"And that wraps up another exciting interview with one of our top young prospects! As the year draws to a close, we wish you all a Happy 2893. Stay tuned and follow us on social media. Our Interstellar reps will be making a huge announcement on January 1st!"
The voice echoed across Paxos Mega City, crisp and cheerful.
It came from a projection hovering over Central Plaza, a glowing screen large enough to be seen from a dozen city blocks away. The woman's face smiled against a kaleidoscope of shifting colors and ads, her tone practiced and energetic.
Around her, the city pulsed. Hovercars zipped between glass towers. Sidewalks moved beneath crowds like conveyor belts. Drones weaved through airspace, delivering packages and streaming ads to everyone in range.
Paxos never slowed down. It covered over 800,000 square kilometers and housed more than a billion people. Entire vertical neighborhoods were stacked into layered blocks. Neon signage blinked in a dozen languages. You could live your whole life on a single street level and never need to leave.
But it hadn't always been this way.
Back in the 2400s, after World War V, the world had collapsed. Not from a single blast, but from everything hitting its limit—climate, war, economics, greed. Nations fractured. Cities crumbled.
Then the skies dimmed.
And then came the shadows.
Massive shapes darkened the skies, still and silent. They weren't clouds. They weren't planes. They were ships, huge and unfamiliar.
Earth's final wars ended not with treaties, but with precision strikes from above. Military installations vanished overnight. Satellite networks fell silent.
The invaders didn't speak at first.
They acted.
Only once the destruction stopped did they introduce themselves.
They called themselves the Interstellar Alliance, a coalition formed eons ago by early spacefaring civilizations. They'd been watching Earth for generations, waiting to see if it could course-correct. When it didn't, they stepped in.
They didn't come to enslave or conquer.
Their mission was called, Preservation.
They eliminated corruption, wiped out organized crime, and collapsed the old world order in less than a year. The time became known as The Great Cleansing, an era of brutal precision that left Earth without rulers but not without hope.
The Alliance didn't rebuild countries. They built systems. No more borders. No more flags. Just Earth.
They provided food, housing, clean energy, and universal education. Poverty didn't disappear, but it was crushed into the corners. Slowly, society reorganized under a new global structure, led by those who adapted, and abandoned the old world.
Paxos became a model MegaCity, the kind of place Earth had once only imagined in fiction. Its economy, infrastructure, and culture all thrived under Alliance oversight.
And nowhere did that culture change more than in sports.
The Esports of the early 2000s were long dead. Games weren't hobbies anymore, they were industries. Virtual worlds weren't viewed through screens; they were entered. Full-dive helmets synced directly with the nervous system. No wires. No lag. Just total immersion.
Inside the games, anything was possible. Players who couldn't walk in real life sprinted through jungles. Some wielded magic, others piloted ships the size of cities. It all felt real—every step, every swing, every scream.
Traditional sports faded. Stadiums were converted into streaming towers. Viewership for top tournaments rivaled the population of entire continents. The best players were celebrities.
The absolute best? Icons.
By 2892, gaming guilds had evolved into corporate empires. They had coaching staff, analytics departments, marketing divisions. Some even had political influence. Entire sectors of the economy revolved around gaming—hardware, training, in-game economies, and advertising.
The woman on the billboard was a media mainstay, known for wrapping up the year's biggest moments in gaming. Her segment was the unofficial countdown. When her voice hit the airwaves, the year was almost over.
But not everyone listened.
Far from the lights of Paxos, deep in the snow-covered north, a small village sat quietly beneath a blanket of white.
The roads hadn't been cleared in days. Smoke drifted from chimneys in slow spirals. The only signs of life were flickers behind windows and the occasional set of boot prints leading out to a shed or woodshed.
At the far edge of the village stood a large wooden house, half-covered in snowdrifts. Ice crawled up the corners of the windows, and the trees loomed close behind it.
Inside, a man jolted awake.
"Ugh. Those damn dreams again."
He sat up in bed, breathing heavily. Sweat clung to his back despite the freezing air.
Jayden Pentagon. Twenty-four years old. Lean, tall, rough around the edges. His dark hair fell past his ears, unbrushed. His eyes had the kind of weight that came from experience, not age.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat still, waiting for the shaking to stop. His heart thudded against his ribs, the last image from the dream still clinging to his mind, something burning, something chasing.
Jayden had lived in this village for seven years. No neighbors close enough to bother him. No deliveries unless he requested them weeks in advance.
He liked it that way.
The kettle went on and the heater clicked uselessly in the corner. Cold crept in through the old floorboards like a guest that never left as he moved through the house without turning on the lights. He didn't need them. The layout was etched into his memory. Every creaky board, every loose handle.
Outside, snow fell in heavy silence.
Jayden poured hot water into a chipped ceramic mug and stood by the window. The forest was dark, the branches weighed down. No animal tracks. No sound. Just that strange, still quiet that came before something happened.
He didn't miss Paxos. Not the noise, not the cameras, not the constant pressure to be someone. But the dreams always pulled him back to that life. Back to the arenas. The games. The rush.
They were getting clearer again. Maybe that meant something.
He took a slow sip and watched the sky shift from black to steel gray.
A new year was coming.
And unbeknownst to him, something was coming with it.