As we trekked through the Dark World, I slowly began to get a handle on where we were. I began to make out familiar shapes in the landscape, and eventually realized we were getting close to the Bandit Tower where I had first taught Jack how to control his character in game.

“I see where we are,” I said as we came to the crest of a small hill. Camps of Horngrin lay beneath us, but like the ones back at the basin, they were somehow different.

Their movements were clunky, almost like they were unfinished, or were something out of an earlier version of the game, and upon inspection, I saw they were twice the level they were supposed to be.

“Yeah, Stoneburg’s not too far from here,” Kodiak said.

“Hey, Kodiak? What’s the deal with the monsters here? Those Horngrin should be level 5, but they’re level 10.”

“You noticed that, huh?”

“Yeah, and that Lake Beast was level 250! I didn’t think any monsters existed past level 126, the max level.”

“Another one of the Dark World’s many surprises,” he scoffed. “Max level has doubled, and so have the monsters and player levels.”

“Jesus…”

“Tell me about it.”

How could Wintermute’s backup have gone so awry? Everything felt wrong. It was like stepping into a memory of Carrethen—or maybe a dream.

A nightmare.

But we pressed on, and after a few minutes, came upon the Bandit Tower, or at least, what was left of it.

Alfred wasn’t there, not that I’d expected him to be, but that wasn’t the weird part. The tower itself had been destroyed. Well, not quite destroyed—more like incomplete. It was as though someone had started to sketch the tower on a piece of paper and then been attacked midway through, causing their pencil to scatter all over the page.

The foundation was there, the front door and two walls, but about half way up, everything but the internal skeleton vanished and you could see right through to the other side. The stairs

“Wow,” I remarked as we walked up to it, staying wide of the Horngrin camps to avoid an unnecessary skirmish.

“Let the Force flow through you.”

That’s what I had told jack before that Horngrin Ravager killed him and sent him spinning back to the Stoneburg Bindstone. I felt a pang in my chest as I was instantly taken back to that moment.

Where are you now, Jack? I thought as I looked at the ruins of the memory in front of me.

“Kodiak. Where are the others?”

“Others?”

“Yeah, the other players,” I asked him. “The rest of them.”

“Well, I don’t know about everyone, but I’d imagine most of them are still down in Sheol.”

“Sheol!?” I replied. “What is that?”

“I didn’t know either,” he replied. “But I ran into someone who told me it was from the Hebrew Bible. A place where the dead go.”

“That’s…terrifying.”

Kodiak nodded grimly. “Remember back on day one, when The Ripper said dead players’ character models would end up in a special Bindstone he’d constructed at the center of the map? That’s Sheol.”

“Why aren’t you there?”

“I was one of the lucky ones who spawned outside of Sheol,” he said. “We call ourselves the Unchained.”

“Why don’t the others just leave?” I asked. “Are they trapped there?

“Sort of,” Kodiak said. “The Lord of the Flame. He guards the exit to Sheol.”

“The Lord of the Flame,” I repeated. Kodiak nodded.

“He’s a player—or at least we think he was. Level 250. Impossible to beat. Attacks anyone who tries to go in or out.”

“Why doesn’t everyone just gang up on him and kill him?”

“Maybe they have,” Kodiak shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I won’t go near that place.

“Do you think—could he be The Ripper?”

“You said you killed The Ripper,” Kodiak replied.

“I did!” I said indignantly. “But I also thought everyone was dead until Wintermute contacted me, so right about now I’m thinking anything’s possible.”

“Well, make sure you don’t die here in the Dark World,” Kodiak said firmly. “You won’t like it.”

“Well, yeah,” I laughed. “I don’t think my family back home would either.”

“Oh, wait—yeah, I guess you would have no way of knowing…”

“No way of knowing what!?”

Kodiak shook his head. “The consequences for death in the Dark World are far worse than they were in Carrethen.”

“Worse than death?”

“You…lose part of yourself when you die,” Kodiak explained. “First thing to go is your memory—knowing who you are. You become less and less human every time you die, until eventually you’re just an empty shell of the person you once were. We call them the Sunken.”

