Alexander Walker used the joystick to move his wheelchair forward—he no longer had the strength to push the wheels himself. The hum of the motor was a quiet reminder of the life he now lived, one built on adaptation rather than brute force.
He sighed. Being a disabled veteran sucked. There was no sugarcoating it. He had lost both legs, his spine was damaged beyond repair, and the traumatic brain injury had left its mark in ways that even the best rehab couldn't fully erase. But he had pulled through. He had survived. And in some ways, he had become stronger.
Before all this, he had been unstoppable. A star athlete in high school—fast, powerful, and disciplined. A solid student, sharp enough to excel in engineering courses, good enough with electronics to modify gear and troubleshoot problems without breaking a sweat. He wasn't a genius, but he didn't need to be—he was damn good at what he did.
That skill, combined with his relentless drive, had landed him at the United States Naval Academy (USNA). He had thrived there, pushing himself past limits others would have crumbled under. Graduating in the top 10% of his class, he earned his commission as a Navy officer and later secured a spot among the elite—the SEALs. He specialized in technology and electronic warfare, bridging the gap between combat and the cutting edge. While others wielded rifles, he wielded data, drones, and advanced tech, turning information into a weapon just as lethal as any bullet.
Then, everything changed.
The mission had gone sideways. He still wasn't sure if it was bad intel, sabotage, or just plain bad luck, but it ended with explosions, gunfire, and pain unlike anything he'd ever known. When he woke up in a hospital bed, both legs were gone, his body shattered, and his mind clouded by injuries even the best doctors couldn't fully fix. He should have died. A part of him had died that day.
But even in a wheelchair, he refused to stop moving forward.
At first, the struggle was unbearable. His body refused to cooperate, his mind betrayed him with lapses in memory and coordination, and every moment was a reminder of what he had lost. But he was a fighter—he didn't know how to quit.
Surprisingly, it wasn't physical therapy or tactical training that helped him regain control—it was video games. The hand-eye coordination, the reaction times, the problem-solving—it retrained his brain in ways traditional rehab never could. He would never be a professional gamer, but that wasn't the point. The stimulation helped him heal, gave him an outlet when frustration threatened to break him. It gave him a way to keep fighting even when his body no longer could.
Along the way, he also got into anime. At first, it was just background noise—something to fill the silence. But then, something clicked. The stories of resilience, of warriors standing against impossible odds, of powerful technology shaping the battlefield—it resonated with him. It wasn't just escapism.
It was motivation.
Even now, sitting in a wheelchair instead of running into battle, he refused to let his past define him. He had lost a war, but he wasn't done fighting. Not yet.
Life had finally given him a moment of peace—ten years of learning to live with his injuries, of finding a new rhythm, of accepting that he would never be the man he once was but still someone who mattered.
Then, the diagnosis came.
Stage 4 leukemia.
Life had fucked him again.
The doctors told him the odds: 1% survival chance. He had survived war, survived losing his legs, survived his brain and spine being wrecked—but cancer? Cancer didn't give a damn how tough he was. It didn't care about training, discipline, or the fact that he had already endured more pain than most men could imagine.
They offered him treatment. "It's not going to work," they said. "We can try, but… you should get your affairs in order."
Fuck that.
The medical bills? Uncle Sam's problem. The pain? Nothing he hadn't already lived through. The odds? He had never given a shit about odds before. He had fought before, so he'd fight this too.
The chemo wrecked him. Tore him down worse than war ever had. He lost what little strength he had left, his body withering, his mind fogging even worse than it already had from the brain injury. There were days he wished he'd just let the cancer win, days where he was too weak to move, too sick to eat, too numb to even care.
And then the clinical trial—something experimental, something with stem cells and bone marrow transplants. He didn't fully understand it—his brain hadn't been the same since the blast that nearly killed him years ago—but he knew one thing:
If there was even the smallest chance, he'd take it.
