Nico opened his eyes wide in the total darkness. For a moment, he thought he had gone blind.

  Panic rose in his throat until he felt the rigid weight of the headset on his head. He ripped it off with a sudden movement, suddenly remembering that it had been connected to the game; perhaps he had fallen asleep with the headset still on his face.

  As always, his body did not obey him immediately: his sight and sense of smell were out of sync. Small trails of light danced before his eyes, attached to his retina.

  He sat up. He remembered having a long conversation in which Princess Nadia had said something important.

  His left leg gave him the usual painful twinge. It was almost strange to feel that pain: he had forgotten it. He shook his head in confusion. It was absurd to forget a pain he had lived with for as long as he could remember. It seemed as if his memories were slipping away, but he couldn't understand how that was possible. He remembered talking to Leo and Kiah, telling them various things... but he couldn't remember what.

  He shook his head, stood up with his hated cane in his hand, and left the room, heading for the kitchen. The hallway was narrow and dark as always, lit only by the kitchen door, which had been left open. He walked with a single thought in his head: I know something big has happened, but I can't remember what.

  A hated and familiar voice tore him from his thoughts: “Where are you going with your stick?”

  Bruno, his cousin, was leaning against the wall as if he were waiting for him.

  “What do you want, Bruno?” Nico growled.

  Bruno stretched out his leg, pointing it at the cane to prevent him from advancing, then shook his head ironically: “No, no, no. You know you mustn't behave badly towards me.”

  “Move,” said Nico, trembling with rage.

  Bruno laughed. “You've forgotten the magic word.” With a quick movement, he hooked the stick with his foot. Nico lost his balance and almost fell, but managed to stay upright by leaning his shoulder against the wall. Bruno continued to laugh while he gritted his teeth in anger and helplessness. He wanted to say something, do something, but…

  “Come on, what's it going to cost you? I want to hear the magic word.”

  His grandmother's croaky voice broke the moment: “Bruno, come to Grandma. Take him upstairs to your mother!”

  Bruno narrowed his piggy eyes into two cruel slits. “You got away this time, but next time I'll stay on the ground.”

  Then, in a gesture of pure humiliation, he spat at Nico's feet and went into the kitchen.

  Nico stared at the foamy lump of saliva on the floor. In horror and humiliation, he decided to go back to his room. He didn't want to see Bruno again; he would wait for him to leave the house.

  His eyes burned with tears he stubbornly held back, and a hard lump tightened his throat. His cane tapped on the floor, and with every step, his stomach tightened in a vice of anger, frustration, and such fierce helplessness that it made him tremble.

  In the game, he had learned to fight, to resist, even to trust someone, but outside, he was, once again, small and defenseless.

  When he entered the room, he saw the viewer on the bed. His eyes widened. He lunged toward the viewer, clumsily throwing himself onto the bed and grabbing it like a bird of prey snatching its prey. He looked around for the case. The stylized eye was opaque, but when Nico touched it with his thumb, it glowed with a faint blue light. He quickly put it away: if Bruno saw it, he wouldn't hesitate to take it.

  He stayed in his room, sitting on the bed. His cousin's piggy eyes kept coming back to him like a nightmare, reminding him that he was there, hidden in his room, having fled the confrontation. In the game, he could be whoever he wanted, he could fight, he could matter. But outside...

  When he finally heard the front door close, he got up and went to the kitchen. It was unusually quiet. He asked in genuine surprise, “Why is the TV off?”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  His grandmother, as always at the stove, turned around. Her enormous ears, which always seemed to Nico to be straining toward the open window in search of new gossip, moved slightly. “The television isn't working. I think it's broken, but Aunt Flora says it's not working at her house either.”

  Nico nodded and sat down.

  “But what do you care, you don't even watch television,” said his grandmother teasingly.

  “I was just asking,” he said dryly, taking biscuits from the pantry and milk from the refrigerator for breakfast.

  As he threw the hard biscuits into the cold milk and scooped them up with a spoon, now soggy, almost reduced to a mush that exploded in his mouth in a sweet and slimy mixture, his mind began to wander, lulled by the silence of the kitchen and the damp murmur of the pots on the stove.

  A slight itch tickled his side. He scratched it absentmindedly as Nadia's voice came back to him: “This is not good. See these black veins? It's corruption.”

  He saw her eyes again, clear and limpid like the sky beyond the window. “Have you noticed any symptoms? Physical, emotional...”

  “I forget things,” he replied in a whisper.

  A sudden sizzling sound brought him back to the present. The pot on the stove was boiling so hard that the liquid was overflowing, dripping down the sides and dirtying the burners.

  He shook his head, irritated by the interruption. Corruption. What did that mean?

  When he was done, he washed the dishes and slipped back into his room, but he didn't feel like doing anything. The nagging thought of what Nadia had revealed to him, and which he couldn't remember, continued to torment him. He thought about going to OpenDask: maybe he could look up information on memory loss, perhaps there were methods to help him remember, but he quickly gave up on the idea. He had seen Bruno and his monkey-like friends hanging around in the courtyard, and he had no intention of risking meeting him again, not after that morning.

  From his bedroom window, he watched his peers in the street, gathered in groups, talking to each other. He knew some of them: schoolmates he had never bonded with, people who had teased him or looked at him askance because of his cane. But soon he would never see them again: a new school awaited him. And, even better, that evening he would reconnect to the game.

  He lay down thinking about what Nadia had said. He lifted his shirt: his side was clean. There was nothing left where Nerakth had wounded him some time ago. Yet he remembered a scar, black veins like snakes branching out from his side.

  He shook his head and lay down, his hands behind his head. Maybe he had imagined it all. Maybe being too connected was stressing him out. Maybe his mind just needed rest.

  A cold breeze caressed his face. He opened his eyes: above him was a black sky with no stars, no clouds, unnatural. He sat up. A faint orange light illuminated a desert of arid rocks with a few dry trees, but he couldn't understand where the light was coming from. He began to walk without understanding where he was. Maybe he had put on the visor. Maybe Erebos had already razed the game world to the ground.

  His eyes widened: Erebos. That was what he was trying to remember. But maybe it was already too late.

  With a broken scream, he called out to his companions one by one, but only the echo answered him. He walked through the desolation, searching for the source of the faint light that illuminated that lonely landscape. Maybe if he found the sun... The sun sets in the east and rises in the west... or was it the other way around? He couldn't remember.

  He felt a presence behind him, a gaze fixed on his back. Suddenly he remembered that he had had other dreams like this. Always the same cold stare.

  “What do you want from me?” he found himself asking before he had even thought it.

  No one answered him. He started to run. Everything was the same, every direction identical, as if the desert repeated itself endlessly.

  His side began to itch ferociously. He lifted his shirt, but his side was clean. He began to scratch frantically. The more he scratched, the more his skin peeled, flaking off in dry, paper-like scabs. He couldn't stop, even though he knew he was hurting himself; scratching was the only way to relieve the itching. He didn't even feel the pain anymore. Until an oily liquid began to ooze from his side, the same liquid that dripped from the Nerakth.

  Terrified by the sight, as those eyes stared at him and a sinister laugh echoed, amused by his terror, he jumped.

  He woke up drenched in sweat.