The first thing he noticed was the absence of blocks.
No pixelated edges, no grid-aligned trees, no cubic sun hanging stupidly in a square sky. Just the humid cling of New York summer air against his skin, the distant wail of sirens, and the acrid bite of exhaust fumes curling into his nostrils. His fingers—long, bony, pale things that looked like they'd been carved from marble and left to gather dust—flexed experimentally. They should've been rendered in eight-bit.
"What the *hell*?" The voice that left his lips was wrong. Hollow, like something speaking through a tunnel.
A woman in a navy pantsuit sidestepped him on the sidewalk, clutching her coffee tighter. "Freaks," she muttered, not quite under her breath.
He turned his head, slow, deliberate. White voids stared back where eyes should've been. She yelped, scalding herself as her paper cup crumpled in her grip. The man beside her—balding, jowly, reeking of stale cigar smoke—grabbed her elbow. "Christ, Linda, you okay?"
Linda didn't answer. Her pulse throbbed visibly in her throat.
The thing that wasn't Herobrine tilted its head. "Coordinates." It wasn't a question.
A teenager in earbuds paused mid-stride, one foot hovering over the pavement. "Uh. 40.7128° N, 74.0060° W?" His Adam's apple bobbed. "Dude, your… your *face*—"
The sidewalk shuddered beneath them. A sewer grate clanged like a gong.
Three blocks east, Peter Parker's spider-sense ignited like a match dropped in gasoline.
Behind the counter of a bodega, an old man named Javier crossed himself. "*Diablo blanco.*"
Fourteen stories above, Tony Stark's repulsors whined to life as his HUD flickered with an energy signature that shouldn't exist.
And in the space between atoms, something ancient—something that remembered being lines of code—unfolded itself, vertebra by vertebra, into a world that had no bedrock to dig through.
The traffic light changed. A delivery van honked.
Herobrine smiled.
It wasn't a human expression.
Herobrine telaports away and stands ontop of a building wondering what he should do now The rooftop gravel crunched underfoot with the exact texture of crushed granite—not the smooth, exaggerated particles of Minecraft's blocks, but jagged little teeth biting into the soles of his feet. Herobrine flexed his toes, feeling the way the rough surface tugged at the unnatural whiteness of his skin. Twelve stories below, a bicyclist swerved around a pothole, shouting obscenities at a taxi driver idling too close to the bike lane.
To his left, the rooftop access door groaned open on unoiled hinges.
"*Mierda*, man, I told you this was a bad idea—" A lanky teenager with acne scars and a red hoodie stepped out, followed by two others: a girl with chipped purple nail polish gripping a DSLR camera, and a heavyset boy sniffing loudly as he adjusted his glasses.
"Shut *up*, Miguel," the girl hissed. "You wanna get caught? This is the best view of the sunset in Queens."
Herobrine didn't turn. His head tilted fractionally, listening to the staccato rhythm of their heartbeats—Miguel's fast and thready, the girl's steadier but with a telltale skip when her sneaker scuffed a loose piece of gravel.
The heavyset boy froze first. "*Dios mío.*" His voice cracked.
The girl lowered her camera. "Oh my *God*, is that—? Is he *glowing*?"
Miguel backpedaled into the doorframe with a metallic clang. "What the *fuck* is that?!"
Herobrine's mouth opened. The sound that came out wasn't speech—more like radio static filtered through a human larynx. "*Inventory.*"
The girl's fingers tightened around her camera strap. "Did... did he just say 'inventory'?"
A pigeon burst from a nearby HVAC unit, wings slapping the air in panic. The noise seemed to snap Miguel into motion; he fumbled for his phone, thumbs jabbing at the screen. "I'm calling 911—"
"Wait!" The girl—name tag on her thrift-store jacket read "Liz"—stepped forward, though her knees visibly trembled. "Are you... like, a mutant? One of the X-Men?"
Herobrine's void eyes tracked the pigeon's flight path across the skyline. Somewhere north, a Stark Industries drone hummed faintly, its red tracking light blinking in erratic patterns.
The heavyset boy (Juan Carlos Rodriguez, 17, asthmatic, currently regretting skipping his inhaler) wheezed out, "His *eyes*, Liz—he doesn't *have* eyes—"
Down on the street, a car alarm whooped to life. Then another. Then six more in rapid succession, a cascading wave of noise that made Liz flinch.
Inside the bodega across the street, Javier dropped his mop. The water bucket tipped over, sending a dark stain creeping across the linoleum. "*Lo dije,*" he whispered to the Virgin Mary figurine by the register. "*Es el diablo.*"
Seventeen blocks away, Peter Parker's hairs stood on end beneath his sweatshirt. "*Okay, that's new,*" he muttered, ducking into an alleyway.
