At this point, I saw a few other contenders, normal looking people, and a few not so normal looking. There was one girl, her facial structure obviously hailed from somewhere in Asia, although I couldn’t place her accent, it was her physic that drew my attention. She stood about a hand shorter than myself, so almost six feet, and covering her whole body was layered stone. She was speaking casually with another woman, though she was much smaller, she too had some peculiarities to her. She had these little glowing lights that surrounded her, each one a different color and circling her like electrons surrounding an atom.
I didn’t want to interject myself into their conversation, so I just kept my peace as I stepped out to floor.
The air hit different up here—crisper, but with an underlying sharpness that reminded me of antiseptic and scorched stone. The sky above wasn’t quite a sky. It was a vast dome painted in permanent twilight, streaked with artificial stars that glimmered like dying embers. Somewhere in the distance, a fake moon hung low, its surface carved with digital runes that shifted subtly if you stared too long.
The moment I stepped out onto the platform, I realized how loud the floor was. Not chaotic, exactly, just busy. A thousand voices overlapped into a droning hum. Lines of people, contenders, and stranger things all moved toward a giant, sweeping courtyard that looked like it had been cobbled together from a cyberpunk mall and a medieval town square. There were stone towers with blinking lights, wrought iron fences twisted into directional gates, and a large central kiosk made of obsidian and polished brass, shaped like a reception desk at a DMV that had eaten an entire cathedral.
To my right, a long holographic display read:
LUNAR QUARTER ENTRY PROCESSING – ESTIMATED WAIT TIME: 1 HOUR, 27 MINUTES
Below it, in smaller print: Failure to comply with processing results in floor-wide debuff: “Unwelcome.” Effects include: isolation status, increased hostility from NPCs, limited UI functionality, and denial of public amenities.
There was an actual velvet rope line. Velvet. In a dungeon full of monsters and murder, they had queue lines.
A tired-looking woman in a jumpsuit held a clipboard made of floating light and kept barking, “Next!” while not making eye contact with anyone. She had an aura around her that I recognized immediately - career burnout. Next to her, a man with goat legs and a neon security vest kept scanning newcomers with something that looked like a Geiger counter duct-taped to a microphone.
As I stepped forward, the weight of the place settled in. The first floor was horror and blood and chaos. This place? This was something far worse.
It was organized.
As disgusted with the prospect as I was, I knew civilization would rear its ugly head. I just didn’t think it would be this… bureaucratic.
The velvet rope line moved like molasses on muscle relaxers. Every five minutes, someone new would be called up, poked, prodded, asked invasive questions, and then sent off looking either confused, pissed off, or both. I stayed quiet, moving forward one weary shuffle at a time. I caught snippets of conversation, someone arguing about their Class Certificate not matching their combat test results, a guy being escorted away by two security trolls for “form falsification,” whatever that meant, and a goblin loudly declaring he was “entitled to dual citizenship” because his mother was born in another quarter.
Eventually, I reached the front. The woman behind the reception desk didn’t even look up. She had slate-gray hair pulled into a bun so tight it could strangle thoughts, thick glasses with a HUD flickering behind the lenses, and the kind of expression that made you feel like an inconvenience before you opened your mouth.
“Name,” she said, voice monotone, fingers tapping her desk console like a bored metronome.
“Kevin O’Brien.” I paused. “Wait, no last name, I think, at least not in my UI. LXII? Unless they assigned a different one.”
“No record of surname input. You will be assigned a placeholder designation unless you purchase a Name Anchor from the City Registry. Would you like to hear about our Name Premium packages?”
“Hard pass.”
“Hmm.” Her eyes flicked toward something only she could see. “No employment affiliation. No social contract record. No resurrection clause filed. No soul-bond insurance. No evidence of fiscal sponsorship.” She looked up for the first time and narrowed her eyes at me. “You came in raw.”
“I’m sure that means something to you,” I said. “Can I just get through whatever the hell this is?”