“The Sunken,” I repeated, shuddering at the thought. “How can that be?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve seen it, and it’s not pretty.”

“You’re not Sunken,” I remarked. “So you must be pretty smart. Or tough.”

“I’ve died once,” he admitted. “I can remember most things, but others are a bit fuzzy. I’ve been trying to play it a little bit safe. Ending up as one of them…well, it terrifies me.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I can understand that.”

We pressed on, leaving the former Bandit Tower behind us as we struck out for whatever was left of Stoneburg. It felt strange walking beneath the tumultuous sky, passing familiar landmarks that had changed somewhat in the Dark World. It wasn’t just the darkness from the clouds, the whole place felt as though a shadow had been cast over it. Everything felt dangerous.

A few minutes later we came upon the dirt road through the woods that would lead us into town, and just then, the sky broke and the downpour began.

“Ah, here we go,” Kodiak groaned, moving to the side of the path to walk under the cover of the trees. “More rain.”

“This happens a lot?” I asked, doing the same.

“More often than it used to.”

“At least we can’t feel cold,” I smiled.

“Yeah, that’s what you think.” He smiled as the rain hit me. A shiver ran down my spine. I was already soaking wet from the fall into the lake, but I guess I’d been so amped up by my brush with death that I hadn’t noticed that I was actually cold. The raindrops were like an extra jolt that awakened the chill inside me, and it wasn’t long before my whole body was shaking.

“How is this possible?” I asked, rubbing my arms. I realized I was wearing basic starter gear: brown cloth pants and a dark blue tunic. How had Wintermute not saved my character profile from Carrethen? Everything I’d collected was gone.

“The Dark World is full of surprises,” Kodiak replied.

“That doesn’t help!” I scoffed. “There has to be a reason.”

“Another one of The Ripper’s tricks?” He suggested.

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “No, this is something different. Wintermute told me he created a backup of the world, but it’s obvious he wasn’t able to get everything. NPCs are missing, buildings are screwed up. The weather settings are completely off.”

“But why would he program pain into the game?”

“He wouldn’t,” I said, thinking out loud. “You know, I played this game when it was still in Beta, and I remember them discussing whether or not players should he able to actually really feel things in game. But everyone decided it was best that they couldn’t. I wonder if sensation was originally programmed into the game and some sort of safety measure was added to block those inputs through the Wellspring device.”

“And when Wintermute made his backup, those safety measures broke?”

“Exactly.”

“Makes sense,” Kodiak mused as we pressed on towards Stoneburg.

“Doesn’t do much for us though,” I groaned as the cold sank into my bones. “We need to find shelter, build a fire.”

The trees opened in front of us and I felt a pang of nostalgia as I gazed out over the town of Stoneburg, or at least, what was left of it.

The general layout of the town was there—all the buildings were where they were supposed to be, but like the Bandit Tower, more than half of them were incomplete. The whole place looked burned out, like a fire had swept through and taken half the town with it before anyone was able to put it out.

The Bindstone hovered as its usual place, but Kodiak was right; Stoneburg was dead. There wasn’t a person in sight. The cows by the town square were gone, and I couldn’t see a single NPC from where we were standing. But what was worse, there wasn’t a single player in sight. Cavey and his men where nowhere to be seen. The town they’d fought so hard to protect was was nothing more than an old decaying skeleton, a shadow of its former self.

Part of me had secretly been hoping to find Xavier at his usual post, a brand new halberd in his hand, interrogating some poor newbie who had wandered into town harmlessly but was now looked at as a potential threat.

Cavey would be in the town square with some of his men. Lookouts would be posted on the outskirts, eyes peeled for Sinful or The Mercenaries, and Kattenschind would be in Gehman’s hut, working hard on some new upgrade or weapon.

But of course those were just dreams. None of them would be in town. They had died in Carrethen and there was no telling where they were now—or if they’d survived their time in the Dark World.

“Bleak,” I muttered, gazing out at the ruins of the closest thing I’d ever had to a home in Carrethen.

“You can say that again.”

“Come on,” I said, starting off down the slope in town. “Let’s see if there’s anything that could help us.”