A New World, an immersive game experience

*Vitoria*

Ragged breaths. Flowing blood. Torn body and soul. Drifting in a void, Vitoria saw naught but white. Her eyes were blinded as she felt herself falling through space. Her body was fighting to stay together.

She had known her actions were reckless, but she had stubbornly believed she had the tools she had needed. Never had she imagined that the difficulty of traversing dimensions would be so high.

But she had survived. Had made it. But not to her target destination.

She drifted. Too weak to do much more.

...

Time passed. How long, she couldn't even guess. It had felt like eons. But a part of her knew it wasn't. At least, not fully. A quirk of time was that different people could experience the flow of time differently. For her, it might truly have been eons.

Just before she lost the last of her strength, she fell out of the world of white. Her body and soul were no longer separate things. Forged together, mutated. Her form, unknown. Humanoid, but not. Ryu, but not.

A failed half-transformation. At best, that would name her current form. But that was being generous.

Parts of herself were missing. Torn apart on her journey. And now...

She was not where she needed to be. This place, this dimension. It was not where Eldrian was. She could feel it. The V-TAS, grasped in her bleeding hands, was pulling her back. Back towards what had nearly killed her.

"That. Did...n't..." Words failed her. Blood drowned her as she coughed.

Alas, even without the need to breathe air, this place. This space. It gave her no solace. It seemed hostile.

This dimension was... wrong. Her powers failed her. Even the once simple act of manipulating space to move freely eluded her.

No. It wasn't that her power didn't answer her call. Even though she was tired, it was still a part of her. The truth was far more horrifying.

This place didn't simply reject her powers. It rejected her very being.

She could feel it. The very fabric of this place tore at her. Tried to fix the "wrong".

It wasn't something conscious that was trying to get rid of her. Rather, it was the world itself. The laws of this space would not allow her existence.

It started slowly. First, with an energy like gravity pulling at her body. Trying to force her to comply. But she fought.

That caused more and more energy to gather. Her fighting acted like a vacuum for everything nearby to collect. To gather and "fix" her existence.

Her death seemed imminent.

'I failed. But... this is still a world separate from that simulation.' she thought. Her mind was at ease. She had escaped the prison of her birth. And while it came at the cost of her own life, she still felt proud. She had done what those who called themselves gods—had sought for eons.

'But I don't want to die.' As old as she was, she did not wish for it all to end. Not here. And not like this. Not when everything was just getting exciting.

She wanted to see how everything would change. How time itself would evolve. But, if she died. Then Eldrian had little hope of surviving. And with his death, nothing would keep the corruption from spreading. Keep the void from devouring all.

Focusing her will into the V-TAS, she hoped for a miracle. Her strength spent, she wouldn't be able to survive in this hostile space. She couldn't even move. All she could do was float while slowly dying from her wounds—if the fabric of this reality didn't "fix" her existence in it first.

'Let's meet. At least once.' she thought as her consciousness faded. Her world turned dark. With her last strength, she forced the connection between the V-TAS and Eldrian to re-establish. She doubted it would do anything.

Yet, it did.

The gathering power trying to erase her caught onto this foreign connection. Like Vitoria, it did not belong. Existence itself tried to correct the mistake.

But, unlike Vitoria, this connection was tied to the source of time. When it enveloped both Vitoria and the connection, it gave just enough power for the fragments of Eldrian's ANW Avatar's soul to access it. Access the river of time.

And that was enough. Vitoria was already being rejected from this world. As soon as a different place became a possibility (outside of erasing her)—that throwing her out required less energy than erasing her—saved her life.

As Vitoria's consciousness faded, she could feel the V-TAS disintegrating. Becoming something akin to her own power. Pulling her along. Somewhere.

...

*Eldrian*

Desperate, Eldrian realized there was little he could do. His friends would die for trying to help him.

He could not allow it.

He threw away all thoughts. Focusing only on one thing. Stopping this from hurting those around him.