“You're not eligible for permanent residency without at least one City Contract, but you qualify for a one-day chit. Provisional access only.” She tapped a panel, and a small brass medallion slid out of a tube next to the desk. She didn’t hand it to me—just pointed at it like I was supposed to know what to do. I picked it up.
“Great,” I muttered. “So, what does this do?” She sighed like I’d just asked what pants were.
“Your chit entitles you to one authorized City Viewer Session. You may select any living citizen or being currently located on your home world. The Viewer will allow you to experience their current reality from a first-person perspective, for the duration of one day.”
Something cold slid up my spine.
“Anyone?” I asked. “Even people back home?”
She didn’t blink. “One person. One day. No repeats, but you are allowed to select the date. You must select a subject before the chit expires. System lockdown will occur at the end of the cycle. Exit from the city will be prohibited until at least one viewing has been completed. Refusal will result in an Uncooperative status marker.”
She leaned forward, peering at me like I was a DMV license photo that had grown sentient. I turned to leave, then stopped. “And once I’ve done this stupid viewing, then what?”
She adjusted her glasses like it was the most exhausting thing she’d done all week. “Once your chit is marked complete, you’ll gain basic contender rights within the Lunar Quarter. That includes mobility between city sectors, Instance access, and permission to register for Class Guilds or Organizational Alliances.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Instances?”
“Mini-dungeons,” she said flatly. “High challenge, better loot, and occasionally soul-linked gear. Most contenders who progress past Floor Two do so by clearing them. Without access, you’ll fall behind.”
“Anything else?”
“You’ll be eligible for soul protection insurance, death contracts, and limited resurrection terms. You’ll also stop being flagged as an outsider, which, shockingly, makes it easier to buy gear, sleep indoors, and not get shaken down by the guards every time someone screams ‘monster.’”
“Wow,” I said. “What a welcoming place.”
“This is a city,” she replied. “Not a theme park.”
With that, she turned her attention back to her terminal, already calling the next name in line.
I scowled at her for a moment, feeling like I just got told off, even if I hadn’t. I swallowed my remarks for her shitty attitude, then grew distracted as a notification about a quest showed up in my UI. To my shock, the Dominai was speaking to me again, but his voice had changed. Dark brooding British street thug sounded in my head. It sounded like Jason fucking Statham.
[Quest: A Right Welcome]
All right, mate. Ya made it this far, didn’t ya? Well, welcome to the big time, Sun-Shine.
The city’s got rules, and ya don’t know any of ’em. Not that anyone gives a toss. So here’s the deal: get yourself situated. Complete your chit-viewin', make a bit of coin, and try not to get mugged, stabbed, press-ganged, or recruited by a cult. You laugh now, but you’ll see.
[Objective]
- Complete your authorized Viewer Session
- Acquire your first Instance Token
- Join or form one official contract (Guild, Faction, Union, Cult, whatever—you need a bloody backing)
- Survive your first night without getting arrested or killed
Bonus Objective (Optional):
- Obtain Soul Protection coverage before sundown
After I closed the menu, a small marker popped up on my compass. I had tinkered with the settings and now my compass had a slider to allow me to keep it in my vision or only activate when I looked down. I wouldn’t have noticed the little marker if it didn’t flash at me for the first few seconds. When I focused on the marker, a little message popped up that said, “Quest Objective.” I mean, if you’re going to be that obliging.
It was an obvious game path, and I couldn’t really be pushed any more directly than this. When a game leads you this hard, you will probably miss something if you play along. In that situation, it would be wise to dig around, jostle things, look for the collector’s items, etc... Either that, or you were still in the tutorial. Seven hells, I might still be in the tutorial.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
The thought nearly liquidated my bowels as I opened the doors to the streets once more.
The doors yawned open with a groan like a rusted tomb, and I stepped into a city that didn’t feel built, it felt grown. Then abandoned, then squatted in by gods and ghosts alike.
The Lunar Quarter wasn’t just a place. It was a phase. A mood. The air shimmered faintly, not with heat, but with subtle silver hues that danced like oil on water. Light didn’t behave here, it curved around corners before you reached it, hung too long at the edges of things. The sun hadn’t vanished entirely, but it was distant, like we were perpetually five minutes after dusk. High above, the moon hung too close and too large, almost sentient in its pale indifference.