On the rooftop, Miguel's phone screen flickered. Then died. "*No no no—*" He smacked it against his palm.
Herobrine raised one hand. The air around his fingers *warped*, like heat haze over asphalt.
Liz's camera emitted a high-pitched whine. The viewfinder displayed only static.
Juan Carlos made a sound like a deflating balloon.
Three things happened simultaneously:
1. A SHIELD surveillance van screeched around the corner, blacked-out windows reflecting the dying sunlight.
2. Tony Stark's repulsors shrieked overhead, the gold-and-red suit banking hard enough to scatter pigeons from a water tower.
3. Herobrine's fingers closed into a fist.
The rooftop door slammed shut with the finality of a tomb sealing.
Miguel screamed.
Liz's knees gave out.
Juan Carlos fainted.
And somewhere deep beneath Manhattan, something that hadn't existed before—something with too many vertices and not enough polygons—pressed upward through bedrock that was suddenly, inexplicably *soft.*
The wind shifted. The drone's hum cut out.
Herobrine exhaled.
The sound smelled like overworld grass and burning RAM.
The Netherite sword flickered in Herobrine's grip—one moment a blade humming with violet enchantments, the next a diamond pickaxe with telltale chips along its edge, then a splash potion swirling ominous magenta. Each transformation emitted a faint *pop* of displaced air, like bubbles bursting in thick syrup.
Liz's chipped purple nails dug into Juan Carlos' shoulder as she hauled him upright. "*Holy shit.*" Her whisper carried the pitch of someone restraining panic through sheer awe. "Miguel—Miguel, that's *Herobrine*."
The lanky teen froze mid-dial, his 911 call abandoned. His acne scars stood livid against suddenly pale skin. "Like... the creepypasta?" His voice cracked. "That's not—that's *impossible*—"
The sword solidified into its original form, its razor edge catching the sunset in a way that shouldn't be geometrically possible. Three floors down, the bodega's fluorescent lights exploded in a shower of sparks. Javier's muffled curse drifted up through the fire escape.
Tony Stark's boots hit the rooftop with a *clang* that sent vibrations through the gravel. The faceplate retracted to reveal eyebrows furrowed deep enough to shadow his eyes. "Okay, Casper," he said, palms raised in a mockery of nonchalance. The repulsors glowed faintly blue. "Let's put the glowy sword down before—"
Herobrine turned his head. Not a human rotation—more like a mannequin's head swiveling on a display stand. Tony's jaw muscle twitched.
Liz inhaled sharply. "Mr. Stark! His inventory—he's *cycling items*!"
The sword dissolved into a golden apple, then a bundle of TNT fuses hissing dangerously. The smell of gunpowder ribboned through the air.
From the alley below, a web *thwipped* against the rooftop's edge. Peter Parker's sneakers squeaked on the gravel as he landed in a crouch. "Uh. Hey. So." His Adam's apple bobbed. "Anyone else seeing the Minecraft guy?"
Miguel made a sound like a deflating balloon.
The TNT morphed into an ender pearl, its surface seething with violet energy. Tony's HUD flared crimson warnings. "*Friday, evac protocol for these kids,*" he muttered through clenched teeth.
A gust of wind carried the scent of ozone and—inexplicably—freshly tilled soil. Peter's spider-sense prickled at the base of his skull. "He's not... *evil* evil, right? Like, wiki says he just builds weird stuff—"
Herobrine's mouth unhinged. The noise that emerged wasn't language—it was the sound of a disk drive skipping, layered with the distant *clunk* of pistons firing. The ender pearl pulsed in time.
Behind them, the SHIELD van doors slammed open. A black-booted foot hit the pavement—
—just as the pearl arced skyward.
Tony shouted. Peter lunged.
Liz's camera flashed involuntarily, capturing the exact moment spacetime *bent* around Herobrine's form. The photograph (later classified Level-10 by Fury) would show his pixels unraveling like thread from a sweater, the rooftop's gravel rising in defiance of gravity, and—most disturbingly—the faint gridlines of chunk borders superimposing themselves over reality.
Then silence.
Empty air where Herobrine had stood.
The ender pearl shattered against a water tower two buildings over.
And deep below Queens, the bedrock *groaned*.
Juan Carlos finally found his voice. "*Qué carajo...*"
Peter picked up the golden apple that had materialized where Herobrine's feet last touched. It left shimmering motes in his palm. "Uh. Mr. Stark? I think..." He swallowed. "I think he just loaded a new world."
Tony's repulsor hummed ominously. "Friday? Get me every seismic sensor from here to Hoboken."
Somewhere in Midtown, Stephen Strange's sling-ring sparked without warning.
And in the abandoned subway tunnels beneath their feet, something began *digging*.