Everett stood up. He grabbed his heavy black greatsword. He did not walk carefully. He let go of control. He surrendered to his own body. Everett ran toward the front doors of the supermarket. His body jerked wildly. He ducked to the left. Two seconds later, a heavy wooden beam crashed through the spot where his head had been. He swung his sword blindly to the right. One second later, a falling piece of iron pipe hit the blade and bounced away safely. He was perfectly dodging things that had not fallen yet. He looked like a madman dancing to a silent song. But he was weaving a perfectly safe path through the collapsing building. "Step exactly where I step!" Everett yelled over his shoulder. Silas grabbed Rae’s hand. Lyra stayed close behind them. They followed Everett’s strange, jerky movements. They ran through the aisles of floating food. The gravity kept turning on and off. One step, they were heavy. The next step, they bounced ten feet into the air like astronauts on the moo

The heavy iron hammer came swinging down. Garet, the terrified player, put all his anger and fear into the strike. He wanted to crush Everett. He wanted to kill the anomaly to save the world. Everett floated helplessly in the air, his boots lifted off the ground by the broken gravity. He could not dodge. He had exactly 1 Health Point left. The iron hammer was one inch away from Everett’s chest. Then, the blinding white light exploded. It was not a flash of magic. It was the fabric of the universe tearing apart. There was no sound. The heavy iron hammer did not hit Everett’s chest. Instead, the hammer passed completely through Everett’s body, like a ghost passing through a wall. Garet gasped. He fell forward, swinging at empty air. Suddenly, the broken gravity snapped back into place. Everett fell hard. He crashed into the cold, snowy ground. The impact sent a terrible, sharp shock of agony through his broken ribs and his shattered left arm. He coughed, spitting red blood onto th

Everett tried to take a step forward. His heavy boot lifted off the ground, but it took five full seconds just to move his foot forward one inch. "Whaaat... isss... haaapening..." Everett grunted. His own voice sounded completely distorted. It was incredibly deep, stretched out, and painfully slow. He looked around. The fifty trapped players were frozen in mid-air. They were screaming, but their faces were stuck in slow-motion terror. The static monsters were moving toward the players, but they were also moving at a snail's pace. The red pixel claws reached out, taking a full minute to cross a few feet of space. “Everett!” Rae’s voice buzzed inside his radio earpiece. The radio signal was fighting through the static. Her voice sounded broken and choppy. “You... are... in... time... dilation! The overlapping timelines... create extreme... temporal drag! You cannot move at normal speed!”Everett gritted his teeth. He tried to swing the heavy black sword. He pulled his right arm ba

Everett stood alone in the grass. He felt a deep, crushing loneliness. He had fought so hard to save humanity. He had bled for them. But in this pristine, perfect world of the past, he was the monster. He did not belong here. The System had thrown him into a clean room to show him how dirty he was. Everett turned his back on the frightened adults. He started to walk toward the edge of the park, hoping to find a quiet place to hide. But as he turned, he stopped. Standing near the bright red slide on the playground was a little girl. She was about nine years old. She wore a simple blue denim jacket and a small, colorful backpack decorated with cartoon stars. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into two neat braids. She was standing perfectly still, holding a bright red balloon on a string. Everett’s breath caught in his throat. His heart stopped beating for three full seconds. He dropped his heavy black sword. It hit the soft grass without a sound. He knew that face. He knew that c

These Winged Lizards looked different. They were not solid. They were semi-transparent. Everett could see the buildings right through their bodies. They flickered rapidly with blue and white static. They were Phantoms. Ghosts pulled from the old data logs of the System. The normal people on the street looked up at the sky. They screamed in absolute, mindless terror. They had never seen a monster before. To them, dragons and giant lizards were just stories in movies. Now, the stories were diving down to eat them. "Run!" a man yelled, dropping his briefcase and running blindly down the street. A Phantom Lizard folded its leathery wings and dove straight down. It aimed its sharp claws directly at the running man’s back. Everett did not think. He reacted. He was tired. He was broken. He was bleeding. The people in this city feared him. They thought he was a monster. But he was the Undying Martyr. His job was to protect them. Everett ran forward. He dragged his heavy black sword. He