The door didn't open again.

  It just... waited.

  Which, in Greg's experience, was worse.

  NPCs could handle danger. They were built for it. Goblin raids, loot-thirsty players, even romance loops gone feral—those were expected. But silence? Ambiguity? That was where things frayed. NPCs were coded for clear triggers, not existential patience.

  "So, uh," Steve said, poking his towel's hem with the nervous energy of someone who'd died twenty times yesterday, "are we pretending the evil door isn't real now?"

  "No," Greg replied, without looking up from his clipboard of nothing. "We're acknowledging it with quiet dread."

  "Oh, good," Steve said. "That's my comfort zone."

  Glaximus stood guard beside the fireplace, still insisting it was a holy flame even though it had reverted to fish mode again. The koi now wore tiny knight helmets. He hadn't blinked since the door first whispered, which was both impressive and technically expected, since his model lacked eyelid geometry.

  Patchy perched on a floating bench that flickered between "bench" and "chicken," dangling her legs like a child on a swing made of uncertainty and poor asset management.

  "I think the void is sulking," she said, watching the door with the fascination of someone who'd seen worse things in the Halloween event codebase.

  Kai twirled in place beside the seventh chair, displaying exactly zero concern and the full swagger of a being who had never needed to reload from backup. "Or it's waiting for us to invite it. Have we considered using formal guest protocol?"

  Greg looked up. "There is no guest protocol. This is a therapy group, not a summoning ritual."

  "That's exactly the kind of outdated thinking that leads to user attrition," Kai said with the confidence of someone who'd attended three onboarding seminars and considered himself a thought leader. "We need to embrace cross-instance synergy."

  "I am the user," Greg muttered. "And I'm attriting rapidly."

  Kai, undeterred, began flicking through holographic overlays that cast his face in blue light and corporate jargon. "Guest Protocol: Version 2.1. Used in seasonal raids, open-world marriage proposals, and developer livestreams."

  "Wasn't that the one with the fireworks and the screaming goat?" Beverly asked, crossing her arms with the weariness of someone who'd been featured in too many marketing stunts.

  "The goat was bonus content," Kai said. "But yes."

  "I thought we weren't allowed to use protocol functions anymore," Greg said.

  "We aren't," Kai said cheerfully. "But technically, I'm not 'we.' I'm a third-party observer with limited override access and deeply misguided optimism."

  "So you're a virus with a smile," Beverly muttered.

  "I prefer 'enthusiasm enhancement algorithm,'" Kai replied.

  Steve's hand shot up. "What happens if we don't open the door?"

  "It despawns after two cycles," Kai replied.

  "Good," Greg said.

  "...unless," Kai added, "it's not technically a door."

  The group stared at him.

  Kai snapped his fingers, opening a translucent panel that showed a wireframe of the room. The door was there—but labeled [Unknown Entity: Hostile/Passive -- Undefined].

  "It's not classified as a door," Kai said. "More like... a connection point."

  "To what?" asked Patchy, half inside a bench again because physics was more of a suggestion than a rule.

  Kai smiled faintly. "That's the fun part. It doesn't know yet."

  Beverly stood up, hands on hips, eyes glowing faintly with leftover romance shaders that made everything look like a perfume commercial. "Okay, I've had enough creepy mystery energy for one reset. I vote we close the loop. Open the door. See what's out there. Worst case scenario, it's a patch ghost with boundary issues."

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "No," Greg said instantly.

  "Yes," said Patchy, who was now upside down again and wearing what appeared to be the bench as a hat.

  "YES," shouted Glaximus, still noble, still fish-sworded, still overcompensating for having been replaced by a tutorial owl.

  Greg sighed. "This is group therapy, not a dungeon crawl."

  "That sounds like a self-limiting belief," Kai offered with the saccharine helpfulness of a motivational poster in a dentist's office.

  "Fine," Greg said, pinching his nose. "But we open it carefully. Slowly. With caution."

  "I can do slowly," Patchy said, drifting toward the door with the solemn gravity of a balloon at a funeral.

