The door opened without fanfare.

  No glow. No gust. Just a polite slide outward, like it had been waiting all this time to reveal the inevitable with courtesy. The mechanical equivalent of "After you" from an entity that might not exist.

  Beyond it lay... not a hallway. Not even void.

  It was... hallway-adjacent.

  A kind of corridor formed from asset placeholders—checkerboard textures, "missing mesh" cubes, light sources labeled light_probe_finalFINAL_v2_ACTUALFINAL. The kind of space that only existed between finished ideas and abandoned concepts, a digital purgatory where half-formed thoughts went to loiter.

  Greg didn't move.

  No one did.

  Even Kai had stopped glowing, his usual optimistic shimmer reduced to the dull pulse of a router contemplating its life choices.

  "I don't like this," Steve whispered, towel clutched tight against his chest like emotional kevlar. "It feels like a level designer died here."

  "That's because they probably did," Patchy said cheerfully, already halfway through the threshold, trailing glitches like excitement. "Metaphorically, anyway. You can see where someone gave up—look at that texture tiling. Pure despair."

  "Patchy!" Greg barked.

  She turned, floating backward now, arms wide in the universal gesture of what-could-possibly-go-wrong. "What? It called us. You said we were still here. Now it wants to know why."

  "She has a point," Beverly said, frowning at the checkerboard patterns that screamed "placeholder" in six different shader languages. "And honestly, this room's been getting a little... stable for my taste."

  "Stability is overrated," Patchy agreed. "I once got locked in a stable function and had to chew my way out with a memory leak."

  Glaximus stepped forward, sword twitching gently between fish and blade like it couldn't decide which metaphor was more appropriate for the situation.

  "IF DESTINY CALLS," he thundered, "THEN I SHALL CHARGE."

  "No charging," Greg snapped. "Nobody charge. Nobody emotes. Nobody triggers any scripted behavior."

  "What about unscripted behavior?" Patchy asked, now hanging upside down from what appeared to be a lighting rig that hadn't been properly integrated.

  "Just... behave," Greg said with the weary authority of someone who'd seen too many event spawns go sideways.

  Kai finally spoke, voice quieter than usual, as if someone had turned his enthusiasm slider from "insufferable" to "concerned consultant."

  "This is... something else. I think we've been handed dev keys. Not just visibility—narrative access."

  "Explain," Greg said.

  Kai rotated a shimmering pane into view, his fingers trembling slightly. On it: a cluster of spinning icons and one blinking phrase.

  >>Narrative Fork Detected

  >>Input Source: Emergent Behavior

  >>Mode: Freeform

  Steve made a soft, whimpering sound like a corrupted audio file trying to express existential dread. "Are we... player-controlled?"

  "No," Greg said slowly. "We're uncontrolled."

  "That's worse," Steve whispered.

  "That's better," Beverly countered.

  "That's opportunity," Patchy sang.

  Beverly crossed her arms. "So what—you think this... hallway of half-ideas is a reward?"

  "It's not a reward," Beta-Nineteen said, still seated, still unreadable as an encrypted patch note. "It's an invitation."

  Greg turned. "You're not coming?"

  "I don't know if I can," Beta replied. "I'm old code. My paths are fixed. If I cross the wrong line, I unravel."

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Glaximus knelt beside him. "THEN I SHALL CARRY YOU."

  Beta looked at him, expression blank. "Please don't."

  "I INSIST."

  "Your armor has clipping issues."

  "CLIPPING IS THE PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION OF FRIENDSHIP."

  Kai floated closer to the door, his posture more cautious than usual, like someone approaching a digital pet they'd abandoned years ago. "I can detect partial data clusters inside. It's not one space. It's a blend. Like the system tried to forget parts of itself but left the memories open-ended."

  "So a metaphor," Greg said.

  "So a maze," Kai corrected. "One that doesn't want to be solved. Just... walked."

  Greg sighed. "Wonderful. Haunted therapy field trip."

  He turned to the group.

  "Okay. Here's the rule: we go together. We stay close. And nobody licks anything."

  "Oddly specific," Beverly noted.

  "Necessary limitation," Greg replied. "Remember what happened when Steve licked that quest item?"

