The sun didn't set; it plummeted.
One moment, the square, burning star was hovering above the horizon. The next, it dropped like a stone, swallowed by the edge of the world. There was no twilight, no dusk—just an abrupt, terrifying switch from blinding light to absolute, suffocating darkness.
Alex scrambled to finish his shelter. He had used his bleeding hands to tear up chunks of dirt, piling them into a crude, claustrophobic 2x1 hole in the side of a small hill. He placed the last block of dirt over his head just as the light vanished completely.
Darkness in the real world is rarely absolute. There is starlight, light pollution, the adjustment of the human eye. But here, the darkness was physical. It was a heavy, crushing black ink that pressed against his eyeballs. It was Sensory Deprivation.
He huddled in the corner of his dirt coffin, his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. His shattered hand throbbed in time with the glowing health bar on his arm, the red light of the hearts casting a faint, sickly illumination on the dirt walls.
Then, the world began to speak.
It started as a low vibration in the floor. Groooooaaaaaan.
It wasn't the ambient cave noises of the game. It sounded like metal twisting under immense pressure, like a submarine hull buckling at crush depth. It was the Cave Sound—the audible strain of the corrupted code holding the simulation together.
"It's just audio," Alex whispered, rocking back and forth. "It's just a sound file."
Scrape.
The sound was close. Outside the dirt wall.
Scrape. Scrape. Hiss.
Something was out there. And it was digging.
Alex realized with a jolt of ice-cold terror that he had no weapon. He had planks. He had sticks he'd snapped from the oak saplings. But he had no sword.
"Crafting table," he muttered. He pulled the planks from his inventory—the void in his gut retching as he materialized them. He tried to visualize the 2x2 grid, tried to force the wood to fuse into a table.
It didn't work. The mental blueprint flickered and died. The "System" was silent.
Scrape. The dirt wall shuddered. Dust fell onto his face.
"Okay. Manual. Do it manual."
Alex grabbed a piece of jagged cobblestone he'd unearthed while digging the shelter. He grabbed a thick oak stick. In the game, you clicked a button. Here, he had to perform the Bloody Craft.
He slammed the stone against the stick, trying to wedge it into a split in the wood. It wouldn't fit. He needed to carve it.
He used the sharp edge of the stone to whittle the wood. The stone slipped.
"FUCK!"
The jagged rock sliced across his left palm. Blood welled up, hot and sticky, mixing with the sap on the stick.
He didn't stop. He couldn't. The scratching outside was getting frantic. A low, wet moan filtered through the dirt—a sound of bubbling liquid and rotting vocal cords.
Alex jammed the stone into the blood-slicked split of the wood. He tore a strip of fabric from his shirt and bound it tight, using his teeth to pull the knot until his gums bled.
He held it up. It was ugly. It was unbalanced. It was a stone shiv taped to a branch. But it was sharp.
CRUNCH.
The dirt block in front of him exploded inward.
The smell hit him first—a wave of putrefaction so intense it tasted like copper.
Standing in the opening, illuminated by the red glow of Alex's health bar, was a Zombie.
It wasn't the green, cartoonish figure Alex knew. It was a corpse. Its skin was a sickly, peeling gray-green, hanging loosely off wet muscle. Its eyes were black voids. Its jaw hung open, unhinged, dripping black saliva.
[Hostile Entity Detected.]
[XP Reward: 5.]
The System's text flashed red in Alex's vision, urging him on. Kill it. Claim the reward.
The Zombie didn't groan. It lunged.
It was fast. Terrifyingly fast. Its cold, rotting hands clamped onto Alex's shoulders. The grip was like a vice. Alex screamed as he felt fingernails dig into his flesh, burning like acid.
Health: 8.5/10.
Alex thrust the crude stone sword forward.
He felt the resistance. The stone tip tore through the rotten shirt, through the cold, dead skin, and crunched against a rib.
The Zombie didn't stop. It snapped its jaws at Alex's face.
"Die! Just die!" Alex shrieked.
He pulled the weapon back and stabbed again. And again. And again.
The Sensory Hyper-Realism turned the fight into a nightmare. Every impact sent a shock up his arm. Every stab resulted in a spray of black, viscous fluid that coated his face and arms. There were no damage particles. Just wet, tearing sounds.
With a final, desperate heave, Alex drove the stone spike through the creature's eye socket.
The Zombie went rigid. Then, it collapsed on top of him, a heavy, suffocating weight of dead meat.
For a second, there was silence.
Then, the body began to sizzle. It dissolved into a cloud of black particles, leaving behind only the smell of ozone and rotten flesh.
Floating in the air where the head had been was a small, glowing green orb.
Experience.
It drifted toward Alex. He tried to scramble away, but the orb moved faster. It hit his chest and vanished inside him.
A shiver racked his body—not of pleasure, but of violation. A flash of memory that wasn't his own flickered in his mind: A cold room. A hospital bed. The sound of a flatline.
Alex vomited into the dirt.
He scrambled to the hole the Zombie had made and shoved a dirt block into it, sealing himself back in the dark.
He sat in the silence, his chest heaving, his hands covered in his own blood and the black residue of the monster. His new weapon lay in the dirt, a testament to the brutality of his survival.
He had survived the first encounter. He had crafted his first tool. But as he wiped the black slime from his face, Alex realized the cost.
The game didn't just want him to build. It wanted him to butcher.