’t a perfect refuge—step wrong, and a higher-tier demon would see him. Step wrong again, and the Circle of Earth or Windrest Keep’s awakened hunters might mistake him for Abyss-touched and drag him into questions he couldn’t afford.
So he’d run, he’d burned what he could, and he’d survived.
Now the system had handed him fifteen days of breathing room.
Ethan lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
Cycle 2: fifteen days in the player world.
If he wanted Windrest to still exist when he logged back in, he needed a plan—fast.
And Flint still had ten percent left to bond.
If demons were coming, he might not get another chance.