The screen flickered, and suddenly he wasn't in the computer lab anymore. He was a pixelated serpent slithering through a green grid, the taste of binary code on his tongue. He could feel the walls. When he lost, he snapped back to his seat, gasping.

The first level loaded. It was a mirror. And looking back at Leo was not his reflection, but every version of himself who had ever chosen a screen over the real world.

In front of him, floating in the white void, were 6,676 tiny, frozen avatars. A kid stuck mid-jump in Geometry Dash . A girl captured forever in a Fireboy and Watergirl puzzle. And behind them, a door marked .

It was called .

“Fine,” he whispered. “Just… lag.”

But somewhere, deep in the unblocked spaces of the internet, a door cracked open. And six thousand, six hundred and seventy-six players finally blinked.

The page loaded, but it was different. No search bar. No waiting room. Just a single, pulsing button in the center of the screen.