David stepped through the film of light and immediately felt cool. The heat and raising humidity of a late summer morning dropping off towards a comfortable indoor temperature. He felt something shift inside his chest. Like the first breath after holding it too long, or the moment when chronic pain finally stops.

  Hope. For the first time since this nightmare began, he felt actual hope.

  The dome contained maybe half a dozen people scattered across grass that looked impossibly green. Conversations that had been muted by the light barrier suddenly became clear as multiple faces turned toward him.

  [QUEST COMPLETED! CONGRATULATIONS - YOU HAVE REACHED THE HERALD'S BEACON]

  [TOUCH THE OBELISK TO RECEIVE REWARDS, NEW QUESTS AND FURTHER ASSISTANCE]

  [YOU HAVE ENTERED A FRIENDLY WARD - BUFFS APPLIED]

  [MORE INFORMATION AVAILABLE IN YOUR INTERFACE AND FROM THE OBELISK]

  [YOU HAVE ENTERED AN AREA OF HIGHER MANA DENSITY - MANA ABSORPTION AND RECOVERY ACCELERATED]

  David blinked away the notifications, his pulse settling to something closer to normal for the first time in hours. The constant edge of panic that had been riding his shoulders since the monster attack was... quieter somehow.

  A woman approached him with the confident stride of someone used to taking charge. Running clothes in high-vis colors, the lean build of a serious athlete. Latina features with something around the eyes that suggested mixed heritage, pretty he absently noted.

  "Hi there, what's your name?" Her voice carried the confidence and natural authority of an extrovert used to getting her way.

  David's analyst brain kicked in automatically. Group spokeswoman. Elected or self-appointed? The body language of the others suggested the former. Five people behind her, plus an outlier who wasn't part of the main cluster.

  His categorization was interrupted by realization. The outlier looked like a homeless man and he knelt beside a shopping cart, hands moving gently over something on the ground.

  A dog. Motionless. Dark fur, medium size.

  David's heart rate spiked as memories of claws and twisted bloody dog hands carrying something horrible towards him at speed flooded back.

  "Look out!" He scrambled backward toward the light barrier. "Get away from that thing before it attacks!"

  The group's reaction told him everything about their social dynamics in seconds. The spokesperson stepped forward with practiced calm. The others deferred to her or broke ranks, so a new dynamic. Things got chaotic for a moment.

  "Stop. Take a breath." The woman's voice remained steady. "We're safe here. There's nothing to worry about. I'm Camila, maybe you could introduce yourself."

  Simultaneously, the homeless man crouched protectively over the dog, glaring at David. "Back off! You leave Bessie alone! She's a good girl!"

  While this was going on David kept backing away, adrenaline fighting against something else. A strange sense of... safety? The panic felt muted, like hearing an argument through thick walls. Still there, but somehow less immediate.

  What was happening to him?

  "Chill, man." A kid in a fast-food uniform stepped forward, hands raised peacefully. "I'm Charlie by the way. You must have met something nasty out there to react like that. But this is a safe zone. We're protected here."

  Charlie puffed up a little when David's stare made his unspoken question obvious. “The Herald explained it,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the obelisk. “I touched it earlier. Got the whole info-dump. Nothing twisted can enter the zone. Mutations, monsters, non-system things all that - repelled, locked out. Safe as it gets.”

  David tilted his head. The Herald told him? Through the rock? As an analyst he immediately flagged three possibilities: 1) Charlie was lying, 2) Charlie had hallucinated, or 3) the world really was operating on game logic, complete with tutorial NPCs. None of them were comforting.

  “Let me test something.”

  He moved back toward the shimmering barrier, ignoring Camila’s quick, “Wait—what are you doing?” With slow, deliberate steps he pressed a hand against the light. It offered no resistance. His fingers slid through as if he were dipping them in sunlight. No tingling, no heat, nothing at all.

  “Doesn’t block us,” he muttered. Then, before anyone could protest, he stepped across entirely. The air outside was heavier, hotter, which he expected. More importantly he started to feel other things he hadn’t even noticed vanishing – his feet hurt a little more, the slight hollow feeling of coming down from repeated adrenaline highs was back.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The stillness took on a harsher feel. The edge of panic he’d been fighting since the monster attack was coming back, feeding off dozens of mental and physical cues. His pulse spiked. One step back inside and it eased, like turning down the volume on static, he couldn’t pinpoint what felt better but it did.

  He went back and forth twice to be sure, earning several baffled stares. “Climate control, so it’s not just an illusion. Definitely suppresses the stress response,” he concluded. “Feels psychological, but no—too consistent. Some kind of dampening field.”

  David stooped, grabbed a loose stone from the grass, and tossed it across the barrier. It vanished into the shimmer, arced, and landed on the asphalt outside with a dull clack. He tried again with a stick, with similar results. “Physical objects cross fine,” he announced. “Which means if monsters wanted to lob things at us, this place won’t stop it.”

  Camila frowned. “But we can’t see through it from the outside.”

  “Exactly.” David tapped the air where the light film met his palm. “One-way visibility. We can see them, they can’t see us. That’s tactical value.”

