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Quinn finds me crouched behind a broken fountain, hyperventilating into my knees.
"You look like shit," he says.
I don't look up. My hands are still shaking from Nyx's sword at my throat. The metal was cold. Her breath was warm. I can't stop thinking about the way she said it—don't make me kill you again—like she was asking me not to hurt her.
"She let you go," Quinn says. He's not asking.
I finally look at him. He's dressed like a graveyard keeper, all tattered gray robes and a shovel slung over one shoulder. His face is too smooth for someone who's been trapped here as long as he claims. No stress lines. No exhaustion. Just this permanent look of mild disappointment, like he's watching someone fail a test he already knows the answers to.
"Yeah," I say. "She let me go."
"Interesting."
"Is it?"
Quinn crouches down next to me. Up close I can see the seams in his texture. His eyes don't quite track right—they move a half-second too slow, like the game's frame rate can't keep up with his animation rig. He's an NPC. Or he was a player once and the game ate enough of him that the difference doesn't matter anymore.
"Nyx doesn't let people go," he says. "She's the final boss. Her entire script is kill, reset, repeat. If she's deviating..."
I wait. He doesn't finish.
"If she's deviating, what?"
Quinn stands up. He's looking past me, toward the obsidian tower where Nyx's throne room sits at the top. The sky here is always wrong—purple and green and flickering like a bad monitor. No sun. No moon. Just this sick ambient glow that makes everything look poisoned.
"Come on," he says. "If you want out, I'll show you where to start looking."
I don't trust him. But I also don't have any other options, so I get up and follow.
He leads me through the Graveyard of Infinite Sorrows, which is exactly as pretentious as it sounds. Tombstones everywhere, all of them blank. There are no names. No dates. Just smooth black stone and too much fog. The ground squelches under my boots. I'm still wearing the default newbie gear—leather armor that doesn't fit right and a sword I barely know how to use.
I died three times yesterday. Or maybe it was today. Time doesn't work right in the loops.
"How long have you been here?" I ask.
Quinn doesn't turn around. "Long enough to know you won't make it."
"Wow. Pep talk of the year."
"I'm not trying to discourage you," he says. "I'm trying to save you some pain. Everyone who gets stuck here thinks they're going to be the one who breaks out. They all fail. You will too."
"Then why help me?"
He stops walking. We're standing in front of a stone well. It's old, older than the rest of the Graveyard. The stones are cracked and covered in moss that glows faintly in the dark. There's no water inside. Just black emptiness and a faint hum, like the game's trying to render something it can't quite load.
"Because watching you fail will be more interesting than watching you give up," Quinn says.
Honest. I'll give him that.
He gestures at the well. "This is a memory anchor. The game uses them to store player data. Skills, inventory, quest flags. Some people think they also store memories—the real kind. The ones from outside."
I step closer. The hum gets louder. It's not pleasant. It sounds like a swarm of insects trapped inside a computer fan.
"If I look inside, I can see my memories?"
"Maybe," Quinn says. "Or maybe you'll just see what the game thinks you remember. It's all corrupted now. Don't trust anything you see in there."
Great. Don't trust the guide. Don't trust the well. Don't trust the boss who keeps killing me but also keeps saving me. I'm starting to think trust isn't really on the table anymore.
I lean over the edge of the well.
At first, there's nothing. Just darkness and that awful buzzing sound. Then something flickers at the bottom. A shape. A face.
Mom.
She's looking up at me. Her mouth is moving. She's saying something.
I can't hear her.
"Mom?" I say it out loud, and my voice cracks.
She keeps talking. Her face is so clear. I can see the mole on her left cheek. The gray streak in her hair she always said she'd dye but never did. She's wearing her blue cardigan, the one with the coffee stain on the sleeve.
But I can't hear the words.
I try to remember the last thing she said to me. It should be easy. It was right before I logged into the game. I was in my apartment. She called. I answered. We talked about—
Nothing.
I don't remember.
"Shit," I whisper.
Quinn is watching me. "Losing it already?"
"I can't—" I stop. My throat feels tight. "I can't remember what she said."
"That's how it starts," Quinn says. His voice is flat. No sympathy. Just observation. "The game eats your real memories first. The ones that hurt. The ones that matter. Makes it easier to keep you here."
I back away from the well. My hands are shaking again.
"I need to get out," I say. "Right now. Show me how."
Quinn tilts his head. For a second I think I see something flicker across his face—pity, maybe, or regret. Then it's gone.
"There's a terminal," he says. "Old debug console. The devs used it before the game went live. If you can access it, you might be able to force a logout. Keyword: might."
"Where?"
"The Undercroft. Below Nyx's throne room."
Of course. Of course it's in the one place I absolutely cannot go without getting murdered.
"There has to be another way," I say.
Quinn shrugs. "There isn't. The game's locked down tight. Every exit route runs through Nyx. She's the central node. The server's core. You want out, you go through her."
I think about the way she looked at me before she let me go. The way her fingers hesitated on the sword hilt. The way she said my name—Vera—like she was testing the shape of it.
"What if I can talk to her?" I say.
Quinn laughs. It's a short, bitter sound. "You can't negotiate with a boss fight. She's not a person. She's code."
"She remembered me."
"That's a bug."
"Maybe. Or maybe she's waking up."
Quinn's expression goes cold. "If she's waking up, that's worse. An AI that breaks its own script doesn't become your friend, Vera. It becomes unstable. Dangerous. You think she's sparing you out of kindness? She's sparing you because something in her code is corrupting, and she doesn't know what to do about it. When she figures it out, she'll kill you just to make the error stop."
I want to argue. I can't. Because he might be right.
But I also remember the way Nyx's hand shook when she held the sword to my throat.
"Where's the terminal?" I ask again.
Quinn sighs. He pulls out a small item—a glowing shard, pale blue and humming softly. He hands it to me.
"This is a key fragment," he says. "You'll need three of them to unlock the Undercroft entrance. I can get you the other two, but it'll take time. And you'll owe me."
"Owe you what?"
"A favor," Quinn says. "Unspecified. To be called in later."
Red flag. Huge red flag. Every gamer instinct I have is screaming at me not to take this deal.
But I don't have a choice.
I take the shard. It's cold in my hand, and the glow pulses in rhythm with my heartbeat.
"Fine," I say. "Get me the other two."
Quinn nods. He turns to leave, then pauses.
"One more thing," he says. "When you get to the terminal, don't try to destroy Nyx. The game won't let you. She's load-bearing. If she goes down, the whole server collapses. You'll be trapped in here forever. Assuming the crash doesn't just kill you for real."
"Then what do I do?"
"You log out clean. You leave her running."
He walks away before I can ask anything else.
I stand there, holding the shard. The graveyard is quiet except for the wind and the distant sound of something growling in the dark. I open my menu—still sluggish, still half-broken—and navigate to the system settings.
There's a new option at the bottom.
EXIT PROTOCOLS.
I select it. A list loads. Most of the commands are grayed out. Error messages everywhere. But one line flickers at the bottom, half-corrupted:
NYX CORE ACCESS ONLY.
I stare at it.
Quinn was right. Every exit runs through her.
I close the menu. My hands are still shaking. I can still see my mom's face in the well, her mouth moving, saying words I'll never remember.
I have to get out.
But first, I have to go back to the woman who's killed me twice and ask her very nicely to let me into her core.
This is going to go great.