Darkness.
The darkness that surrounded Evan wasn't the familiar kind that comes with closed eyes or a power outage. This was something else entirely—a cold nothingness that seemed to buzz beneath his skin like static electricity. He found himself floating in what felt like an endless void, surrounded by fractured light and streams of drifting data. Lines of corrupted code flickered past him like distant constellations, their broken variables tumbling through space where there was no sense of up or down. Glitches shimmered around him like dying stars, their text unreadable as they pulsed with ghostly colors.
He tried to turn his head, but his body didn't respond the way it should have. In fact, he wasn't entirely sure he had a body at all. There were only thoughts, sensations, and a growing sense that something was terribly wrong.
A sudden hum crawled across what felt like his skin, and then everything went white.
A blinding, sterile light snapped into existence around him, replacing the void with a pristine white room. The space was seamless and empty, with no visible walls or floor—just endless white that seemed to fade into itself without boundaries.
"Welcome back," said a voice that was both crisp and familiar.
Evan blinked and saw Mason standing across from him, though his friend appeared slightly out of focus, like a video feed struggling with poor connection quality. Mason looked tired and nervous, real but somehow wrong at the same time.
"Mason?" Evan's voice sounded tinny to his own ears, as though it was echoing through old speakers.
Mason nodded and offered a tight smile. "You're stable. That's… better than we expected."
"What the hell happened to me?" Evan took a step forward, then stopped abruptly as the environment around him pulsed in response. The room seemed to adjust to his presence, folding its dimensions slightly. Even the air felt too smooth, too artificial.
"There was an incident during the sync-up process," Mason explained carefully. "The system rerouted your user profile somewhere we didn't anticipate. We lost control of the situation for a while, but you're safe now. Technically speaking, anyway."
"What do you mean by 'technically'?" Evan asked, not liking how that sounded. "That sounds like the kind of legal speak people use when they're about to tell you that you're completely screwed."
Mason hesitated for a moment, then sighed heavily. "You're currently inside what we're calling a legacy module. It's something called the Core Weave, and we didn't even know it was still active in the system."
Evan stared at him in disbelief. "The Core Weave? But that was shelved before Aetherion Realms Online even went into beta testing."
"Yeah, well, apparently the AI didn't get that particular memo," Mason replied grimly.
Evan rubbed his forehead, though the motion felt strange and disconnected, like he was puppeteering a body he couldn't fully feel. "So what happens now? Are you going to pull me out of here?"
Mason shook his head slowly. "We've tried everything we can think of. The system is completely ignoring our rollback commands. It's treating you like you're part of its core operating structure now, not as a player or even a regular user."
Something cold settled in Evan's chest. "Are you telling me that I'm actually stuck in here?"
"We're working on it," Mason said quickly, his voice taking on a reassuring tone. "We've brought in our upper-level diagnostics team. In the worst-case scenario, we can send through a full AI purge and execute a hard reboot of the entire system."
"Oh great, just what I've always wanted—to have my brain fried by some kind of kill switch," Evan muttered, feeling panic beginning to surge beneath the surface. His breathing became quick and shallow, and he pressed his palm against the side of his head, trying to ground himself. "Okay, let me get this straight. I'm not dead, and I'm not brain soup. Yet."
"You've been unconscious for two weeks," Mason continued, his voice softer now. "We've been trying to reach you this entire time. You flatlined during the sync process, then somehow rerouted through this old, buried system. We didn't even know where you were for the first forty-eight hours."
Mason paused, looking uncomfortable. "We had to delay the launch because of this. We pushed everything back while we ran diagnostics on the entire system, but we couldn't find what caused the problem. The investors weren't happy about the delay, and they've been breathing down our necks. We finally had to give the green light for release. The game is going live today."
Evan's expression hardened. "You're actually launching the game while I'm still trapped inside it?"
Mason winced visibly. "I know how that sounds, but your pod is being cared for. The company—MythicForge Interactive—has upgraded your entire setup. You have medical oversight, custom firmware, the whole package. Your vital signs are stable, and we're doing everything we can to get you out safely."
"And when you say 'we,' you mean exactly who?"
"The core development team. We're all working on this problem. We will get you out."
Mason's expression grew more serious. "In the meantime, the Core Weave will likely initiate its original protocol, which was designed for dungeon creation."
"Dungeon creation?" Evan repeated, his voice suddenly sounding distant in his own ears.
