Swift movements through the bloodied terrain left shallow footprints in the layers of thick snow. The red snow clumps together, creating a powdery, deep red blanket that covers the ground, with the added benefit of suppressing the constant ringing in Tang-Ji's ears.
For a beat, she remembered Kyoto in late summer—the cicadas fizzing in the trees, heat pooling on stone, plum ice melting down wrist. The memory flashed like a match in wind, quick and useless against the cold, but it made the ringing in her ears feel human again. Then it was gone.
Kazami's eyes darted around, noticing a red splattering of snow coating the trees and huts. Tang-Ji was surprised at how still everything seemed. The only sound she could hear was her half-broken boots crunching softly in the snow.
She wanted—absurdly—to feel warmth that wasn't borrowed from panic.
The initiation of Dusk Protocol left the three helpless individuals scurrying through the blizzard.
Tang-Ji squinted her eyes as fresh snowflakes gently fell onto her eyelashes. As she exhaled, her breath hung in the cold air for a brief moment, forming a delicate cloud of mist.
She watched as the vapour danced and swirled, carried away by the harsh weather. It's a simple yet mesmerising sight, a tangible representation of the frosty atmosphere. The game was truly real.
"We're almost there." A faint quiver threaded through Kazami's words, as brittle and sharp as the wind itself. "I see it; on my mini map, there's a mansion ahead that anchors this floor."
The word sat heavy—like soil on roots. Home was supposed to feel like that once.
"Are there anymore mobs ahead, Ukiyo?"
Ukiyo's eyes flickered briefly as she scanned the area, head tilting with mechanical precision. After a beat, she spoke with a voice that was flat and devoid of any inflection.
"No more threats detected," she stated, returning her gaze to the group with the same lifeless efficiency, as if simply relaying a data report.
"Thanks, we couldn't have shaken those snow golems off if it weren't for you warning us about the Dusk Protocol beforehand.'' His sentence was abruptly interrupted as his body came crashing down onto the slippery concrete.
"Ahh! What the hell?!" Kazami groaned as he massaged his injured behind. He slowly turned to get back to his feet. However, something unexpected happened: Ukiyo's hand jutted out before him.
"Please watch your footing," she urged, steady before pulling him up.
"Thanks again," he said, rubbing his head out of embarrassment.
Pulling her right sleeve down, Ukiyo paced ahead without responding.
The journey continued in silence for a while longer before they stopped altogether, besides a snow trail, to stare at the sky in disbelief. The moon had taken on a beautiful, reddish tinge.
Tang-Ji's eyes lit up at the sight, admiring how the crimson moon's light reflected on a small bed of well-tended oleanders, which were one-quarter buried in the red snow, each flower blooming pink and white in short, straight rows.
As they passed through a short corridor of trees, the group was met with a gateway composed of two pillars of ruined stone, with a snow-covered path leading out between them into an empty field.
Short oleander trees ran up each side of the road in uniform rows until they formed a square-like formation around the field at the end. Inside the square was a line of oleander bushes, seemingly following along the edge of a small, frozen river, whose flow was stopped by the frigid weather.
The tree branches brushed against Tang-Ji's arms, and the night grew steadily darker as she walked along the path.
At last, with one final effort, she cleared a tangle of dead, frosted branches; her coat now slightly damp from the frost. What lay before the three players now was a clearing before the ornately carved gate of an icy mansion.
Tang-Ji thought to herself, 'oleanders are poisonous,' she remembered, 'Could they be here guarding something or perhaps keeping something in.'
She also had the fleeting thought of a potential safe haven to escape from a never-ending nightmare. She thought to herself, perhaps she had wandered into a fairy land, protected poisonously from the glares of outlanders and creatures that awaited her impending demise.
"Could we stay here?" She mumbled before stopping mid-sentence as Kyushu's words began repeating themselves in her head.
"There will no longer be a safe place to hide."
"From this moment onwards, once your avatar health bar reaches zero, you will be permanently deleted both from the game and the real world."
For one treacherous second she pictured steam from a kettle, wet mittens over a radiator, a room that smelled like oranges. The vision thinned like breath in cold.
His words continued to form a loop in her mind before she could feel an arm reaching from the back and grabbing onto her shoulders. Slowly, she turned, meeting Ukiyo's gaze. Her eyes held a quiet sorrow, an unspoken weight behind them, as she stared into hers.
"You are not alone. Follow me; I will ensure you reach the next town without incident," Ukiyo reassured her.
Some part of her wanted that—wanted not just safety but a hand that knew the way.
Tang-Ji tried to calm her posture to maintain a neutral expression as she steeled her nerves before hasting towards Kazami, who stood at the metallic gate.
Here the gate was tall, ominous, and heavy, set strongly into a metal wall that went off through the silver trees with naked branches adorned with snow.
Tang-Ji could see the padlock in the chain that was twisted around through the bars. Beyond the gate, she could only see that the road continued to turn shadowed besides the still dark trees.
Since the gate was so clearly locked—locked with double locks and chained and barred—she could slowly feel her skin turning inside out. It reminded her of the neighbour's house during Halloween. She could almost smell late-August dust on suburban hedges, that warm, sun-stunned air she sprinted through with eyes squeezed shut.
