Gray woke with a start, blue eyes wide and frantic. His forehead glistened with cold sweat. "What... was that...?"

He grabbed his cell phone and glanced at the time.

3:00 AM.

He sat up and ran a hand through his dirty blond hair as he tried to gather his bearings.

Dark. Moonlight filtering in through the window by his bedside. He was in his bedroom, part of the studio apartment he rented overlooking the city street.

"A dream?" he muttered.

It had to be. He was still in his rented apartment, still in his bed, and still as he was when he went to sleep, dressed in a plain black t-shirt and boxers.

But that dream... it had been too vivid. Too real. Something like that... it was almost as if he was standing there and watching it happen. The magic, the swords, the blood-

Gray's stomach lurched. He swallowed and shook his head.

Vivid. It was way too vivid to be just a dream. But...

"...Alright. Next time, no playing horror and RPG games before bed."

...He rationalized it away like that. What else could it be, after all? Visions of another world? Things like that only happened in Anime and light novels. It must have just been a result of his mind mixing up what he had been doing just before sleeping.

Gray glanced at the time on his phone again and sighed. He had to head to class in four hours. It started at seven, so that meant that he really only had three and a half hours of sleep if he tried to go back to bed. It was far from enough for a good rest.

Stifling a yawn, Gray grabbed his phone, stumbled out of his bed, and staggered towards the kitchen.

A flick of a light switch illuminated the darkness.

-Ordinary. Everything was ordinary. Along the way to the kitchen, everything was the way he placed it. His backpack, a black polyester bag with multiple zippers and pockets, was still leaning against the dining table. A spiral notebook laid near it, slightly disheveled from when Gray had tossed his bag aside when he returned.

On the dining table was his laptop and scattered sheets of paper, littered with programming class diagrams and various coding documentation. The result of trying to program a device driver for his phone from scratch. The final project in his Operating Systems course.

Gray set his phone on the table and glared at the mess. More specifically, he glared at what it represented: a project still incomplete and refusing to make any headway despite the deadline fast approaching. But after a while, he let out a sigh and muttered, "Might as well work at it now."

After making himself a cup of coffee, Gray took a seat at the table and turned on his laptop-

*BZZZZT*

His phone was vibrating.

Gray frowned and picked up his phone. "It's three AM. Just who's- huh?"

He thought that it was someone calling. In fact, it turned out to be his morning alarm. 6:30 AM. Time had passed in a blur without him realizing it.

Gray rubbed his eyes and then glanced at his laptop. He rubbed them again when he saw that his code stubs had been filled out, and that all his unit tests had passed. Still not daring to believe his eyes, but also not willing to take the chance that he would wake up again and realize it was a dream, Gray quickly pulled out his phone's adapter and plugged it into his laptop. The result...?

"No way. It's actually working?"

Seeing the successful interactions between his computer and cell phone, Gray laughed. "A freaking miracle." He shook his head and then headed off to take a shower. With his project finished, he might as well finish up his morning rituals before class started.

He left his phone on the table, still connected to his laptop. Because of that, he didn't see the strange phenomenon happening to his phone.

Letters. A countless stream of them flashed across his cell phone's screen. Not just letters... words. An infinitely scrolling text filled the display of both his laptop and his phone...

6:50 AM.

Gray was walking to class. Thankfully, he wasn't sleepy enough to forget to change his clothes. At the moment, he was dressed in a simple black t-shirt and jeans.

...Alright, so maybe he was too tired to be bothered to change his shirt and really just threw on a pair of jeans. Either way, he had changed into appropriate attire to meet the day.

Gray's apartment was only a few blocks away from the campus of his university. After seeing that it was good weather out, a clear blue sky and bright sun, he decided to take a morning stroll instead of his car.

At the moment, he was walking along a sidewalk parallel to a small road. To his left, there were some of the more obscure campus facilities, like public safety and the printing center. Brown brick buildings that no student actually visited unless they needed to. That was in direct contrast to what lay across the street.

To Gray's right was the university's sports field. Green grass stretched on for a while in that direction, a perfect place for exercise and athletic practice. It wasn't uncommon to see people running laps inside the field, though it looked like no one was there on this morning.

Of course, you wouldn't see Gray anywhere but on the outside of that sports field. For someone like him, a shut-in, Dean's list honor student in the Computer Science program, exercise was the bane of his existence. Not because he was overweight or anything, but after hundreds upon hundreds of hours either sitting in front of a computer screen or in the school library these past few years... Yes, exercise was most definitely not his forte.

Gray reached the crosswalk leading towards the main campus buildings. Stifling a yawn, he staggered across the street, not bothering to look left or right.

-Dangerous.

A horn blared, and wheels let out a screeching sound as they rapidly accelerated...

But this wasn't Japan, and so Gray was perfectly fine.

The source for the noise had been the train that ran nearby his university. It had just been making its morning rounds, a commonplace occurrence in those parts.

In that way, Gray successfully made it across the street and onto the sidewalk heading to the main campus.

-Sleepy. With only a few hours of sleep that day, Gray's mind was a blur. He barely looked at his surroundings, only trusting his body to autopilot his way to class.