He knew emotions were powerful. But they also made losing control too easy. He had to clear his mind. He called upon the power within him. If he couldn't stop this void from spreading. Then, he had to ensure the damage would be limited. He couldn't close the void, but he could destroy its link to Earth.

'At least this will give them some more time.' he thought. Gathering the last of his strength. He had to ensure he didn't leave any traces of the void behind.

It was at this moment that he suddenly felt something. A pull connected to his soul. 'This. This is so familiar...' Eldrian thought, knowing he should have known what this meant. Who this bond between him belonged to. But he didn't.

He couldn't recall them.

Even though he couldn't remember the bond. His instincts told him he had to answer. Answer with everything he had. It was as good an idea as any other; he thought.

Eldrian answered. He sent the powers he had honed in the Realm of Time to strengthen this tugging link on his soul. And he immediately felt a pull. A familiar one.

'Yes, this might just work.' Eldrian thought. Forming a feeble smile, too weak to even lift an arm to assure his friends. Eldrian called on all the mana he had gathered to strengthen his spell. To use this link to fix the problem he had created.

...

*Erik*

As soon as Erik had touched Eldrian's arm, he had been consumed by a terrible pain as his soul became connected to Eldrain's. The void linked them and tried to consume them.

But through this, Erik saw glimpses of what Eldrian had been through. Everything he was shouldering.

He wanted to help him. Desperately so.

Thus, when he felt a tug at his consciousness, he responded with all he had. Just like Eldrian. And it was enough to ensure he wasn't left behind.

...

"Where are we?" Confused, Erik looked around. One second he had been suffering from agony, and the next he wasn't. It had taken him some time to even notice. The lingering pain disturbed his thoughts.

Erik did not receive a response. But the place he was in obviously wasn't their guild home. As he was looking around, Erik started noticing fragments in the surrounding space. Like space itself was cracking. And the fragments formed from those cracks showed him the recent past. Where he and Eldrian had been tormented by that terrible pain.

"Wait, I saw something like this—Eldrian!" Erik shouted, his shock overruling his curiosity.

His friend was lying a few dozen meters away. As frail as he had been since this entire event started. But, at least, he seemed better than before.

Relief flooded Erik, and that was when he noticed the other figure. She appeared little better than Eldrian. While the woman wasn't as malnourished, her body was covered in blood. Some parts were so damaged that he could see her bones.

Torn between whom to help first, Erik ultimately started with the woman. While Eldrian was in a dangerous state, healing magic couldn't replace food and water. At least not the type of magic he was capable of casting outside of ANW.

But it could still mend normal wounds. And while this woman's were extreme, it should at least stop the bleeding and increase her chances of survival.

Or so he had thought. Sure, he wasn't as good as Eldrian at using magic. But Erik could fully cast spells on Earth. Here, however, he failed to produce even the most basic of spells. It wasn't that his magic wasn't working. Rather, any mana he summoned outside of his body was immediately stolen.

After his third attempt, he knew he had to stop. He knew this was abnormal. If he wasted all his energy without first figuring out what was going on, he wouldn't be able to help anyone.

"Child..." A soft whisper reached his ears. Barely audible.

"You're awake?" Erik asked in disbelief. He had been surprised enough that she had been alive. That she could be awake in her horrible condition shocked him even more. The pain must be unbearable.

"You..." She coughed, blood and bits of lung. "Hand..." she said, turning to spit out the blood threatening to drown her.

"Here!" Erik shouted, desperate. He took her hand. A mess of bones, scales, and blood. "What now—"

Feeling his mana leaving his body, Erik almost pulled away. He stopped as soon as he realized her bleeding was lessening. Sadly, he didn't have enough mana to heal her.

"Thank... you..." she mumbled, still incredibly weak. Her body didn't look much better. But her bleeding had stopped—mostly. Not completely, sadly. Her wounds hadn't been healed.

"I'm sorry." Erik started, but stopped. Realizing that she had fallen asleep.

With his mana spent and none to draw from around him, Erik could do nothing else for her or Eldrian. He started looking around. Slowly, his attention was drawn to the fragments.

Time moved onwards as he waited for either of them to wake.