Darkness swallowed everything. Not the comfortable kind that came with closing your eyes. This darkness felt deeper. Endless. For a moment, there was no sense of direction. No up. No down. Nobody. Just the strange awareness that something still existed. Somewhere.
Then, sound arrived. Low. Distant. Like the echo of a massive bell ringing somewhere beneath an ocean. A slow, haunting tone rolled through the void. Rori frowned instinctively. ...Music? It wasn't cheerful. It wasn't triumphant. It was slow. Ancient. The kind of sound that made the empty darkness feel even rger.
As she listened, Rori realized something strange. She could see again. But not the way she expected. The world around her was still pitch bck, yet faint motes of pale light drifted through the void like distant stars. She looked down. Her body wasn't there. Instead, a small sphere of dim red light floated where her chest should have been. Rori blinked. "...Okay, that's weird." Her voice didn't echo. It barely existed. Like a thought spoken out loud.
Nearby, another glow appeared. Soft silver. Then another. A cool blue. The three lights hovered silently in the darkness. Lira was the first to panic. "...Kainen?" Her voice sounded distant, almost underwater. "I'm here," Kainen replied calmly. Internally, however, he was already analyzing the situation. This isn't the login interface. Something else is happening. He looked down at himself. Where his body should have been, a small sphere of pale blue light floated. A soul. His mind reached that conclusion immediately. Interesting.
Across the void, Rori's red sphere pulsed slightly brighter. "Okay, so either we died," she said thoughtfully, "or this game has a very dramatic loading screen." Lira's silver light flickered nervously. "Please let it be the second one." A sudden sound cut through the darkness. A familiar cheerful chime. The system appeared.
The text scrolled slowly through the void:
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INITIALIZING AVARICE ONLINE....
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Neural synchronization in progress....
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Loading world parameters...
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Calibrating sensory feedback...
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Synchronizing brainwave patterns...
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Kainen watched the text carefully. Every message appeared perfectly normal. Except for one detail. The darkness around them wasn't part of any interface he had seen before.
Then the system paused. Scanning Soul Structure... The three glowing spheres drifted slightly closer together. Rori's sphere pulsed again. For a brief moment, the darkness around it twisted. Like something enormous had shifted just beneath the surface of the void. The system hesitated. Just for a fraction of a second. Then the next line appeared:
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Dormant Soul Cores detected.
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Rori blinked. "...What?" Lira's voice trembled. "That doesn't sound normal."Kainen's thoughts sharpened instantly. Dormant cores? That definitely isn't standard character creation. Before he could say anything else, the system continued.
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Adjusting Parameters...
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The red sphere fred suddenly. The silver one followed. Then the blue. For a moment, the darkness around them seemed to ripple like disturbed water. Then the system chimed again.
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Synchronization complete.
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Everything went white. Light exploded across their vision. Wind rushed past. Grass brushed against bare feet. And suddenly—they were standing outside the gates of Eldoria. The sudden change was disorienting, but Rori's excitement was immediate. "Whoa!" she excimed, staring around at the unfamiliar ndscape. Lira stumbled, her eyes wide with wonder. Kainen, however, remained calm, his eyes scanning the horizon. Something was off. He could feel it. But for now, he pushed the thought aside and smiled.
"Welcome to Avarice," he said, his voice low and smooth.
"Let's see what kind of trouble we can get into...."
