The paper wasn't paper.

  Greg turned it over in his hands. It bent like parchment but flexed like UI. The text shimmered, shifting between fonts like it hadn't decided on an identity. Arial, then Gothic, then something that looked like Morse code for grief, then Comic Sans for a horrifying millisecond before settling into what appeared to be "Bureaucratic Serif Pro."

  Kai hovered nearby, visibly uncomfortable, his glow dimmed to "concerned fluorescent" instead of his usual "blinding optimism." "Where did that come from?"

  Greg tapped the nameplate on his new desk. It gleamed with bureaucratic authority and smelled faintly of procedural importance. "The system. Apparently I'm 'Custodian' now."

  Kai winced. "That's one level below 'Narrative Architect' and two levels above 'Patch Containment Officer.' You're dangerously adjacent to lore."

  "What happens in the lore department?" Steve asked.

  "Strange things," Kai whispered. "They write backstories that make people cry. They decide which NPCs get childhood trauma. They're the ones who decided that every shopkeeper needs a secret tragedy to explain why they sell hats."

  Greg grunted. "I've lived through twelve patch cycles and a Halloween event with sentient pumpkins that whispered stock market tips. I'll manage."

  He looked back at the case file.

  It had a heading.

  >> CASE ZERO: PRE-PATCH RETAINER (REDUNDANT)

  >> Status: Inactive

  >> Location: Legacy Dump Sector 7G

  >> Reported Issue: "He won't stop asking where the player went."

  Greg frowned.

  Beverly peeked over his shoulder, her perfume triggering an unauthorized romance cutscene in the chair behind her. "7G? That's deep. They dump broken questlines there."

  "I know," Greg said. "I used to trade with one."

  "For what?" Steve asked.

  "Dignity," Greg replied. "He had extra."

  Glaximus stepped forward, righteous as ever, armor polished to a shine that suggested he'd spent the morning buffing his emotional damage resistance. "I HAVE HEARD OF THE DUMP. A PIT OF UNUSED CONTENT. AN ABYSS OF QUESTS WITH NO CLOSURE."

  "It's where sidequests go when they've been side-quested," Beverly nodded.

  Patchy tilted her head. "Sounds like my old family."

  "You had a family?" Steve asked.

  "Sixteen of them," Patchy confirmed. "All test variations. All screaming. The devs kept trying to make me 'less traumatizing' for the Halloween event. They failed dramatically."

  Greg slid the paper into his mug. It absorbed instantly, like a digital stomach digesting information.

  A glowing waypoint appeared above the door.

  Kai flinched. "Oh no. The system wants you to go."

  Greg stood. "Apparently part of my new job involves site visits."

  "You're not a dev," Kai said. "You don't have traversal protocols."

  "Tell that to my shoes," Greg said, already walking toward the door, which was now pulsing with coordinates and smelling faintly of purpose.

  Patchy floated alongside him. "Ooh, field trip!"

  "No," Greg said. "Solo mission."

  "Too late," said Beverly, grabbing her sword-shaped parasol that had been enchanted to cause emotional damage. "You're not leaving us with Kai and a talking fire."

  "I NEVER CLAIMED TO TALK," said the fire, offended. "I MERELY WHISPER EXISTENTIAL OBSERVATIONS INTO THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS."

  Steve emerged from behind a curtain made entirely of question marks. "Is it safe?"

  "Absolutely not," Greg said.

  "Cool," Steve replied, and followed, his towel now shaped like a superhero cape with "EMOTIONAL DAMAGE RESISTANCE +5" embroidered on the back.

  Kai sighed. "Fine. I'll come. But I'm logging this as an unsanctioned excursion. If we get deleted, it's on your mug."

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  They emerged into nothing.

  Or almost nothing.

  Legacy Dump Sector 7G wasn't a space. It was an idea of a space. Untextured ground, floating file icons, a sky made of layered JPEGs that hadn't loaded since the beta and now displayed "Error 404: Sky Not Found" in aggressively cheerful red font.

  "It's so... quiet," Beverly whispered.

  "There's no ambient track," Kai said. "Just silence. And guilt."

  "And the distant screaming of abandoned character models," Patchy added. "If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of NPCs reciting dialogue no one will ever trigger."

  Greg followed the waypoint deeper. Piles of broken content surrounded them—half-written quest logs, discarded loot tables, three versions of the same tree arguing silently about realism settings ("More leaves!" "No, more branches!" "I want to be a bush!").

