Rewind: A Grimdark LitRPG Series (Pyresouls Apocalypse, Book 1) by James Callum (reading tree .txt) 📕

It warded off the chill of the world, one he was desperate to check on. Were the skies still red?

He hurried down the winding corridors to the mess hall and then to the exit. It took him a long while on his own to get the bunker’s doors opened.

“Fenris… why am I alone?” Jacob asked as each clanking step through the tunnel felt heavier than the last. “Where is everybody? I thought killing the Burgon Beast would stop the Collapse!”

“Perhaps you would prefer to go back inside,” Fenris said, his voice solemn. “There is… much to discuss.”

“I want to see the sky,” Jacob said stubbornly.

Coming around the bend, he saw the ruddy light spilling into the tunnel. He hoped against hope that it was just a sunset. That everybody else was out running supplies. Or maybe they were farming on the rolling hills below.

He needed something - anything - that would explain why he had woken up to an alarm and not a team of his friends.

He tried to come up with reasons for everything. But he knew, in his heart, that none of them could be true. And as Jacob came out of the tunnel and stared at the burning red sky, he understood the depths of despair.

Jacob stared at the blood-red skies for a very long time, feeling what little hope and accomplishment he had bleed away like a mortal wound. The Fire Oppa gently nuzzled against his neck, trying to assuage his pain.

Spying a rough stairway of hastily carved stone, Jacob turned and took them up higher onto the cliff face until he came to a small sheltered rise of grass and dirt.

He stopped cold, recognizing the place for what it was - a graveyard.

Dozens of mounds littered the site, each with a marker of stone. His breath came in short gasps. Jacob could barely control himself as his legs moved of their own accord pacing the rows of dead.

Names he knew well. Friends, family, loved ones all.

He spotted Kat’s grave, Sal’s, Caleb’s. In a never-ending parade of death, he found familiar names engraved on the markers. Even Alec’s name graced one of the tombstones, he was one of the last.

Jacob was hardly surprised by that point to see Alice and Ian’s names next to Alec’s grave. But what truly stole his breath away was the last marker. The greatest care seemed to go into this particular grave, and the date was the most recent.

It was Camilla’s.

“I’m sorry, Jacob,” the Fire Oppa said consolingly. “Please come back inside, you are not done with Pyresouls Online.”

For some reason, seeing Camilla’s name there broke him more than any of the others. She had no reason to come to Earth. How had she even done it? That she was there meant something had changed, something more than what he could remember. Earth was not Camilla’s concern, and yet her grave told another story entirely.

“What do you mean?” Jacob managed to choke out. “I failed, Fenris. There’s nobody left. They’re all dead. The Collapse still happened. I failed.”

“You stopped one incursion, Jacob,” the Fire Oppa said softly, alighting onto Camilla’s gravestone so he could face him. “There was another. Jacob, you have to go back.”

“I can’t,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. He was beginning to understand how Alec felt. Jacob didn’t know - seeing how much worse things were now after his meddling - how he could set foot in Lormar again.

“You have to Jacob,” Fenris said, though his voice was not without sympathy. He looked about the graveyard up high on the sheltered ridge. “Because if you do not, this is the fate of your world. Of more than your world. You must go back to Lormar, Jacob.”

Epilogue

September 11th, 2035.

Altis Main Campus.

“Johnson, the boss lady wants to see you,” Cameron said, poking his head into their shared workspace.

Nodding, but not looking up from the IDE on his screen, Johnson said, “Be right there. Just gotta figure out why I’m getting a segfault here, the memory space isn’t reserved.”

“Now,” Cameron said, with such authority that Johnson looked up and saw the severity on the typically upbeat young man’s face.

“Right,” he said, swallowing a gulp of black coffee. “See if you can figure out what’s causing the error, will you? I can’t get it to reproduce in the development sandbox, only on the live server.” Standing, Johnson picked up the little rubber duck he had sitting in front of his keyboard. He tossed it to Cameron. “Mister Ducksworth will explain the problem to you.”

They both had a chuckle at that. Johnson, running his fingers through his hair, left their workspace, and went to the glass office at the center of their floor.

He had a good idea what Marissa wanted and already had a list of potential resolutions to solve the problem or at least divert blame onto another department.

When Johnson got to the glass box that dominated the center of the 42nd floor of the skyscraper, he paled. Marissa wasn’t alone. The Board was in there. All dour, serious faces that turned as one when he gingerly knocked on the door.

Marissa was there, red hair tied up in a bun and a kind smile that could turn into a vicious snarl in a nanosecond. She ushered him in and to the lone seat at the far end of the long table.

Was this a post-mortem? He didn’t think they would react that soon. Nervous beyond anything he ever felt before, Johnson took the offered seat and scooted it in.

To buy time and to avoid looking at any of the sallow faces of the Board, he fussed with the height of the office chair and took a drink of water from the glass nearby.

Somebody cleared their throat.

Johnson looked up, and a few of the Board grinned at the fear in his eyes. He was dead. There would be no mercy from these curmudgeonly old beings that held his fate in the palm of their wrinkly