When his phone rang suddenly, that fact didn't change. He mechanically pulled out his phone and glanced at the caller ID. Seeing that it was unknown, he swiped left on the dismissal icon and continued walking.

After a little more walking, his phone vibrated.

Again, he mechanically pulled his phone out from his pocket and glanced at the display.

One new message.

A few swipes later brought up the content. Like the phone call, it was from an unknown caller ID. As for the message itself...

Blank. An empty text message. All that was there was a space. Maybe someone had accidently called him and then texted him? That thought went through Gray's mind, but then he decided that it was probably some prank caller or scam artist. Accordingly, he deleted the text message and went on his way.

On autopilot, he kept walking for a while before he realized that something was off. The hard pavement beneath his feet had changed, replaced with soft dirt. As for the familiar sight of the university buildings, they were nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a hilly field of grass that was waist high.

"...That's weird."

It didn't look familiar. Did his brain shut off again like this morning? It was possible. Come to think of it, he had been spending quite a few all-nighters trying to get his project working... maybe this was a result of that?

He pulled out his phone and did a quick location check. Thankfully, there was still signal. From the looks of the map app on his phone, it seemed like he wasn't far off from the university... though this place didn't look familiar at all.

Then again, he hadn't explored the entire campus. Maybe this was just the area behind some campus buildings?

Gray took another look around and saw that there was an old brick building not too far away. It was vaguely familiar, about the same style as the buildings around campus, so he decided to see if there was someone there to ask directions.

...The closer Gray got to the building, the more he was beginning to rethink his decision. While he had thought the building old from a distance, on drawing closer, he saw that it was less of an old building and more of an old ruin.

When Gray reached the front door, he saw that it was made up of olden wooden planks twisted with age and mildew. The door handle was gone, leaving only an empty hole where it should be. All in all, it looked like a weak breeze could blow the door down.

It was highly unlikely that anyone was inside. In fact, it probably would have been in his best interests to turn around then and there, relying on his phone to guide him back to the university. No, not probably. It definitely was in his best interests to turn around.

If he were in a rational state of mind, i.e. wide awake, he would have realized that and turned around. Unfortunately, lack of sleep had weakened the higher sections of his cognition, leaving his base instincts to guide him.

At that time, curiosity won out and Gray pushed the door open. It opened easily, and thankfully did not fall out of its hinges.

A blast of wet air surged to meet him. Damp and cloyingly sweet. The scent of mildew, one that clung to the breath despite best efforts to avoid it.

Gray coughed and immediately covered his mouth and nose with his shirt. He grimaced and took a few steps forward, fanning the air to try and clear it. However, all that served to do was stir dust around.

Coughs resounded again as Gray took in the dusty air. He stood and waited for the dust to settle before taking a look around.

When the dust settled, Gray finally got a good look at the interior of the building. First impression: it was dark. The only sources of light were from behind Gray, where he had left the door open, and from the few places in the building where portions of either the roof or wall had caved in.

Second impression: there was nobody there, and it was probably a bad idea to stick around.

The place was as abandoned as it could be, and looked like it could fall apart any minute. In fact, the floor Gray was standing on was cracked vinyl tiles that seemed like they would break if he so much as looked at them funny.

The door had opened up into a hallway, and it seemed like there might be a few rooms further down judging from how there were doors on either side, but his fatigued rational mind had finally kicked in at that point.

I need to get out of here.

Gray spun around, pretending he hadn't seen anything, and took a single step-

CRACK.

An ominous sound.

Gray froze, not daring to move another inch. With his eyes, he glanced down at the floor and said, "You have got to be kidding me."

Rapidly widening cracks, spreading across the floor. He was at the center of them, and if he didn't do anything, it looked like he would fall down into the unknown depths below.

Fortunately, he was only a few feet from the entrance. To be exact, three. The number of steps he had taken inside.

It was so close, and yet so far.

Do I risk it?

Two options were available for him.

One: jump and hope that he goes far enough to clear the gap. Since he was only a few feet away, he should be able to make it. Even if he didn't clear the gap, he would be able to go far enough to hang onto the ledge. But the problem came at that point... he wasn't strong enough to pull himself up.

Two: inch forward slowly, spreading out his weight as best as he could. While the cracks were spreading fast, they seemed like it was at a rate where he could still make it if he moved lightly enough to prevent a sudden collapse. But that was practically leaving his life up in the air. If the floor collapsed on him at that point, it would be too late to jump.

The first option was do or die... and the second option was do or die. It was just that he knew the floor would collapse in the first option and he prayed it wouldn't in the second.

Either way, his options weren't looking too good.

Gray glanced at the floor again and let out a sigh. ...If I'm going to fall either way, then-

CRACK.

"FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU-!"

...Unfortunately, despite having come to a decision, it was a moment too late.

The floor shattered with a loud crack.

Gray tried to jump, but he had nothing to leap off of, the floor having completely collapsed beneath him.

All Gray could do was watch the open doorway grow ever distant as he fell into the inner depths of the old ruins.