Not buggy— wrong . A faceless announcer with a voice like scratched vinyl said, “Drag your Archer to the bridge.” But the card wasn’t an Archer. It was a silhouette. A human-shaped void with two white pinpricks for eyes. When Kael dragged it onto the arena—a gray battlefield strewn with the petrified remains of other troops—the Null-Archer didn’t shoot. It walked forward. Silently. Other Null-Archers spawned from the opponent’s tower, but they didn’t attack either. They just… met in the middle.

The game had taken his first bike ride, the smell of rain on hot asphalt, the plot of a book he’d loved at twelve, and the face of a girl who smiled at him in a grocery store three years ago. In return, he had won 847 trophies and a new card: (rarity: irreplaceable).

Arena: Suburb. Not a fantasy castle—an actual cul-de-sac rendered in low-poly graphics. His tower was his childhood home. The opponent’s tower was a similar house with a red door.

The arena went dark. The towers, the bridges, the petrified remains—all of it dissolved into a gray mist. At the center stood a single figure. Kael’s own shape. But empty. A Kael-shaped hole in the world, wearing his clothes, tilting its head with his mannerisms.