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

It turned out they were right.

Unfortunately for them, money was a poor shield against the creatures that flooded into the world during the Collapse. Whoever they were, they never survived long enough to make it to the bunker.

Just as well. They probably wouldn’t have been the sharing kind. And with so few humans left, it would have been a shame to kill them just to secure lodgings. They even had a FIVR pod. Too bad there were no games.

That didn’t stop the few scientists they had in their group from setting up shop alongside the thing.

FIVR pods were all the rage back when reality was so predictable and mundane. Using them, people could escape - body and mind - into worlds full of violence, magic, and mayhem for fun.

That all ended the moment Pyresouls turned out to be more than a game.

The dull electric buzz of fluorescent lights gave Jacob a headache as he mentally dismissed his shield and sword. They vanished into a swirl of ash. He could recall them with another thought easily enough.

Kat gently punched his shoulder. The clink of metal reminded him that he still wore his armor. Jacob sent that away with a thought, that too broke apart into ash that vanished a second later, leaving Jacob in a sweat-soaked shirt and pants.

“Gonna grab some grub, you want me to snag you something?” she asked.

Jacob shook his head. “I gotta talk to the Doc. I’ll see you at eighteen-hundred for sparring though.”

“You got it, Jake. Think you’ll finally teach me Moon Crests the Horizon?”

“Maybe,” Jacob hedged, no longer paying much attention. He finally spotted Alec among the fifty or so people currently in the mess hall. With a wave of goodbye in Kat’s direction, he headed toward the only table filled to the brim.

Alec never ate alone, though it wasn’t out of preference. He had a way about him that drew people to him. It should have gone to his head but it never seemed to.

There was an empty spot on the bench at the long aluminum table his group was eating at.

Jacob wanted to leave him alone. He knew the man well enough to know he would prefer to grieve in peace. Alec placed the billions of people’s deaths squarely on his shoulders. He felt responsible for the Collapse that wiped out half of Earth’s population in the first week alone.

The problem was, it was true.

After all, it was Alec who failed to defeat the monster he awoke within Pyresouls Online. That same monster managed to get out of the game and create a breach in reality that caused the Collapse. An apocalyptic event that changed the fundamental rules of reality forever.

Not only that, but he had just lost his brother. Caleb had left on some sort of errand that the Doc gave him. He left with seven others, the strongest and swiftest among them that didn’t rely on heavy armor.

When the scouts picked up Caleb’s return, he was alone and being chased by a horde of monsters. Alec and Jacob were summoned along with a few others not already on patrols to bring Caleb in.

They had failed. As they had so many times in the past. Failure was an old friend to the dwindling survivors of the human race.

Every week their numbers shrank. Even with food and shelter, every death made the next one that much more likely. Many other groups weren’t so lucky. Death came in the form of famine, disease, and even other humans.

Jacob wanted to give the ember to the Doc. But it somehow felt wrong not to include Alec. Caleb was his little brother after all. If he died to get the [Ember of Probability], shouldn’t Alec know?

Of all the people Jacob met since the Collapse, he was closest to Alec. He knew Caleb but only in passing. There was a deep wound between the brothers that even the Collapse hadn’t managed to heal.

“Got a sec?” Jacob asked, standing at the edge of Alec’s table.

Classically handsome, the blonde-haired blue-eyed man looked up at Jacob and pushed away from his meal without a word. Selfless to a fault, he put everybody else before himself.

Once they were out of earshot in an adjacent hallway, Jacob summoned the item he took off Caleb’s body, the [Ember of Probability]. “I found this on Caleb, with his effects. Did you…?”

Alec shook his head. “You keep them. He liked you better than me anyway,” he said with a dark chuckle. “May I?” He tilted his head to the ember.

Jacob handed it over, watching as Alec’s blue eyes danced with the shimmering light of the ember. “Do you know what that is?”

He nodded, something shifted on his features. Fear? Jacob hadn’t ever seen it before. For a brief moment, his best friend seemed weary and tired. Aged dozens of years beyond his mid-twenties. “We need to see Alice.”

2

Doctor Alice Jasieux shut the door to the once-spacious white-lit room, now cramped with all sorts of tables and devices. “What the hell do you think you are doing?” She snatched the [Ember of Probability] from Alec’s hands. “Do you have any idea what this is?” She had a lilting voice with a slight Parisian accent that grew more intense when she was upset.

You could tell the Doc was pissed when she began to mutter in French. That was the only warning you’d get to leave the room.

“Some,” Alec said, leaning against a metal table.

“Then you should know that either of you two geniuses handling this could instigate a Causal Loop if it binds to either of you.” She raised the ember in front of her round glasses. “Thankfully it has not.”

“Somebody mind looping me in here?” Jacob asked. Ever since Alec dragged him along to the Doc’s playroom where she spent most of her time tinkering with the FIVR pod and who knew what else, Jacob had been almost completely ignored.

The Doc set the ember down in