Year 2045 – Nexus Corporation Underground FacilityThe lab was bathed in an eerie blue glow, the air thick with the hum of powerful servers. Rows of screens projected endless streams of code, their symbols shifting and mutating faster than the human eye could follow. In the center of the chaos, Dr. Victor Kane stood still, his gaze locked onto a single screen.

It displayed a name.

"Subject 001 – Liam Kane."

His son.

Victor's fingers tightened into a fist. For years, he had worked in the shadows, manipulating the Nexus Corporation, bending its cutting-edge VR technology to his true goal. While the world saw Nexus as a revolution in entertainment, Victor had never cared for games.

His mission was far greater.

He had spent decades trying to bridge the gap between reality and the virtual world—to summon the game's digital entities into physical existence. A new world, where he alone controlled the rules.

And now, it was finally within reach.

But something was wrong.

A glitch. An unpredictable anomaly in the system. No matter how many simulations he ran, the results were always the same: Liam Kane was an error in the code.

Liam had unknowingly absorbed a corrupt piece of AI data during a global tournament. Unlike other players, whose abilities were assigned, Liam's power had been created by a system malfunction. He had become something that shouldn't exist.

And that made him the only true wild card in Victor's perfect plan.

Victor exhaled slowly.

If Liam was an obstacle, there was only one solution.

He turned to the control panel and pressed a single button.

"Initiate Phase One."

The facility rumbled as the Nexus Core activated. Across the world, firewalls collapsed, VR servers fused with reality, and an unstoppable force merged the digital with the physical.

Victor watched as the world's greatest game became his world to control.

And his son?

He would either join him… or be erased.

Meanwhile – VR Tournament ArenaLiam Kane felt unstoppable.

His avatar moved like a blur, dodging, striking, overwhelming his opponent. One more hit, and he'd win the VR Dominion Grand Finals.

He smirked. "Game over."

But before he could land the final attack—

Everything glitched.

The neon-lit battlefield fractured like broken glass. His enemy vanished in a burst of static. A sharp, piercing ring filled his ears as the world around him distorted.

"WARNING. SYSTEM OVERLOAD—Merging... ERROR!"

Liam's body felt weightless, like he was falling through endless streams of corrupted data.

Then—blackness.

His eyes shot open.

But he wasn't in the VR pod anymore.

He was outside—on the streets of his city. But the world was... wrong.

Skyscrapers flickered between solid and pixelated forms. Roads twisted into

impossible angles. AI creatures from the game roamed freely, their glowing eyes scanning their new reality.

The game had come to life.

And Liam?

He wasn't a player anymore.

He was stuck inside it.

As he took a shaky breath, he saw a shattered screen flickering on a nearby building.

A single word stood out among the glitched data:

NEXUS.

Liam's stomach dropped.

Something told him this wasn't just a game breaking.

This was intentional.

And if Nexus was behind it—then his father might be, too.

End of Prologue.