Far beyond Earth's atmosphere, something impossible drifted through the void.
It wasn't rock, and it wasn't ice. It was a dense, jagged anomaly that obeyed no known laws of orbital physics.
Satellites that scanned it went completely blind. Debris that drifted too close was violently repelled, as if the vacuum of space itself was rejecting its presence.
But it shifted toward Earth.
Down below, the world was completely oblivious, blinded by celebration.
In Tokyo, New York, and London, massive holographic billboards lit up the night sky in brilliant gold:
[ E N D L E S S ]
For a fraction of a second, the glowing word flickered. The letters twisted into sharp, geometric symbols—almost like an alien syntax—before violently stabilizing.
The cheering crowds just kept screaming, their eyes completely glossed over the glitch.
Why would they? Endless wasn't just a game anymore. It was the global economy.
It was a full-immersion VRMMORPG so dominant that real-world currencies were pegged to its digital gold.
Megacorporations fought over virtual land.
Governments vehemently denied their involvement, but rumors spread quietly through the dark web:
when high-ranking players died during restricted raids, someone in the real world went missing.
Far away from the neon glow, in a cramped apartment in District 9, Kai stared at the city lights through a cracked window.
He was twenty-six, but the bruised, dark circles carved deep beneath his eyes made him look forty. He was a man who had long forgotten how to smile.
On his cluttered desk sat an old, physical game disk. Endless.
He didn't play it. He didn't celebrate it. He created it.
Unwanted memories started to resurface.
"It's sad news, but you are fired."
The clumsy, old manager chewed on a snack, acting as if this were completely normal.
Kai slapped the table. "How? How can you remove me, sir?" His pupils shook violently.
"Wait... wait, I have been creating a game called Endless—"
The old man just continued to eat. He casually tossed a VR chip across the desk toward Kai.
Kai's heart stopped pounding for a split second. He slowly raised a trembling hand to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead. "Ho... how..."
The manager smirked. "One of my clients already built this. Stop spreading false rumors."
Kai tightened his fists. He loosened his collar and slowly moved toward the manager.
The manager narrowed his eyes. "Are you deaf? Didn't you—"
Kai suddenly grabbed the man by the collar, hauling him out of his chair.
The manager started to sweat. "Security! Security!"
Kai pulled him closer, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "Tell me. Who gave this to you? Tell me!"
Unable to breathe, the manager grabbed frantically at Kai's shirt. "Wait... cough... She gave it to me... cough... her name—"
Buzz.
His phone vibrated against the desk, snapping him out of the memory. Kai flinched, his eyes darting to the screen.
[ PAYMENT RECEIVED: $200 ]
He stared at the notification. Pennies for fixing other people's broken logic, while his stolen masterpiece ruled the planet.
Kai had became a ghost. Worse, his own mind had begun to glitch. Lately, he was losing time.
He would blink and find himself standing in the kitchen with no memory of walking there.
Once, he woke up to find an elegant, precise block of code open on his primary monitor. It wasn't written in his style.
File name: AFTER IMPACT
Status: Empty
Creation Date: Tomorrow
Creator: Author
Kai looks at the date ." Huh,Tomorrow is that day".
In calender, 13th was circled. The was something written in it. anniversary of his parents' death.
He packed a small duffel bag in complete silence.
As he picked up the framed photo from his nightstand, his scarred hands trembled.
His parents were smiling in the picture, frozen in a stable timeline before everything collapsed.
"I'm sorry," his fingers slowly hiding his father's face. "I'm sorry I'm still here."
Suddenly the temperature dropped.
It was never yours to begin with.
The voice breathed directly behind his ear, cold as absolute zero.
Kai spun around, his heart hammering against his ribs. The cramped room was completely empty.
His lungs seized, the silence suddenly too heavy to breathe. He snatched his keys off the desk and bolted out the door.
Twenty minutes later, his old van rattled across the Great Bridge, leaving the neon glow of the city far behind.
The night sky was unusually clear, dominated by a sudden meteor shower that streaked overhead.
White fire cut across the absolute dark. It was a beautiful, unnatural phenomenon.
High above, one streak wasn't moving like the others. It wasn't drifting on a standard orbital trajectory. It was adjusting.
The streak violently changed direction, banking sharply toward the bridge. Toward him.
Kai's pulse spiked as the falling star shifted into a burning, unnatural blue, growing massively larger by the millisecond.
***Deep underground in Area 51, the military had already realized the truth.***
They had launched their final hope—an experimental fusion-fission warhead.
But as the nuclear blast struck the anomaly high in the atmosphere, it didn't destroy it. It merely cracked the shell.
The sky began to cry fire.
"Wait, I... I can't see "
Kai slammed the accelerator to the floor, but the bridge was already trembling.
Too late.
The core of the meteor struck the suspension cables with a deafening roar.
Concrete shattered, steel screamed, and the entire massive structure immediately collapsed into freefall.
The van skidded wildly as the world tilted on its axis.
Why am I running?
The question pierced through the rushing adrenaline, sharp and entirely out of place.
Was it fear? No.
There was something he desperately needed to do. Something critical.
But the memory corrupted and slipped away as the asphalt gave out completely beneath his tires.
The van flipped. Metal crumpled. Glass exploded into a thousand glittering shards as a blinding, localized blue light swallowed everything.
As the roof crushed violently inward, Kai closed his eyes.
"Finally," he lips slowly curved. "It's over."
In the far distance, completely untouched by the destruction, the golden holographic lights of Endless still shone brightly against the skyline.
But far above the collapsing bridge, suspended impossibly in the night air, a figure wearing a blank white mask watched the precise point of impact.
Slowly, the figure marked the moment as complete.