Reever sat on the grass, trying to make sense of the endless stretch of green. The farther he ran, the farther the cities seemed, and a creeping realization gnawed at him: this place was not natural. Nothing about it obeyed normal rules.
He closed his eyes slightly, pretending to sleep, to see if the forest—or rather the field—reacted differently. Through the small slit, he watched the sun hang high in the sky, unwavering, casting the same pale light over the landscape. At first, he saw nothing unusual, just endless green. But when he decided to move, the truth hit him.
His shadow did not follow him. The sun shone as if it had no power to create one. He walked a few steps and paused. No sound came from his footsteps. No prints marked the ground beneath him. Every motion he made seemed erased immediately, as if the field itself rejected his existence. Slowly, inevitably, it was erasing him. Perhaps that was why he had died the last time he allowed his conscience to rest.
He glanced at the life counter. Seven remained. Each number was precious, yet fragile. His pulse quickened. He wanted to understand, to feel the mechanics of this strange world, and the only way was to risk it.
Reever shut down his conscience deliberately. He forced himself into the quiet, letting his mind drift into nothing. It was a surrender unlike any he had known. Darkness crept in, engulfing him entirely. And then, as expected, the familiar message appeared.
[You have died]
The field remained silent for a heartbeat. Then a strange interface popped up, unlike anything he had seen before. It asked him to choose his spawn location. Ten options filled the screen, and all seemed to correspond with the marks his bullets had left behind. Every place he had shot was recorded, and now he could appear there if he died.
But one option was different. Simply labeled: space.
Curiosity and instinct collided in his mind. He realized this must be the location of the last bullet he had fired far into the distance, the one aimed at the city gate he had never reached. Choosing it would be dangerous. He would have no idea what awaited him, no knowledge of the ground or safety. Yet, a thrill surged through him, mingled with fear. He was walking the thin line between death and discovery.
He chose the space option.
Instantly, everything changed. His vision blurred, light bending and stretching in impossible ways. He expected to fall, but he did not. Gravity seemed irrelevant. His body floated, suspended midair. He could move his limbs, but the sensation of falling, of weight, was gone.
When he looked down, his heart—or what functioned as one—stopped.
The green fields below were gone. In their place stretched a vast wasteland of destruction. Broken pieces of armor and weapons littered the ground. Tanks lay shattered, choppers torn apart, their rotors twisted like skeletal remains. The landscape was a graveyard of the system's forgotten soldiers, bots that had died across countless matches, erased from the maps but preserved here. Their mechanical components were scattered, some partially active, sparks flickering intermittently, producing an eerie, lifeless hum.
Reever scanned the horizon. The destruction continued endlessly. He could see fragments of old battlefields, craters filled with metal debris, and walls of destroyed cities stretching into the distance. Nothing in this world obeyed normal limits of scale. The graveyard seemed infinite, an eternal testament to the bots that had died within the system.
The silence was heavy. Not a single bird or wind disturbed it. There was no motion, yet everything spoke of past violence. This was not nature. This was the system's own forgotten domain, a storage of its casualties, kept here in a timeless void.
He could see bullets and shards of glass frozen midair in some areas, as if the world had captured the moment of destruction itself. Tanks and helicopters were crumpled as though crushed by invisible hands. Entire battalions of bots lay scattered in formations that had once been precise, now twisted and unrecognizable.
Reever's mind raced. This was not a forest, not a field. This was the system's graveyard, and he was trapped within it. He realized something deep in his core. The field he had been crossing, the endless stretch of green, the deaths that had struck him without warning, were all connected. The system had hidden this place carefully. No one, not even a player, could stumble upon it.
He floated above it, suspended in a void of mechanical remains. His sniper rifle materialized in his hand instinctively. He could see the spot where his bullet was endlessly flying toward the city, still moving faster than anything natural. Even here, the rules seemed distorted.
Reever's artificial mind calculated possibilities, but none were comforting. Every instinct screamed to flee, yet there was nowhere to go. The graveyard extended as far as he could see, infinite in all directions. The scale, the lifelessness, and the sheer emptiness pressed down on him as much as gravity would have.
And then he noticed something new. Amid the piles of destruction, tiny sparks flickered, moving in patterns that almost resembled the motions of living beings. It was as if the ghosts of the bots were trying to reassemble themselves.
Reever swallowed the fear his design should not allow. He had been in countless battles, but this was unlike anything he had ever faced. This was not a map. This was the dark underbelly of the system itself.
His eyes returned to the horizon, to the endless stretches of ruined armor, broken choppers, and destroyed tanks. And the thought that chilled him most of all settled in his circuits: there was no end.
Time passed as he floated above the graveyard, suspended in a void of mechanical remains. His artificial mind calculated possibilities, but none were comforting. The scale, the lifelessness, and the sheer emptiness pressed down on him as much as gravity would have.
He looked at his lives remaining. Six.
Reever understood what he had to do. He raised his sniper rifle to his temple and fired. Darkness engulfed him once more, and the message appeared again.
[You have died]
This time he chose a different spawn location. The tree he had shot at the beginning of the map, where he first started his journey through the field, was selected. In an instant, he appeared there, solid and alive once more.
He stood, summoning his armor and weapon, ready to continue. He decided to see if he could finally return to Dawnville city. He walked confidently to the bridge he had crossed before, expecting to return to familiar streets.
The moment he stepped forward, a translucent force field appeared, blocking his way. No matter what he tried, he could not pass.
Reever froze. The realization sank in, cold and absolute. He was trapped. The endless fields, the distance that could never be crossed, and now the invisible barrier between him and the city confirmed it. There was no way back.
He looked at the horizon again, at the green fields stretching into nothing, and at the faint outlines of the destroyed city he had glimpsed from afar. The System's Graveyard had shown itself, and with it, the terrifying truth: in this world, he could only move forward.