The first street sloped downhill, paved with old, worn stone. Some rough and cracked, other parts etched with spiraling symbols that shifted ever so softly. Subtly. At the edge of my vision, I swore they pulsed, like slow heartbeats buried in the stone.
I passed a bakery, I think, with an emblem of a crescent moon with a bite taken out of it. Nearby, the air smelled of something yeasty and wrong. Peering through the window, the loaves there had impressions faces in them. Their expressions looked like someone screaming into the dough. They twitched. I didn’t go it.
Down the block, a three-legged hound the size of a pony padded silently across the street. Its fur shimmered like stars drowned in oil, and it had no eyes, just a nose like a scarred snout and an open mouth full of silver teeth. Nobody else seemed to notice it, or maybe they just knew better than to acknowledge it. My skin crawled.
The people, if one could still call them that, were as varied as a manic bestiary gone off its meds. A man with spiral horns and mirrored eyes haggled with a living cloak stitched from fluttering bat wings. A fae with violet skin and an antler crown tried to pickpocket someone who appeared to be made of fragmented moonlight. The victim didn’t stop her… just grinned wider with every coin she lifted.
Stalls lined the edges of the road, each one a contradiction. A goblin in a bowler hat hawked a lunar salt that floated in tiny glass vials. A priestess in grayscale robes whispered riddles into a man’s ear as he was hooked up to some apparatus draining his blood. The expression on his face was ecstasy, which made me feel like the normal guy that walked into the bathroom in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
You know the scene, the business man walked in to find two dudes licking LSD off each other. He walks out, freaked out, when the narrator picks up and says, “with any luck his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he’ll never know.”
At that very moment, I was that guy, walking by and witnessing something I’d never know, and to be honest, I didn’t want to know.
Shiny objects stole my attention as I came by various street vendors selling weapons. There were Wolverine claws, falchions, sabers, extendable staffs and so much more. There was one vendor that just sold knives, no labels, no price tags, just a long booth filled to the brim with knives.
Above it all, crumbling towers leaned like drunken giants, connected by bridges of bone and vine. Crows, because what else could they be, watched me from every archway. Their feathers rippling like oil on water and their eyes hinted to red malice.
As I took all this in, I was still following the beacon on my compass. The journey took me across some slums, and though I thought it unclean before, this was something else entirely.
The change wasn’t immediate, the stones slowly grew uneven, slick with something not entirely water. The buildings grew closer together, built from patchwork materials like bone, brick, driftwood and carapace. Doors hung crooked, windows glowed with eldritch blue, and everything stank of the dank wet of a secluded cave. Music drifted in the air, all off-key and withering. There was the sound of a faint chant on the air, like a bard having a psychotic breakdown in a sewer.
A boy no older than twelve hissed at me as I passed, eyes glowing silver and mouth full of too-sharp teeth. He clutched a broken gear like it was a toy. “You smell like sky,” he said, then vanished into an alley I didn’t want to look down.
Finally, the marker on my compass pulsed faintly and I could see my objective in my minimap. It took me down a narrower side street that looked like it had been chewed into existence. Graffiti lined the walls in symbols I couldn’t read but somehow understood: danger, trespass, laughter, despair. So, what else is new?
I chuckled to myself, though there wasn’t any real humor behind it. If someone from earth had made this place, they had coded it while on mushrooms. In hell.
The narrow street opened to a broader boulevard, approximately as wide as four lane street with a center divider. Now, with my objective in sight, I took a moment to take it in. The building itself was much cleaner than the surrounding area, which told me that most of the money from these slums was getting funneled here. Either that, or the AI or whatever set up this place had deliberately made this place grand while making the surrounding area look like an oversized gutter.
The Viewer Hall stood like a sanctum carved from the concept of surveillance itself. Smooth stone walls, bleached bone-white and veined with faint pulses of moonlight, stretched high into the low-hanging fog. An obelisk of black glass jutted from its front courtyard like a blade plunged into the earth, and the entrance was framed by towering statues on either side. They were vaguely humanoid, one wore a hood of crescent shards, the other a mask of mirrored obsidian. Both leaned slightly forward, like they were listening for secrets.
