Kale Mercer was having a gourmet breakfast.
He sat cross-legged on a moss-covered rooftop, chewing what was probably the last edible protein bar in the entire city. It was beet-flavored. Or maybe it was just that everything tasted like beet now.
He sniffed it suspiciously.
"Expiration date: three months before the world ended. Just the way I like it," he muttered, taking another bite. "Mmm. Notes of regret. Undertones of cardboard. Delightfully chewy. Five stars. Would eat again while dying alone in the ruins of humanity."
He chased it down with a mouthful of dungeon runoff water, wincing as it scorched his throat on the way down. He stared into the distance while it settled in his stomach like a brick.
A guttural roar echoed somewhere to the south.
"Yep," he said to no one.
"The indigestion's kicking in already."
He stood and brushed moss from his pants, eyeing the skyline. What was left of it, anyway. Denver had been chewed down to a jagged mess of broken buildings and biome growths. A massive tower in the far distance was glowing blue today — last week, it was green.
Either that meant a mana shift or someone finally beat the mini-boss inside.
"Congratulations, player number 99,991," Kale said, doing a sarcastic game show host voice.
"You've unlocked the rare achievement: Slightly Less Screwed Than Everyone Else. Here's your prize: trauma and athlete's foot."
He sighed and adjusted the straps on his pack. His joints popped. His knees creaked. His entire lower back filed a complaint. He wasn't even that old — thirty-five, give or take — but the end of the world didn't come with health benefits.
"Back in my day," he muttered,
"apocalypses were polite enough to wait until after coffee."
Another day. Another scavenge run. He was heading toward a mall district he hadn't checked yet — not because it was promising, but because the last place he stayed at got swallowed by a dungeon bloom while he was asleep. He woke up in a room full of vines and glowing eggs.
He didn't even want to talk about what hatched out of them.
He made his way down the ruined fire escape, each step creaking ominously beneath his weight. The ground level was quiet — too quiet — which was never a good sign. Kale loosened the strap on the machete at his hip. It wasn't enchanted or named or anything fancy. It was just a machete. Reliable. Honest. Sharp.
"Unlike everyone I've ever dated," he said, stepping over a collapsed shopping cart embedded in the wall.
The street was buried under ankle-deep dust and rubble. Half a sedan stuck out of the pavement at a 45-degree angle. A traffic light hung upside-down from a vine-covered pole. A mana-warped pigeon stared at him from atop a mailbox, its eyes glowing faint purple.
"Hey, buddy," Kale said.
"You blink wrong and I'm turning you into soup."
The pigeon blinked sideways — not down, not up, sideways — and then flew off with a noise like a rusty trumpet.
"…Yeah. That's what I thought."
He reached the corner of 14th and Humboldt and paused. A barrier shimmered faintly across the crosswalk. Thin, barely visible, like heat distortion. The kind of thing you only noticed because the air got too still.
"Ah. A random instance wall. Great!"
The system loved to randomly block off parts of the city and turn them into pop-up dungeons. They could last hours. Days. Weeks. Once, he got trapped in one for seventeen real-world hours while time looped the same three minutes inside. By the end, he was reciting Shakespeare to a screaming gelatin cube just for the company.
Kale tossed a rock at the distortion. It passed through and landed with a thunk.
No immediate explosion. Promising.
He took a step forward and felt a jolt run up his spine as his vision flickered. Words appeared midair:
[NEW INSTANCE: THE FORGOTTEN BLOCK]
Difficulty: Unrated
Theme: Memory Loss
Time Limit: Unknown
Objectives: Unknown
Player Limit: 1
WARNING: Respawns disabled inside this zone.
"Okay, cool. Sounds very welcoming. Not ominous at all. I love memory-themed dungeons. Can't wait to forget how to pee."
He drew his machete and stepped fully inside.
The world around him shifted.
Buildings realigned. The ground smoothed beneath his boots. Street signs flickered and changed. One moment he was standing in an alley of broken rebar and overgrown vines — the next, it was eerily pristine. Fresh pavement. Clean windows. No blood. No dust. It looked like… the city before.
A woman in a floral dress passed him on the sidewalk, smiling faintly. She didn't have a name tag above her head. She didn't even seem to notice him.
He reached out a hand. She passed straight through it, like mist.
"Memory dungeon," he muttered.
"Right."
People bustled past, frozen in loops. Businessmen on phones. Kids eating ice cream. A cyclist zooming by with a comically large baguette sticking out of their backpack.
Kale stared around in quiet disbelief. He hadn't seen a street this normal in a year. His chest tightened.
Then he saw the fire truck.
His old firehouse.
Squad 14.
There they were — his crew — frozen in time, laughing beside the engine. Lou, big and loud. Parker, chewing that stupid gum. Andre, arms folded, pretending to hate everyone. And Kale, younger, smiling, full of purpose.
He stepped toward them.
[Objective Unlocked: Watch the Flame Die]
The truck caught fire. Just like that. It exploded in perfect silence, sending flame across the street. The people on the sidewalk didn't even flinch. The other version of him screamed — the sound muted — as the crew burned.
Kale staggered back.
"Nope. Nope. Not doing this."
He turned and ran. Through frozen streets. Past a grocery store he once looted. Past a woman who looked like his mother, holding hands with a child that could've been him. It was too clean. Too cruel.
The system had a sense of humor. And it was twisted.
He found the exit portal wedged between a pair of dumpsters behind a 7-Eleven. He didn't hesitate. He stepped through and fell forward onto cracked pavement, coughing, the illusion peeling away like film from a rotten fruit.
Back in the real world.
He laid on his back and stared up at the sky — that awful, shifting bruise of color.
And then he started laughing.
It came out like a bark at first. Then louder. Real, gut-clenching laughter.
"Really?! I just wanted snacks! I didn't sign up for a therapy session!"
He wiped his eyes and laughed harder.
"You sent me a memory dungeon?! On a Monday?! What the hell, system? What did I ever do to you — oh right. Forgot to file my taxes."
He wheezed, eventually slumping to the ground, chest heaving.
When the laughter passed, all that was left was the ache. But it was… lighter.
He sat up slowly and grinned.
"Alright. Not bad, you sadistic cosmic algorithm. I give that one a B-minus. Would hallucinate again."
He pulled out a new protein bar. Apple cinnamon.
"It tasted like sand."