ASHEN VALE POV
"Ninety seconds of frozen time," Kai says. "Eighty-seven now. We need a plan."
I can't think. The debug mode has suspended reality around us—Feng's warriors are frozen mid-attack, the marketplace is trapped in impossible stillness, and somewhere out there the Grief King is demanding Kai's death in twenty-four hours.
"Can you extend the time freeze?" I ask desperately.
"No. The system will crash and kill us both." Kai's hands fly across the pod's interface. "But I can do something else. Something crazy."
"Crazier than rewriting reality?"
"Way crazier." He pulls up code I don't understand. "I can upload us into the game world. Actually INSIDE Eternal Midnight. We'd be untouchable there—no physical bodies for Feng to arrest, and spirits can't enter digital space."
My stomach drops. "You want us to hide inside a horror game?"
"Just until we figure out how to deal with the Grief King's ultimatum." His eyes meet mine. "But there's a catch. Eternal Midnight is designed to find your worst fears and trap you in them. If we go in together, we'll see each other's nightmares. Every terrible thing we've ever experienced or feared. No secrets. No walls. Everything exposed."
I think about my family's massacre. The thing I've spent seven years trying to forget. If Kai sees that...
"Sixty seconds," he warns.
"What happens if we don't go in?"
"Feng arrests us. Tortures me for my technology. Probably executes you for treason." Kai's voice is steady but his hands shake. "And the Grief King destroys Neo-Requiem in twenty-four hours because I'll be in a cell instead of fighting."
Both choices are terrible. But at least in the game, we have time to plan.
"Do it," I say. "Upload us."
Kai hesitates. "Ashen, you'll see things about me. My past life. How I died. Why I'm broken." His voice cracks. "And I'll see your family. Your trauma. Everything you've hidden. Are you sure—"
"FORTY SECONDS!" The system screams a warning.
I grab his face with both hands, forcing him to look at me. "I don't care about your secrets. You're the first person in seven years who made me feel human. That's worth any nightmare."
Something in his expression breaks and rebuilds. "Okay. Hold on. This is going to hurt."
He activates the upload sequence.
Reality SHATTERS.
My body dissolves into data streams. I'm being pulled apart atom by atom, converted into pure code, uploaded into a digital nightmare. It BURNS like every nerve ending is on fire.
Then everything goes silent.
I open my eyes in an abandoned hospital.
Flickering lights. Bloodstained floors. The smell of rot and chemicals. Somewhere in the darkness, something is breathing.
This is Eternal Midnight. Kai's game. But it's different from when I tested it before—more real, more visceral, like the horror has physical weight.
"Kai?" I call out.
"Here." He materializes beside me, looking as disoriented as I feel. "We made it. We're inside the game's core program."
"How long do we have?"
"In here? Time moves differently. One hour outside equals about ten hours inside. We have roughly two hundred and forty hours to figure out how to stop the Grief King before—"
A child's voice echoes through the hospital: "Ashen? Where did you go?"
I freeze. That voice. No. No, it can't be.
"What's wrong?" Kai asks.
The voice comes again, closer: "Ashen, I'm scared. The bad things are coming. Why aren't you protecting me?"
It's my brother's voice. My dead brother. The one I couldn't save.
"The game is manifesting your trauma," Kai says quietly. "We need to face it to move forward. That's how Eternal Midnight works—you have to confront your fears to escape them."
"I can't." My voice breaks. "Kai, I CAN'T watch him die again."
He takes my hand. His palm is warm and solid despite being digital code. "You're not alone this time. We face it together."
The hospital corridor ahead fills with shadows. I see figures taking shape—my mother, my father, my little brother. They look exactly like they did seven years ago on the night they died.
"Ashen!" My brother runs toward me, arms outstretched. "Help me! The monsters are coming!"
I know it's not real. Just data. Just nightmare algorithms exploiting my trauma. But my heart is breaking anyway because he looks so ALIVE, so scared, so much like my actual brother.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I'm so sorry I couldn't save you."
The hospital walls crack open. Black spirits pour through—the same ones that murdered my family. They swarm my brother's digital ghost.
I scream and try to run to him.
Kai holds me back. "It's not real, Ashen. If you chase that memory, you'll be trapped in the loop forever. That's how the game works."
"Let me GO!" I struggle against him. "I have to save him this time!"
"You can't save someone who's already dead!" Kai's voice is harsh but his grip is gentle. "I know because I tried too. Every night in my old life, I dreamed about fixing my mistakes. But you can't change the past. You can only survive it."