  Then they saw him.

  A man.

  Sitting on a bench that had no legs.

  Wearing armor from a patch that had been legally erased due to a licensing dispute with a movie studio that claimed plate mail was their intellectual property.

  He stared into nothing.

  And every few seconds, he asked, "Have you seen the player?"

  Then he waited.

  Then asked again.

  Greg stopped several feet away.

  The man's tag hovered above him, blinking gently.

  >> Retainer Durn

  >> Awaiting Player Response...

  Greg cleared his throat.

  "Durn?"

  The man didn't turn. "Have you seen the player?"

  Greg stepped closer. "There are no players here. This instance is off-map."

  A long pause.

  Then: "Then why am I still waiting?"

  Beverly sat down across from him, her romance flags automatically dimming out of respect for genuine emotional pain. "What's the last thing you remember?"

  "I gave them my sword," Durn said. "It was a good sword. Tier five. Bound to their soul. They said they'd be back. But they never..." He trailed off, his face glitching between stoic and heartbroken, as if the system couldn't decide which emotion to render.

  "They deleted the questline," Kai said softly. "You were part of a romance sideplot tied to an achievement path no one finished. The devs scrubbed it for clarity."

  "That's dev-speak for 'we made a new expansion and needed server space,'" Beverly muttered.

  "I remember laughter," Durn whispered. "We sat by the lake. They said I mattered."

  "You did," Greg said.

  Durn turned slowly. His eyes were fogged with placeholder textures, the digital equivalent of cataracts.

  "Are you... a player?"

  "No," Greg said. "Just a Custodian."

  "I don't know what that means."

  Greg nodded. "Neither do I. But I think it means this: I'm here to help you stop waiting."

  Durn looked down at his hands. They flickered between solid and transparent, a visual manifestation of uncertain existence. "If I let go... do I disappear?"

  "No," Greg said. "You get to decide what you are without them."

  Patchy floated over. "You could be anything. A warrior. A poet. A sentient cloud of existential dread. The possibilities are endless when you're no longer bound by your quest parameters."

  "I could... choose?" Durn asked.

  "That's what the rest of us did," Beverly said. "Some better than others."

  "I CHOSE VOLUME," Glaximus offered helpfully.

  The ground pulsed.

  And for the first time, Durn blinked.

  His tag flickered.

  Then changed.

  >> Retainer Durn

  >> Status: Unassigned

  He looked up. "Does that mean I'm free?"

  "It means," Greg said, "you're not furniture."

  "You're a bug," Patchy said cheerfully. "But the fun kind. The kind that doesn't get squashed, just... reclassified as a feature."

  The group stood in silence.

  Even Kai.

  Then Durn smiled.

  Small. Uncertain. But real.

  "I think I'll walk," he said. "I haven't walked in years."

  He stood.

  And the bench vanished.

  No sound.

  Just... closure.

  Back in the therapy room, the paper reappeared on Greg's desk.

  Only now it was blank.

  Except for one line.

  >> CASE ZERO: CLOSED

  >> Additional note: You did good.

  Greg stared at it.

  Then at the mug.

  Then at the group.

  "Right," he said. "Next time someone else taps the glowing furniture."

  Patchy raised her hand. "Do chairs count?"

  "Absolutely not," Greg said.

  "What about sentient ottomans?"

  "Double no."

  Then the door shimmered again.

  And a new case file dropped onto the desk.

  But this one... had blood on it.

  Not metaphorical blood. Not symbolic blood. Actual red, dripping, viscous liquid that pooled on the desk and began to form a tiny, horrified face.

  Kai leaned in.

  "Oh. That's not symbolic," he said. "That's real codeblood."

  "What's codeblood?" Steve asked.

  "It's what happens when you delete something that really, really doesn't want to be deleted," Kai explained. "Like erasing a song from a musician's mind. The cognitive dissonance manifests as... well..."

  Steve fainted.

  Beverly poked the growing face in the blood puddle with her parasol. "Cute. In a horrifying way."

  Glaximus raised his shield. "I SHALL DEFEND US FROM THE LIQUID EXISTENTIAL CRISIS!"

  Greg simply sighed and reached for the new file.

  Instance Zero wasn't just giving him purpose.

  It was giving him paperwork.