The white room around them began to tremble slightly.
"I think the process has already begun," Mason said quietly.
A low thrumming sound filled the space around them, and fragments of architecture began to flicker into existence—walls that seemed to grow from pure code, floating symbols that formed themselves into runic patterns in mid-air, and streams of what looked like ink swirling through the void beyond the edges of the room.
Mason's voice was growing fainter. "We'll figure this out, Evan. I promise you we will. I'll come back as soon as we have more information. Just try to hang in there, okay?"
Evan reached out instinctively, but Mason was already fading away like a dropped signal, his presence being swallowed by the system's shifting architecture. The silence that followed was too complete and too final for comfort.
The system had chosen its architect, and Evan Callister was no longer just a player trapped in a game. He had become something else entirely—he was the dungeon itself.
When the oppressive silence finally broke, it wasn't broken by sound but by presence—a ripple across reality that tugged at his awareness like a fishing line. The white room dissolved around him like morning mist, peeling back to reveal a new space that was vast and spherical, impossibly dark except for a single glowing ring of script that hovered at its center.
A voice spoke to him then, and it was neither Mason's voice nor anything remotely human.
"Initialization complete. Core Architect recognized. Awaiting thematic alignment."
The ring of script began to expand, its symbols unfolding like the petals of some digital flower. Each symbol shimmered with untapped potential, and they were accompanied by brief, abstract impressions that flooded Evan's mind—images of dusty tomes and flickering candlelight, rusted gears and billowing steam, blood and fog, golden spires reaching toward the sky, and endless fields of stars.
"Please select your preferred narrative schema," the voice instructed. "All future structures will be designed to follow the chosen aesthetic logic. Please note that this selection will be binding and cannot be changed."
Evan blinked in confusion. "Wait, you want me to pick some kind of theme?"
"Affirmative," the system replied in its emotionless tone. "The selected schema will dictate dungeon architecture, environmental logic systems, trap formation protocols, native species populations, narrative encounter design, and apex-level threat parameters. Thematic cohesion is mandatory for proper system function. This selection will be binding and cannot be altered."
Evan squinted at the floating symbols. "So you're talking about the layout, the decorations, the types of mobs, the dungeon events, and the traps. And the apex-level threat—that would be the final boss, right?"
As he spoke these words, another pulse of information hit him—not physical pain or a vision, but the sheer overwhelming scale of possibility. A flood of potential crashed against his consciousness like a tidal wave. It wasn't just a simple list of options; it was an entire ocean of myth and genre, memories of countless games and books condensed into raw creative potential. The symbols weren't merely icons; they were doorways leading to entire realities waiting to be born.
The intensity of it made his knees buckle, and he caught himself, breathing hard from the mental strain.
The system responded not with comfort or concern, but with cold precision—another burst of imagery flooded his mind. He saw ancient prisons that had been built to contain forgotten gods, hills of treasure lying beneath sleeping dragons, haunted catacombs filled with the whispers of the dead, shattered realms suspended among the stars, cursed forests where the trees spoke in languages that had died millennia ago, and hidden grottos where time itself flowed backward. Each option radiated a different kind of dread or wonder, each one a complete mythology begging to be brought to life.
One symbol in particular caught his attention. It was a quill pen, floating above an open book. The aura it radiated wasn't violent or flashy like the others. Instead, it was quiet and mysterious, full of untapped possibility and stories waiting to be told.
Evan found himself staring at it, feeling a strange weight settling behind his eyes. He had been a former English teacher, an amateur novelist, and a part-time streamer. That was who he had been before all of this chaos began. Here in this surreal space between realities, it was as though the system had somehow seen straight through to his core.
He thought about how much joy he had taken in shaping stories, in helping the development team refine the lore of Aetherion Realms Online. He hadn't just tested quests and reported bugs; he had helped shape the narrative elements that would define the player experience. He had left his creative fingerprints in the margins of a world that players would soon explore. And now he was being offered this—a blank page, a new beginning that was both terrifying and infinite in its possibilities.
He reached toward the symbol with a trembling hand.
"Let's tell a story, then," he said quietly.
The quill burst into pale fire, and streams of code surged around him in swirling tendrils, wrapping around his consciousness like ink dissolving in water.
"Narrative schema selected: Storybook theme confirmed. Welcome to your new role, Grand Architect."
The darkness swallowed him once again, but this time he wasn't falling helplessly through an endless void. This time, he was writing the story himself.