Chapter Text
All video games are created from code. A pre-determined simulated reality. Everything fixed, constantly on loop.
Codes made with care — made with blood, sweat, and tears. It was tailored for a perfect arrangement.
It’s a cybernetic hell; one error, and the entire program comes crashing down.
Usually, these anomalies are fixed. Deleted and redone so the program can resume smoothly once more.
Usually.
So why is this strange abnormality the exception?
A lone shadowed figure watches as the screens flash red, error after error clashing against blues across every monitor. A contemplative expression etched on their face as they brought the phone closer to their ear.
“I need you all in the testing room. Now.”
Inches away, the codes and programs start shifting once more, moving across as symbols and numbers get deleted and words get rewritten.
It felt alive.
Alive in the way a game should never be.
Darkness.
All he could see was the endless and cold nothingness of empty space.
His consciousness feels like it had drifted away, maybe it was also gliding through this strange limbo.
The last thing he remembers was downloading the limited edition DLC for his favourite game.
Mercurial Hearts.
God, what if he wasted his money on a game he couldn't play? He would honestly cry.
Daylight starts to seep into his eyelids, disorienting him and cutting off his train of thoughts.
When his eyes fluttered open, Wemmbu was met with a room that came straight out of a fairytale.
It felt like a fever dream.
Walls of midnight blues and gilded gold. Intricately designed vases and knick knacks are spread throughout the room, things that probably cost more than the rent and tuition he pays in a year.
He also noticed the strange amount of floral decorations.
On the ceiling, red and white carnations adorned the midnight blue, mixing and mingling together, as well as contrasting sharply.
Vases filled with red tulips and chrysanthemums were shoved into a corner, the flowers looking fresh and alive despite collecting dust.
He looked around more. Shelves filled with white tulips, gypsophila's, daisies, gardenias, and white lilies also looked freshly picked, but collecting dust as well.
I wonder why the flowers are so specific… He thought absentmindedly.
Curtains with many sigils and familiar insignias, gold etched into the velvet fabric. Sheer white veils hanging from a hook, sparkling in the daylight.
He also saw some sort of robe, hanging half hazardously from another hook. It looked like something a priest would wear, but it was… decorated in a way a priest's robes should not be.
He shook his head. It must belong to whoever actually owned this room.
And the piece de resistance, a crystalline chandelier that glimmers like the stars at night, garnished what looked like red and white yarrows.
It felt… awfully familiar. But he doubted it.
Maybe he forgot his medicine?
“Are those… real diamonds?” He looked in confusion, knowing damn well he couldn't even dream of buying real diamonds.
He could feel his heart racing as he took in such opulence. This… this was obviously not his room. Where was he?
Surely this must be an elaborately large prank of some kind.
This isn't real.
But the bedding felt too plush, the velvet curtains look soft to the touch. Everywhere he looked didn't indicate that this was the set of some kind of movie.
Everything felt too real.
Yeah, I'm definitely fucking hallucinating. There's no way something like this can actually happen.
Wemmbu sat up properly, trying his hardest to even process what was happening.
Alright, first, breath. That's something his therapist should've drilled into his head a hell lot more.
He looked around more closely.
His clothes felt too soft.
His body felt too small, too claustrophobic.
His hands looked smaller.
His hands look smaller?
In front of the bed stood an ornate vanity mirror emblazoned with the words of a language he couldn't quite read.
He got up from his — he wasn't actually sure if it was actually his, but he'll happily take it — bed, footsteps thumping lightly against the marble floor as he got closer to the mirror.
The mirror also had the same sigils and familiar insignias on the curtain, sculpted into the glowing silver, It was adorned with small orbs of light obsidian gems decorated carefully, with small touches of florals like white salvias.
Whoever lives here must really like flowers. Wemmbu snorted.
He looked deeply into the mirror, hoping for the scene to just randomly change so he could deem this entire situation a strange dream.
It was definitely his face, his body. Everything matched to what he knew he looked like down to his iconic silky purple hair. But something didn't… really sit right with him.
“Why am I younger?!”
He looked into his own eyes, red and puffy like he had been crying. He didn’t remember crying at all.
Even if his life was shitty, he didn't cry himself to sleep. Well he didn't, mostly.
He touched his body, skin clean and plush, missing his scars. He traced his face, delicate and round. He swore he looked uglier than this.
This was truly a fever dream. Either that, or Wemmbu went through something in his sleep.
He pinched himself lightly, wishing to whoever could listen to him that this was something that would disappear in a few minutes. It felt lightly painful, just like real life.
Real life?
Oh how he wishes his true life was as grandeur as this one seemed to be. To live in a room with expensive ornaments, pristine decor, and marvelous embellishments instead of molding — rotting now that he had properly thought about it — apartment walls and drowning in his overdue bills.
