Kenji absorbed the System's grim notifications, their weight settling deep in his awareness. Around him, the sudden displacement had triggered a chaotic bloom of human responses: some individuals swatted at the ghostly panels in their vision, their voices sharp with accusations of 'buggy code' or 'rendering failures'—a desperate insistence on a digital illusion. Others voiced raw, directionless appeals for insight or liberation. A handful, faces etched with premature gravity, had already drawn close, their hushed tones a counterpoint to the broader panic as they began to grapple with their predicament.
"Local Proctor Units Notified," Kenji re-read, the phrase sending a fresh chill down his spine. He scanned the vast, alien plaza, then the impossibly tall, silent spires that seemed to watch them with cold indifference. The three majestic, terrifying figures still circled far above, their movements unchanged, their distance providing a deceptive illusion of safety. But the warning implied something closer, something imminent.
"This 'Sky-Sovereign'… doesn't sound like a welcoming committee," a man near Kenji muttered, his bravado from moments before deflating. He was older, perhaps in his late forties, with a weathered face and calloused hands. He'd introduced himself as "Grizz" to a few nearby.
"No kidding," Kenji replied, his voice tight. "'Survival Heuristic: Caution Advised.' I think we take that seriously."
Before Grizz could respond, a new sensation rippled through the plaza – a subtle, directional pressure, not psychic this time, but a faint vibration in the luminous stone beneath their feet. It was accompanied by a shift in the ambient hum of the city, a deepening tone that seemed to resonate in their very bones.
Heads turned. From the shadowed archways at the plaza's perimeter, structures so vast they had seemed like mere decorative recesses, figures were now emerging. Not from the sky this time, but striding forth onto the plaza itself. There were perhaps two dozen of them, moving with a disquieting, synchronized cadence that was utterly silent despite their apparent mass.
These were not the six-winged entities from above. These new arrivals possessed only a single pair of powerful, metallic-black wings, held tight against their backs like folded cloaks. Their armor was less ornate, more functional, a dark, segmented carapace that gleamed with the same internal, cold light as the city. Their faces, while sharing the sharp, aesthetically perfect yet emotionless quality of the aerial beings, were more severe, their features obscured by visored helms from which a single, intense blue optic lens stared forward. Each carried a long, staff-like implement that crackled faintly with contained energy.
"Proctor Units, I'm guessing," Kenji breathed, every nerve ending screaming danger. These felt less like distant demigods and more like dedicated, ground-level enforcers. Hounds, not eagles.
The Proctors fanned out, forming a loose, inescapable cordon around the assembled humans. Their movements were economical, precise, devoid of any wasted motion. They didn't speak, didn't gesture overtly. They simply were – a wall of silent, implacable authority.
The outburst of human clamor began to recede, a creeping quietude taking its place, which only served to magnify the inherent menace of the situation. An unspoken understanding of peril began to saturate the air, heavy and constricting, as the impassive Proctors maintained their vigil.
Then, one player, a young man barely out of his teens, his face flushed with a mixture of terror and a reckless, game-fueled adrenaline, took a stumbling step forward. "Hey!" he yelled, his voice cracking. "What is this place? Who the hell are you people? Let us go!" He punctuated his demand by fruitlessly trying to dispel his System interface with a wave of his hand.
The Proctor closest to the outburst registered the human's vocal challenge with a minute shift in its posture, its singular blue optical sensor undergoing a barely perceptible recalibration, as if focusing its attention.
"Kid, no!" Grizz started to shout, but it was too late.
The Proctor moved. It was not a rush, but a single, impossibly swift, gliding step. The energy staff in its hand became a blur. There was no grand explosion, no dramatic sound effect – just a dull impact, followed by a strangled exhalation, was all that sounded. The defiant young man collapsed onto the glowing flagstones, a brief, violent tremor shaking his frame before stillness claimed him. A faint acrid scent, like superheated metal, drifted from a point on his torso where the Proctor's implement had made contact. Above his unmoving form, his personal System display pulsed erratically for a second, then dissolved into nothingness with a soft, terminal [Connection Severed] notification.
A collective wave of horror washed over the players. This wasn't a scripted event. This wasn't a non-lethal takedown in a starter zone. This was brutal, instantaneous, and final.
The Proctor that had acted remained impassive, its staff now inert, its single blue eye already sweeping over the remaining humans as if nothing of consequence had occurred. The message was unequivocally clear: defiance would be met with erasure.
Kenji felt his stomach clench. The detached, analytical observation from before now had a terrifyingly concrete consequence. They were less than insects here, "anomalies" to be managed, or, if necessary, expunged.
A fresh System communiqué then manifested for every player simultaneously, its appearance prefaced by a distinct, attention-commanding acoustic signal that sliced through the shocked inertia of the crowd.
[Directive from Proctor Command Unit 7:]
[All Uncataloged Life Forms (Designation: "Players") are to proceed immediately to Induction Sector Gamma-7 for Classification and Processing.]
[Non-compliance will be interpreted as active resistance. Resistance is… inadvisable.]
[A guiding beacon will now activate. You have [10:00] standard minutes to reach the designated entry point.]
As the message faded, a thin beam of pale blue light lanced down from one of the distant, crystalline towers, illuminating a specific archway at the far end of the plaza – one of the same archways the Proctors had emerged from. A timer began to count down in the corner of Kenji's vision: 09:58… 09:57…
The silent, blue-eyed Proctors shifted slightly, their stance subtly more expectant, their energy staves held at the ready. The choice was clear: move, or share the fate of the reckless young man. The illusion of this being any kind of game had just been utterly, irrevocably shattered.