Though most people in Japan rarely celebrate it, some have adopted the tradition. As a child, she would remember walking home from school, heart racing as she sprinted with both eyes closed past their gate—decorated with fake cobwebs and eerie lights.
She remembered the feeling—the same creeping fear that gripped her now.
As Kazami glanced up behind the tall bars, he could see the ginormous mansion covered entirely with a sheet of white blanket. Its windows were as shy as eyes, large enough to welcome any ray of moonlight.
The rock walls belonged right where they were, as if perchance they had grown up right from the hallowed ground. It was as if it had been called into existence to encapsulate those who came to dwell within, to quell the elements, and to allow heat to build from hearths into the inhaled woodland air.
'Click, click, click.' Like a metronome from a lesson she'd skipped for years.
"Did you hear that?" Tang-Ji quickly twisted her body towards Kazami, who was examining the sinister-looking entranceway.
She paused for a split second before becoming startled by the bewitching noise. The constant sound of grinding clicks and pops vibrated in her ears.
"Wait—Kazami, don't touch the gate!" she shouted, her sudden urgency startling him. He froze, then cautiously stepped away from the entrance.
"W-What's wrong with you?" he muttered through chattering teeth, his breath fogging in the frigid air. "Y-You scared the hell out of me." His voice cracked, brittle from the cold, irritation threading between his shivers. "E-Either way, we n-need to get inside... or w-we're gonna freeze to death."
Next to him, Ukiyo began placing each of her fingers slowly on the metal bar as she scanned the interior of the aged infrastructure.
"So, are there any hostile mobs in there?" He asked.
"Negative, there is no mob detected," she said, shaking her head. "This place holds a quest that players can interact with. To initiate the quest, you must interact with the object behind the mansion's wooden doors."
Kazami gave a puzzled look at Ukiyo before lightly shaking his head.
For all he knows from the beta testing, NPCs in this game should not be able to comprehend the concept of questing, but rather they should only be programmed to speak in a manner that depicts events that happen in their world.
"Maybe I'm just being too paranoid," he murmured before looking back at Tang-Ji, who shivered under the icy conditions.
After letting go of his dubious assumptions, he quickly summoned his Leere once again, but instead of the large blade that directly deflected the vicious boss at spawn, this time it was a dazzling fire. A flame blade lit up, creating an abnormal amount of heat in the arctic environment.
Heat licked Tang-Ji's cheeks and, stupidly, she almost stepped closer—summer pretending to exist.
He swung the two-handled blade, deliberately making a wholly unnecessary display of melting and slashing through the padlocks. Not before long, he threw the gate wide open, crashing sharply into the steel bars behind it, producing a clanging sound that rang throughout the snowy land.
Inky specks appeared on the snow as a result of sparks leaping from his red blade.
Tang-Ji was perplexed by the brilliant presence of the blade and the person who had summoned it as he glanced at the sword's hilt.
"Kazami, didn't your Leere transform into a huge sword before? Why does it look so different now?" Her voice broke the silence; her eyes glinted.
He paused, his gaze shifting to the glowing blade in his hand.
"Honestly," he said, after a beat, "I'm just starting to figure out what my Leere can do. It seems like it can change into any kind of blade I can picture in my head. That fire sword from earlier—I think I saw it in an anime when I was a kid. I must've recreated it from memory."
"So, you can summon any sword you've seen before?" Tang-Ji pressed, her interest momentarily lighting up her face.
"I think so," he replied, the blade vanishing from his grip like it had never existed. "But it's not perfect. I tried to imagine a long sword with a dragon's head, but nothing happened. I guess I need to remember the details well enough for it to work."
Despite her excitement at seeing such a bizarre phenomenon in his Leere, she decided to halt her questions. Just as quickly as the excitement had appeared, it dimmed; the shimmer faded as the looming threat crept back into her thoughts, clouding the brilliance in her sapphire stare.
Once, new loot made her loud; once, a drop could drown out everything. I can still remembered the hum of headsets, the plasticky warmth of controllers, the way midnight felt like noon when a party was full. The feeling tiptoed back—then froze.
Unfortunately, Dusk Protocol wasn't a game she could enjoy; rather, it was a game of survival.
She was on the verge of being able to let go of Kyushu's remarks and her ongoing terror of the mansion for a fleeting instant.
Suddenly, a strong will to survive temporarily occupied her mind. She was aware of the imminent danger lurking at her side, yet there was a part of her that wanted to learn more about the new world.
'Wallowing in fear and despair won't be able to change my current situation, so why not make the most of it? If I want to keep everyone safe, I must keep advancing forward. If the only constant is change, then so be it'. She thought to herself before zoning out into the winter land.
"Hey Tang-Ji, it's odd that you can't call for your Leere considering you were able to do it so flawlessly back at school," he said as he turned slowly to face her. "I want you to remain close to me in either case. Who can predict what dangers may lie ahead?"
Regaining her focus, she subconsciously nodded before walking through the metal gate.
However, before she could continue her journey into the ominous realm, there was a burning question on her mind that needed an answer.
"Kazami... can I ask you something?"
He halted in his tracks.
"Ukiyo, you go ahead and examine the trail for danger, just in case; we don't want a surprise assault." He spoke calmly, trying not to raise the decibel level above a specific threshold that would draw in hostile creatures.
Ukiyo whispered, "Alright," before pacing herself slowly up the dark path, leading towards the mansion.