It didn't feel like dying.
It felt like lag.
A sharp jolt in Kai's chest. A pause. Then the world stopped buffering.
One second, he was mid-match — headset half-on, fingers dancing over the keyboard, mind locked into the rhythm of a fight he couldn't afford to lose. The next, the screen blurred, the room tilted, and everything turned to static.
Not on the monitor. In his head.
Game Over.
The thought passed quietly. No panic. No drama. Just a flicker of resignation.
Then darkness.
Kai opened his eyes to a screen.
Not a monitor. Not a dream. Something… in-between.
A glowing blue UI floated in the air before him, flickering like an unstable HUD. The space around him was dark — not black, but empty, like an unfinished map in a game engine. No textures. Just void.
The screen blinked to life:
WELCOME TO SAVE POINT ACADEMY— Initializing SoulCode...— Personality sync in progress...— Memory fragments: 83% corrupted— Assigning provisional identity...
The text glitched, warped, and reformed.
Kai sat up slowly. His body felt weightless, like respawning in a server that hadn't fully loaded yet. He looked down — he still looked like himself. Sort of.
Black hoodie. Faded jeans. Calloused hands. His hair was a mess as always. But a faint glow trailed behind his fingers when he moved, like afterimages from a broken frame rate.
Was this a dream? A hallucination?
A voice buzzed into existence behind his right ear — flat, synthetic, and strangely polite.
Player: Kai.
Age: 17.
Status: Glitched.
Assigned Game Mechanic: NULL.
Please proceed to your tutorial checkpoint."
"…Null?" Kai muttered. "What does that even—?"
Before he could finish, the void peeled open like a digital curtain, revealing a narrow corridor lit in soft red and blue hues. Floating arrows hovered mid-air, pointing toward a flickering door at the far end.
He stood up, hesitating. The ground beneath his feet responded like pressure-sensitive panels — pulsing faintly with each step.
As he walked, text began appearing on the walls like loading messages:
Remember to set your Save Point.
You only get one.
Don't ignore the warnings.
At the end of the corridor, the door whooshed open. Light spilled through. And with it came the low hum of voices — dozens of them.
The room he stepped into looked like an orientation hall — if the orientation was designed by a dystopian game dev with a glitch fetish.
Rows of glowing white chairs arranged in a semicircle. A large central platform hovered in the middle, surrounded by floating panels of translucent data. The walls buzzed softly, overlaid with streams of shifting code.
About thirty other students sat in silence. Most looked Kai's age — teenagers, confused, alert, some scared. One kid had already fainted. Another was trying not to cry.
A sign blinked over the platform:
WELCOME, NEW PLAYERS
SYSTEM SYNC: STABILIZING
Then a figure appeared on the platform in a flash of light — a tall, silver-haired teen with flawless features and eyes that shimmered like corrupted pixels. He wore a sleek black academy uniform and moved with frame-perfect grace.
Kai stared. Something was off. The guy didn't blink.
"Welcome to Save Point Academy," the figure said, his voice filtered through a delay — like it had to travel through a bad connection."You are not dead. Not exactly. You are not alive, either. You are in recovery."
A murmur ran through the crowd.
Kai stood near the back, arms crossed. He was still trying to figure out if this was a prank, a dream, or some kind of final-game hallucination.
"Each of you arrived here because your soul experienced a glitch," the NPC continued. "Something broke during your transition from life. Rather than fading… your code persisted."
He made a sweeping gesture, and a holographic diagram of a body rotated above his hand. It was marked with glowing data points.
"Your consciousness has been migrated to a temporary recovery space — this Academy — where you will receive training, adaptation guidance, and trial-based evaluation."
"Most importantly, each of you has been assigned a SoulCode: a personalized mechanic based on your identity. It may be passive. It may be active. It is your only advantage here."
A girl near the front raised her hand.
"What if we don't know what our SoulCode is?" she asked.
The NPC's head turned sharply.
"Then your first task is to survive long enough to find out."
Several students stiffened.
Kai's eyes drifted to the side, where his HUD floated beside him.
Name: Kai
Level: 1
SoulCode: [NULL]
Respawn Status: Unset
No powers. No backup.
He looked around. Other students were whispering now, comparing their SoulCodes. Some were excited. Some were clearly faking it.
No one seemed to notice him. Which suited him fine.
"Over the next two weeks, you will attend classes, complete trials, and attempt to stabilize your corrupted data," the Instructor said. "Each of you has been granted a Save Point. You may set it once. Use it wisely."
Another screen appeared overhead — a countdown timer.
DUNGEON SIMULATION BEGINS IN: 13 DAYS
Survivors may proceed. Deletions will be permanent.
Kai's jaw tightened. Permanent?
What kind of messed-up afterlife was this?
Later, a hallway led him to his assigned dorm — Room 404. Of course.
The door slid open with a smooth hiss.
Inside: two beds, two desks, and a glowing panel on the far wall that read:
SET SAVE POINT – TAP TO CONFIRM
He stared at it.
No explanation. No confirmation button. Just the glowing words, waiting for input.
He moved to the bed, dropping onto it with a tired sigh. The mattress barely compressed under his weight — more like memory foam built out of code than fabric.
He glanced again at the panel.
Still blinking.
That night, he dreamed in loading bars.
Blurry memories. A fight. A screen. A faint voice calling from behind his bedroom door. Static. And then silence.
When he woke, the panel was still blinking.
He sat up slowly, rubbed the back of his neck, and walked toward it.
His finger hovered just above the glowing surface.
One tap.
One save.
One chance to come back.
He lowered his hand.
Stopped.
"…Not yet."
He turned away.
Behind him, the panel dimmed — just a little.