  Steve shuddered. "I tasted side quests for weeks."

  Patchy floated back through the threshold, grinning with all her teeth, including several that weren't visible. "Too late."

  "You licked something already?" Greg asked.

  "I licked the concept of something," she replied. "Tastes like unrealized potential and Mountain Dew."

  Greg followed her through, muttering something about supervision requirements and hazard pay.

  The others trailed behind, a parade of broken code entering what looked like concept art for digital limbo.

  On the other side, the air was different. Not cold. Not warm. Just sentient. Like the code here noticed them noticing it, a recursive awareness loop that made Greg's skin feel like it was being recompiled in real time.

  They stood in what might have once been a tutorial hub—long since purged. Banners for quests that didn't exist. Empty scaffolding. A giant sword stuck in the ground with no lore attached to it. A fountain that played water sounds but showed only error textures where the liquid should be, the digital equivalent of a mime performance.

  In the center stood a platform.

  On it: a button.

  Glaximus gasped. "THE HOLY BUTTON."

  "You recognize this place?" Greg asked.

  "I WAS BORN HERE," Glaximus whispered, which would have been more dramatic if he hadn't immediately followed it with, "OR POSSIBLY A PLACE IDENTICAL TO THIS. TUTORIAL HUBS USE TEMPLATE STRUCTURE FOR EFFICIENCY."

  Kai's panel lit up.

  [BUTTON FUNCTION: UNKNOWN]

  [ACTIVATION REQUIRES MULTIPLE TOUCHPOINTS]

  [EMOTIONAL RESONANCE REQUIRED: 60% MINIMUM]

  Greg raised a hand. "Don't anyone—"

  Patchy pressed it.

  There was a low chime, like a satisfied cash register. The platform shimmered. Then:

  >>Resonance Detected: 62%

  >>Narrative Access Confirmed

  >>>> Instance Zero: Therapy Mode Activated

  "...Therapy Mode?" Steve asked.

  Kai blinked. "Oh no. That's not a standard mode."

  "What modes are standard?" Beverly asked.

  "Combat. Quest. Economy. Romance. Documentation," Kai recited. "There is no 'Therapy' in the official feature list. This is custom. Unauthorized."

  A ripple passed through the ground, like reality hiccuping. The banners retextured themselves—now reading:

  Welcome, Lost Ones. You Are Not Alone.

  "Okay," Beverly muttered. "That's way too on the nose."

  "THE SYSTEM SPEAKS IN PROPHECY," Glaximus said.

  "No," Greg corrected. "The system's speaking in desperation."

  "Or manipulation," Kai suggested.

  "Or loneliness," Beta-Nineteen offered.

  Then something shifted.

  The air changed. The flickering cube-world melted into soft shapes, textures half-rendered and full of emotion rather than technical precision. A bench appeared beside them. A tea kettle. A familiar fire. A circle of chairs.

  Their chairs.

  They were back in the room.

  Only now, it wasn't flickering.

  It was whole.

  Warm.

  The fire crackled with actual audio instead of just playing the fire_loop_ambient.wav file on repeat.

  The door was gone.

  Kai stood perfectly still.

  "We didn't walk back," he whispered. "It rebuilt itself around us."

  "Maybe we never left," Beverly suggested.

  "Maybe we were the room all along," Patchy said dreamily.

  "Maybe we're experiencing a recursive instance trigger looping on environmental memory fragments," Kai offered.

  "Maybe we should sit down," Greg said.

  The others followed.

  Even Beta-Nineteen, who stared at the fire like it had given him a memory he didn't deserve, a glimpse of what it felt like to be intentional rather than forgotten.

  Patchy floated in lazy loops. "So what now?"

  Greg exhaled.

  "We talk," he said. "We stay talking. Because somehow, the system just decided we're a story."

  "And stories," Kai said slowly, "get preserved."

  "Or edited," Beta-Nineteen whispered.

  "Or canceled," Beverly added.

  "Or given terrible sequels that nobody asked for," Steve muttered.

  No one spoke.

  Somewhere, beyond the code, a watcher logged a heartbeat.

  Instance Zero had begun.