The spirits tear my brother apart. His screams echo through the hospital.
And then silence.
The corridor goes dark. The nightmare resets.
I collapse against Kai, sobbing. "I hate this. I hate that I couldn't save them. I hate that I'm still alive when they're not."
"I know." He holds me while I break down—something no one has done in seven years. "But being alive means you get to choose what you do with the time they didn't get. You can waste it hating yourself, or you can use it to save other people's families."
I look up at him through tears. "Is that what you do? Is that why you made the game—to save people?"
"I made it because I'm selfish." His smile is bitter. "In my first life, I died alone at my desk, having wasted every relationship for my work. This time I wanted to matter. To create something that actually helps instead of just entertaining." He wipes a tear off my cheek. "Turns out helping people makes them want to protect you. Novel concept."
Despite everything, I almost laugh. "You're an idiot."
"Yeah, but I'm your idiot now. You chose me over your entire career, remember?"
We're having this moment—vulnerable and raw and almost tender—when the hospital's emergency speakers crackle to life.
A voice I don't recognize speaks: smooth, ancient, amused.
"How touching. The Phantom General and her little game designer, hiding in digital fantasies while the real world burns."
The Grief King. Somehow, it's communicating directly into Kai's game.
"That's impossible," Kai breathes. "Spirits can't access—"
"I am not just any spirit, child." The voice grows colder. "I am the PROGENITOR OF DESPAIR. I was ancient when your species learned language. And your little sanctuary? I've been inside it since the moment you activated the upload."
The hospital around us starts CHANGING. The walls bleed black ichor. The air fills with screaming voices.
"I gave you twenty-four hours to die honorably," the Grief King continues. "But since you've chosen to hide, let me motivate you. Every hour you remain in that game, I will destroy one district of Neo-Requiem. Starting now."
Through the hospital windows, I see a vision of the real world. The Undercity's southern district is BURNING. Spirits are massacring everyone. Thousands of people screaming.
"Stop!" I shout at the empty air. "They're innocent!"
"So was my kind before humans learned to weaponize fear against us." The Grief King's laugh echoes. "Now you'll watch them die while you hide in safety. Hour by hour. District by district. Until you decide your boyfriend is worth less than a city."
The vision vanishes.
Kai and I stare at each other in horror.
"We can't stay here," I say. "We have to go back—"
"If we go back, Feng arrests us and we can't fight the Grief King anyway." Kai's mind is racing—I can see it in his eyes. "We need a third option. A way to fight from inside the game."
"How? We're just code right now!"
"Code that generates fear energy." His expression shifts to something dangerous and brilliant. "Ashen, what if we don't hide in the game? What if we weaponize it? Turn Eternal Midnight into a bomb we can detonate directly into the Grief King's mind?"
"That's insane. You'd have to—" I stop as understanding hits. "You'd have to link your consciousness directly to the Grief King's. Let it into your mind. It could destroy you from the inside."
"Yeah." Kai's smile is reckless. "But it would also give me access to ITS mind. And if I can get in there, I can find its weakness. Every creature has one—even ancient Progenitors."
"Kai, no. It's too dangerous—"
"It's already inside the game!" He gestures at the bleeding walls. "We're out of safe options."
He's right. But the thought of Kai opening his mind to that thing makes me want to vomit.
"If you do this," I say slowly, "I'm going with you. Into the link. Into the Grief King's mind."
"Ashen—"
"We're in this together, remember?" I grab his hand again. "You face my nightmares. I face yours. And we face that monster's together. Deal?"
He stares at me for a long moment. Then nods. "Deal. But if this kills us—"
"Then at least we die doing something brave instead of hiding." I squeeze his hand. "Now stop stalling and open the link before another district burns."
Kai pulls up the interface and starts typing code at impossible speed. "This is going to feel like dying. Multiple times. Simultaneously."
"Can't be worse than living without my family."
"God, you're dark. I like that about you." He finishes the code and looks at me one last time. "Ready?"
No. I'm not ready. But another district is burning while we hesitate.
"Do it."
Kai activates the mental link.
The hospital explodes into black flame.
And I feel something ancient and hungry SLAM into my consciousness like a freight train made of pure despair.
The Grief King's mind is an ocean of suffering—centuries of collected human misery, all compressed into one endless scream.
Through the pain, I hear Kai's voice: "Stay with me, Ashen! Don't let it drown you!"
Too late.
I'm sinking into infinite despair, and the last thing I see before the darkness takes me is a memory that isn't mine:
A little boy watching his parents burn alive.
The boy grows up cold and cruel.