His apartment was a shoebox above the garage. One room. A bed, a desk, a kitchenette that hadn't seen real use in months. A stack of instant noodle cups towered next to the sink. Dorian made a mental note to throw them out. Then ignored it.
In the corner sat his pride and joy. A legacy gaming rig cobbled together from scavenged parts, old schematics, and sheer stubbornness. It looked like a junkyard had thrown up on a desk. But it worked. Gunnar had helped him build it when Dorian turned eighteen. "If you're going to waste time on old games," the old man said, "at least do it properly."
Dorian sat down in the creaking chair. The upholstery was torn, foam spilling out. He didn't care. He slotted the chip into the reader.
The screen flickered. Static. Then a menu appeared. Not the colorful, bombastic menu he expected from an old fantasy game. This was stark. Black background. White text. A single line.
Loading: The Elder Scrolls V. Please wait.
He waited. The hard drive chugged. The old fan whirred, sounding like a dying animal. Then the screen changed.
ERROR: Missing required mod.
"Isekai" mod not found. Download? [Y/N]
Dorian frowned. He hadn't installed any mods. He didn't even know what an "Isekai" mod was. But the chip came from Leo, and Leo never gave him junk. He pressed Y.
A new window popped up. No download bar. No installation progress. Just text. But this time, the text was different. More formal. Almost legal.
"ISEKAI MOD v. ∞"
This modification requires full neural permission access to the user's consciousness stream. By accepting, you agree to the Terms & Conditions (see 47,182 pages). Warning: This mod will permanently alter your reality state. No reversal. No exceptions. Do you accept? [Y/N]
Dorian snorted. "Forty seven thousand pages? Sure. Who has time to read that?"
He thought about Gunnar. The old man always told him to read the fine print. "Contracts are written by people who want to take something from you," Gunnar would say, tapping a greasy finger on whatever document Dorian was about to sign. "Read it. Every word. Then decide if you're willing to lose what they're asking for."
Dorian had ignored that advice more than once. Sometimes it worked out. Sometimes it didn't.
This is just a game, he told himself. What's the worst that could happen?
He clicked "View Terms" anyway, just to shut up the voice in his head that sounded like Gunnar.
The screen flooded with text. Tiny font. Dense paragraphs. Legal jargon that mixed old English with futuristic legalese. He scrolled. And scrolled. And scrolled. Page after page of clauses about "consciousness transfer," "soul integration," "irrevocable consent," and "liability waivers for dimensional displacement."
Dimensional displacement?
Dorian paused. His finger hovered over the scroll wheel.
No. That's ridiculous. It's a game mod. Someone wrote this as a joke.
He scrolled faster. The pages blurred. His eyes glazed over. Then, at the very bottom, after what felt like an eternity of legalese, he found the last line. In tiny, almost invisible font. Smaller than the rest. Almost hidden.
Designer: ROB. No refunds.
"ROB?" Dorian muttered. "What is this, a netrunner's prank?"
He leaned back in the chair. The foam squeaked. He looked at the photo on his desk. Not the one with Gunnar. A different one. His mother. A corpo headshot from her employee file. She was smiling, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. She had signed contracts too. Hundreds of them. And one of them had killed her.
"Lab accident," the corpo report said.
Dorian never believed it.
He looked back at the screen. At the blinking cursor waiting for his answer.
If this is real...
He shook his head. It's not real. It's a game. A weird, overly complicated game with a stupid mod.
He pressed Y.
Acceptance logged.
The screen went black.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the room began to feel strange. Distant. Like he was watching himself from across a vast empty space. The walls flickered. The neon light outside the window smeared into a long, colorful streak, like paint running down a canvas.
Dorian tried to stand. His legs didn't respond.
What the hell?
A voice. Not spoken. Not heard. Felt. Deep in his bones. Resonating in his chest like a second heartbeat.
Transfer initiated. Destination: Tamriel. Body mapping: Vampire fledgling. Soul fusion: In progress. Estimated time to completion: 3.2 seconds.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to rip the chip out of the reader. But his hands were already fading. Translucent. Ghostlike. He could see the chair through his own palms.
Warning: Soul fusion may result in temporary disorientation, memory integration, and mild existential dread. This is normal.
"Mild?" Dorian croaked.
The apartment dissolved around him like smoke. The walls became pixels. The pixels became stars. The stars became a void. Dark. Cold. Infinite.
Acceptance logged. Welcome to your new run, Dorian Reyes. Difficulty: Survival. Permadeath: Enabled. Good luck.
The last thing he saw was the legacy reader. Its little green light blinked once. Then twice. Then went dark.
And Dorian Reyes fell into the void between worlds.
---
Somewhere in Night City, an old man named Gunnar woke up in the middle of the night. He didn't know why. He sat up in bed, listened to the silence, and felt a cold knot form in his chest.
Something's wrong, he thought.
He reached for his phone to call Dorian. Then he stopped. The boy was twenty two. An adult. He didn't need checking up on.
Gunnar lay back down. But he didn't sleep. He stared at the ceiling until the sun rose over Night City, painting the smog orange and gold.
He never saw Dorian again.