The Game Hall had a rhythm to it, one Lin Yue had learned without meaning to — the low murmur of trade stalls in the eastern wing, the clatter of practice weapons in the training yards, the particular cadence of survivors pretending, for a few hours or a few days, that the Flow did not exist.
That rhythm broke at exactly the moment every System screen in the Hall lit up at once.
[GLOBAL SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT]
[NEXT INSTANCE OPENING]
[COUNTDOWN: 12 HOURS REMAINING]
The words hung in the air above every visible surface, pale and merciless, and for one full second nobody in the Game Hall moved at all.
Lin Yue was in the middle of an unremarkable conversation with a supply vendor about the price of a reinforced blade when the announcement bloomed into his vision, and he watched the vendor's sentence die halfway out of his mouth.
"—should hold up better than the last one, it's got a—"
Silence.