Atop the doors, a shifting sigil burned in pale blue flame. It reminded me of a blue version of the Eye of Sauron, except this eye was disappointed. It didn’t look, it glared.
The air in front of the building was… still. Too still. No foot traffic, no beggars, no vendors daring to set up shop. Even the rats gave it a wide berth, like there was an invisible barrier and they dare not get too close.
A pair of guards in lunar-stamped plate leaned against the gate columns, one nursing a half-smoked stick of something that hissed rather than burned. Their armor looked ceremonial, ornate with lunar filigree, but the way they scanned me said they’d earned their positions.
I sighed and climbed the steps. Each one was clean and dry in a city that seemed allergic to both. My boots made no sound, which was unnerving.
The two guards nodded as I strode past. The doors didn’t creak when they opened, they didn’t groan. They just parted like they had been expecting me since the world began. I had a bad feeling about this, and I’m sure it showed on my face as my body adapted to the new temperature.
It was cold. Not air-conditioned cold, more like funeral parlor cold. The interior stretched upward far too high for the building’s exterior dimensions to allow. Moonlight filtered down from somewhere far above, catching in swirling motes that refused to settle. The floor was comprised of polished black stone, perfectly reflective. Walking across it felt like treading over some deeper void.
Everything was quiet, the library kind of quiet to boot. Oddly, it had an edge to it, like if I whispered too loudly something old and nosy might whisper back. It gave me the heebie-jeebies.
A single desk sat in the center of the chamber, shaped like a crescent, manned by something that used to be a person. Her features had a porcelain quality to them, entirely too smooth and symmetrical. Her eyes glowed like a candle flame seen through fogged glass. She didn’t look up as I approached, only raised a finger and pointed.
Following that finger, there were rows of alcoves. Each alcove contained a seat, not a chair but not quite a pod, with something in between. They looked grown instead of built, like shells of giant nautiluses, though their insides were padded with pale blue cushions and fitted with visor-like hoods. Above each seat was a hovering symbol. Occupied seats had a blue symbol whereas unoccupied seats were red. Their shape was different too, but that just told me it would change once someone got in.
As I approached the one she’d pointed to, its hood lifted with a soft sound of pressure escaping. The cushion inside shimmered faintly, like a shiny new foil card, it caught the light in a way that felt inviting. I paused, eying it.
“Your chit will expire in four hours once you’ve started the viewing,” the woman at the desk said, voice hollow and deliberate. “Please be seated.”
I glanced back, wondering if it was too late to nope out of this entire floor. But my minimap still had the marker flashing, and the voice of the Dominai whispered in my head.
“C’mon, Dorathy, one peek behind the curtain. Don’t ya want to know what’s real anymore?”
I clenched my jaw, stepping into the shell. I worried whether it was the last thing I’d ever do.
The hood lowered, and the world went dark.
Blackness, utter and complete. I felt adrift in the void for a time I couldn’t count. As abruptly as it began, a menu appeared. It read:
[User: Kevin LXII]
[Viewer: Kevin LXII]
Underneath it was a green button I could mentally select. It read, “Commence.” I went to select the viewer, since I was obviously the one using the machine, but it was unchangeable. I mentally selected it again, and nothing happened. I tried and tried again, and though I could change the “user,” it didn’t seem right. I was the user using the equipment. What if I accidentally let someone else view me? What did that mean?
I started getting frustrated, obliviously pressing all the buttons at once with a mental barrage. I tapped the commence button.
What happened next broke me. Broke me in ways I don’t have words for. Broke me down to the core of my being and sent me into a spiral that I might not ever crawl out of.
I watched a day in my own life.
A day in the life of a man that was never abducted. A day in the life of myself, the me that never left. The me that never saw lights in the sky in some backwater town in Navada. The me that never had to fight to survive. The me that got to stay with Beth. The me that wasn’t me. The me that I was made from.