How much more he’d give to taste a drop of paradise, to have a life so exquisite, that he could only really dream of. He remembers the messy overdue bills, the tuition fees, the ignored job applications, the pain of trying to find reasons to get out of bed in the morning. He wished to forget it.
What a wretched and disappointing life he lived, truly.
The thought made his chest ache painfully.
And just for a moment, in the corner of his eye—
The mirror glitched.
He froze immediately, like a deer caught in headlights.
What the fuck? The hell was that?
His reflection flickered violently like corrupted pixels on a broken monitor.
Purple eyes met a quick glimpse of blue.
Something appeared behind him for a split second.
A single, small luminous glowing blue eye.
Covered in pairs of wings, staring intently at him. It seemed similar to those seraphims? If that’s what they (or whatever it was) were called.
There were cracks in the walls. Pieces of the room he was in seemed to fall into pitch black. Ominous cracks surrounded him, it was reminiscent of files being corrupted.
He felt coolness starting to seep into the room, just like how it felt in that weird limbo.
In a split second, the eye distorted again.
A sharp and loud static sound roared through the room.
He immediately covered his ears, the roaring sound felt like it almost burst his eardrums.
And then—
Everything returned to normal.
The curtains swayed gently as if nothing was wrong with his reality.
The chandelier glimmered peacefully over his head.
The daylight shined into the room.
It was as if he just hallucinated.
His breathing turned uneven. His eyes opened wide.
A fundamental truth came into his mind: he was not dreaming.
Dreams don’t glitch.
“I told you we didn’t need all this fancy computer stuff! We would have been fine using our regular old equipment,” Juniper snapped, trying to override the stupid system.
“Nah, I think it’s kinda sweet.” Shrugged Lumineria, her body hovering over one of the computer screens. She was lazily typing, while Jeo seemed to have some sort of epiphany as they typed out codes swiftly.
“Oh my days, who even said it was a good idea to buy all this bullshit?” Jeo swore, watching as their hard work was rewritten and deleted. “We could've done all this without these weird computers!” she growled angrily.
“I don’t see why you would be complaining really,” Lumineria replied casually, as if their entire game was not crashing down. “It’s not like we paid for this, we take what we can get.”
“Gods, we're all fucked!” Juni swore, his fingers’ typing becoming more and more brisk.
There was a knock on the door.
“Gods, we are busy over here!” yelled Juni, still typing away aggressively, trying to get the code in order.
Arthemize sighed deeply, having an inkling that nothing was probably going to be salvaged from this disaster. Her typing slowed down, knowing that Juni and Jeo were probably going to end up saving the program from how fast they were both typing.
The knocks became much more insistent by the second.
Lumineria, infuriatingly calm, slowly turned her head to the door. Her hands were still lazily typing despite the overwhelming panic her friends were experiencing.
“Oh! That must be the delivery!”
“LUMS WHAT DELIVERY?”
“A large pizza I ordered for MYSELF. Thank you!”
Juniper stopped her typing and looked at her gluttonous friend. “You ordered pizza? A large? All for yourself?” They frowned, Lumineria never took anything seriously.
“It’s not my fault you haven’t figured out that the code keeps rewriting itself… We’ll be stuck here for ages…” Lumineria mumbled.
“You say that as if it’s MY fault, it is not, I blame Møn’s stupid system,” he retorted, pointing a finger accusingly at Arthemize.
Arthemize sighed even more deeply, knowing deep in her heart that they were all utterly fucked, she put her head into her hands, deflating in real time.
“Where did you even get the time to order the fucking pizza?”
“A few minutes ago, Scar’s pizzeria did wonders to my coding. They’re fast too.”
Lumineria stood up and happily went to get her large pizza from the delivery boy’s possession.
“Toodles!” she giggled.
Jeo groaned, the urge to just follow Lumineria was starting to invade her. “The one time I am awake and kicking, bullshit like this happens,” She muttered under her breath. “Toodles my fucking ass.”
“You say that as if Lumi wasn’t always like this puppy,” Juni barely looked up from the screen. Her face was still scrunched in concentration, trying to calm herself.
“Shit head. I wonder why I married you out of all people,” Jeo spat out, a vein almost obvious on their neck.
“Love you too, dearest.” His hands were shaking slightly. She couldn’t lash out at her wife now could she?
“And I don't, now shut up so I can save our money making machine,” they answered almost immediately, though it was obviously half-hearted.
Despite trying to stay calm, frustration still won out in the end.
Juniper walked away from the computer, sighing. He yelled out, “I am going to be stress baking, figure this out yourselves!” They went out, heading to what the others assumed was the kitchen.
Their screens flashed another warning. The kill switches didn't work, the overrides didn't respond. They could only stare as the program continuously rewrote, deleted, and changed itself.
An unknown source code.
Someone or something has fully taken hold of the system.