From the darkness of the dragon pit, a figure emerged. It used the model of an old champion, one deleted years ago, but its movements were fluid and hyper-realistic, far beyond the game's engine. It didn't attack. It walked up to Elias’s champion and leaned in close, its face a mess of unrendered polygons.

: The game starts "peeling" away, revealing something sentient underneath.

When the police found the room the next morning, it was empty. The computer was humming quietly, the fans spinning at maximum speed. On the screen, a single folder sat open on a clean, blue desktop.