  Charlie crossed his arms, bristling slightly. “I told you already, the Herald said mutations can’t happen in here. We’re safe.”

  David met his eyes. “I don’t doubt you. But I don’t trust tutorials without testing their limits.” He gestured at the shimmering wall, still humming softly. “That’s the difference between being alive next week and not.”

  For the first time since meeting them, some of the others regarded David with something other than suspicion. Now he had some information David turned to Charlie and asked “What exactly did you learn?”

  "Things can't get twisted in here, though we didn’t really understand what that meant. The barrier is a repulsion field, its words not mine. The area is mana enriched. Everyone in the zone is buffed to enhance training and recovery." the kid responded. "Billy's just taking care of Bessie and working on his skills. This is like an RPG, dude.” He was excited now, eager to move onto sharing speculation. “We're all wizards and warriors now. Billy's planning to be a ranger type with Bessie as his companion once she absorbs enough mana to wake up. Oh, yeah. About that. You need to absorb enough mana to wake up."

  David's thoughts were running a mile a minute. Then his logical mind reasserted control. With the stress and anxiety fading something else came to the fore. Embarrassment…

  "Sorry, Billy." He looked toward the homeless man. "I just had a run-in with something that used to be a dog. It tried to eat me. While I was in a car."

  The group exchanged glances. Their calm confidence wavered slightly.

  "You all got quests to come here, right?" David continued. "Mine said the world was getting more dangerous."

  The fast-food kid became the focus of attention again as he shook his head. Interesting. The natural leader for introductions, but the kid was their expert on whatever this system was.

  "Hey, slow down, no quests to come here" the kid said. "We were all here when it went down. Billy sleeps on one of the benches - he likes this park because Bessie's allowed here. I come by to watch sunrise after my shift..."

  A flush colored his cheeks as his eyes flicked toward the running group. Ah. Crush on one of the morning joggers…

  "That group stretches here every day during their run," the kid continued. "And Carl there was driving by when everything happened. We all got 'initiation boosts from proximity to the obelisk' and woke up a couple hours ago."

  The pieces clicked into place. They hadn't traveled here. They'd been here when the wave hit, close enough to the beacon to get special treatment. No wonder they seemed so calm about everything.

  "A few others were here too but already left," the kid explained. "Once you get your first reward, you get another quest and the chance to actually do cool stuff. Learn magical skills, boost attributes, you know. I was trying that when you arrived - I don't normally do weird dance moves in public."

  He gestured toward the main group. "I'm kinda the expert because I play a lot of RPGs. Already picked my build direction. They're discussing what to do next, who to help, that kind of thing."

  The woman stepped forward again, back in spokeswoman mode. "I'm Camila. This is Katie, her boyfriend Mark, you met Billy and Charlie, and that's Carl."

  She indicated each person efficiently. David automatically categorized: three serious runners who trained together, one office worker caught in the wrong place, one homeless man with his dog, and one fast-food worker with gaming knowledge.

  "I'm David Murphy. Financial analyst from the downtown district." He kept his summary concise. "Everyone else I've encountered is either dead, undead, or oozing weird transformation goo. I met a monster that might have been a dog once, hence my reaction to Bessie. Cell reception is patchy, and when I finally reached 911, nobody answered."

  The group fell silent. Charlie looked embarrassed.

  "Hey, I just said that in apocalypse games, technology always stops working," he protested. "Our phones were dead, Carl's car wouldn't start. How was I supposed to know mana doesn't break technology like in all the stories?"

  Meanwhile Camila and the others had clearly focused on a different part of David’s explanation. “Wait, undead?” “Transformation goo?” “Dead? What do you mean people are dead?”

  Then Mark spoke up cutting through the noise “if you’re hurt I can check you out, I’m a trained first aider for tournaments and running meets. Of course I don’t have a cure for zombie bites, or anything really.” His tone made it clear this was meant to be a joke, something to lighten the mood. Overall the group took his revelation pretty well…

  David fell into presentation mode and filled them in on his morning as well as just what morning it was. It became clear that while the safe zone helped it wasn’t some sort of perfect mind control because there was plenty of stress.

  As the group began debating this new information and reassessing Charlie's credibility, David realized that despite rehashing everything and provoking a fair degree of shock his stress levels had dropped to something almost approaching normal. Whatever this place was doing to them, it was working over time.

  "Look, you guys discuss this while I go touch the obelisk for my rewards, okay?"

  Camila nodded. "Good idea. Charlie might be wrong about some things, but he does seem to understand the system mechanics. Ask him if you have questions." With that they fell back into chewing over things and processing. It sounded like an argument was brewing…

  David walked toward the stone monument at the dome's center, feeling oddly optimistic for the first time since waking up. The obelisk rose maybe ten feet tall, covered in symbols that seemed to shift when he wasn't looking directly at them.

  The strange humming grew stronger as he approached. He mind noted the energy signature, the way the air felt different here, the subtle wrongness that suggested this definitely wasn't human technology.

  But for once, wrongness didn't automatically mean danger.

  David reached out and touched the stone.