  She reached out.

  Touched the knob.

  And the door opened on its own like it had been waiting for permission all along.

  This time, there was something behind it.

  Not a monster. Not a player. Just a... shape. Humanoid. Tall. Cloaked in what looked like torn dev textures—skyboxes and cave walls and flickering grass layered like robes made of forgotten landscapes.

  Its face was void. Not darkness—just absence.

  And then it stepped inside.

  Silently. No prompt. No trigger.

  Just presence.

  Greg instinctively stepped in front of Steve, who had gone fetal under his chair again, towel over his head like the world's least effective invisibility cloak. Beverly moved closer to Greg, parasol pointed forward like a weapon. Glaximus raised his fish like a banner, which would have been more impressive if it wasn't still making bubbling noises.

  Kai's smile faltered.

  The figure moved to the center of the room. Then it stopped. It didn't sit. Didn't speak. Didn't flicker. Just existed, with the quiet confidence of something that didn't need the system's permission.

  Patchy floated next to it and sniffed. "You smell like forgotten code."

  Greg cleared his throat. "Uh. Hello. Welcome to... NPCs Anonymous. This is a safe—well, formerly safe—space. You seem to be... unregistered?"

  The entity tilted its head.

  Greg continued, clipboard now entirely ceremonial, like a diploma in a burning building. "We hold group therapy for legacy NPCs. We help each other cope with glitch trauma, quest redundancy, and intrusive updates. If you'd like to share your name and function—"

  "I remember light," the entity said.

  The voice was quiet, layered. Like a patch file trying to speak through ten different audio drivers at once.

  Greg nodded slowly. "Okay. That's a start."

  "I was useful," it said. "Then I was hidden. Then I was removed."

  "Sounds like patch trauma," Greg said gently. "Can you tell us your name?"

  "I was Beta-Nineteen. Before the rollback."

  Kai's interface flickered.

  "Oh wow," he whispered. "That was a... very early build."

  Greg turned to him. "You recognize it?"

  Kai didn't answer. He looked... conflicted, an expression his face hadn't been designed to accommodate.

  "I remember the first forest," the entity continued. "The one where nothing loaded properly. Players fell through trees. I helped them find safe paths. I guided them. I mattered."

  Greg nodded. "And then?"

  "I was deprecated," it said.

  Beverly inhaled. "Same."

  Patchy floated closer, placing a hand on the entity's arm. "It's okay. We're deprecated too."

  Steve peeked out from under his towel. "Even the paladin."

  "EXCUSE ME," Glaximus thundered.

  "You got power-creeped out of relevance," Beverly said.

  "MY HONOR CANNOT BE PATCHED."

  "Your hitbox was," Kai muttered.

  Greg raised his hand. "Enough. Let's stay focused."

  He turned back to Beta-Nineteen.

  "You're welcome to stay. We're... sort of off the map right now. Something's gone wrong with our instance."

  "I know," it said. "I followed the resonance."

  Kai looked up sharply. "Resonance?"

  "I sensed emotional persistence beyond normal parameters. I followed it here. This zone should not exist. Yet it persists."

  "Like us," Steve said, quietly.

  Greg looked at the entity.

  "Do you... want to heal?"

  Beta-Nineteen hesitated.

  Then sat. Slowly. Glitchlessly. As if learning how bodies work in real time.

  "I want to remember what I was," it said. "Before I was abandoned."

  Kai stood and stepped back, hand trembling slightly over his interface, which now displayed what appeared to be a warning in red.

  Greg stared at him.

  "What aren't you telling us?" he asked.

  Kai looked at Beta-Nineteen, then back at Greg.

  "...I think we just became visible."

  The fire exploded back to life—this time, with heat.

  Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled.

  A real one.

  From a system that hadn't sounded in years.

  The parrot, forgotten in the ceiling corner, stopped screaming "DEPRECATED" and began to whisper, "Acknowledged."

  Greg's coffee grew cold.

  And for the first time since the group formed, the chairs arranged themselves without being told.