The treatment nearly killed him. The fevers, the infections, the weeks on a ventilator, trapped in his own body while machines kept him alive. But he had made it through.
He had fucking won.
Against all odds, against even the doctors' expectations, he survived. But the war had left its mark. His body was weaker than ever, his mind even more fractured, and now, he had to figure out what to do with the life he had fought so hard to keep.
Alexander rolled his wheelchair up the ramp, feeling the strain in his arms. A nurse was waiting—he couldn't remember her name.
Damn chemo. His memory had always been off since the war, but now? It was like trying to hold onto smoke. Details slipped away too fast, thoughts tangled in a haze. But he didn't complain. Complaining wouldn't fix it.
He ignored her and went straight to his command center—his PC, his simulation hub, the one place where he was still in control. His fingers weren't as quick, his hands weren't as steady, but he still refused help.
He had rewired himself before.
His body was wrecked, his brain damaged, but he had trained himself back into working order. Video games, mental exercises, simulations—anything that forced his mind and hands to work together, anything that fought back against the decay.
And it worked. He wasn't who he used to be, but he was still here. Still fighting.
His hands hovered over the keyboard for a moment before pressing the power button. The screen flickered to life. His world, his battlefield.
As long as his mind worked, as long as he could think, he wasn't done yet.
…..
…..
…..
Alexander snapped awake.
Shit. He had fallen asleep while powering up his computer.
He sighed, rubbing his face as he tried to shake off the drowsiness. Fatigue hit him harder these days. Whether it was from the lingering effects of chemo, the brain injury, or just the sheer exhaustion of existing, he wasn't sure anymore. It didn't really matter.
He moved the cursor—slowly, carefully—and clicked on Skyrim.
He had over a thousand hours in the game by now. It was his favorite, had been for years. A world where he could move freely, where his body wasn't a prison, where skill and reflexes weren't the only things that mattered.
He always played on the easiest difficulty. Not because he wanted a casual experience, but because his body couldn't keep up. His hands weren't as fast as they used to be, his motor skills lagging just enough to make combat frustrating. Even now, using a controller or a mouse took effort.
But none of that stopped him.
Even if it wasn't the same, even if he had to adapt, he still played.
All of a sudden, the power went out.
The hum of his PC, the soft whir of his wheelchair's motor—gone.
Darkness swallowed the room, thick and absolute. The only sound was his own breathing, steady but tense.
Damn it.
Alexander tried the light switch. Nothing. The entire apartment was dead. He sighed and shifted in his wheelchair, his body already protesting the movement.
"Hey! Nurse!"
No response.
His fingers twitched against the armrest. Something about the silence felt off. Not just the usual power outage kind of quiet—this was heavier. Thicker.
Then, out of nowhere—his computer flickered back to life.
Alexander froze.
That wasn't possible.
He had just checked—the power was out across the whole apartment. And yet, his monitor glowed, cutting through the pitch-black room.
At first, he thought maybe it was rebooting. A backup battery he'd forgotten about? But as the screen stabilized, it wasn't his desktop.
It was black.
Then, letters appeared—typed out one by one, as if someone else was at the keyboard.
"You don't belong here."
Alexander's gut twisted. His hands hovered over the controls, but he hadn't touched a thing.
More words erased the first line.
"This world has left you behind. Broken. Forgotten."
He exhaled sharply. What the hell? A virus? A hack? He'd seen weird glitches before, but this—this felt wrong.
The screen flickered, a faint hum vibrating through the desk. The words changed again.
"But there is a place where you are whole. Where you can stand. Where you can fight."
Alexander scoffed. Oh, come on.
This had to be some kind of prank.
Some elaborate joke, some messed-up virus, or maybe—maybe his memory was worse than he thought, and he'd installed something weird and forgotten about it.
Someone hacked my system. A hidden program. A hallucination?
His brain injury had messed with his head before. Maybe it was chemo fog. Maybe it was just stress, exhaustion, or a dream.
Yeah. A dream.
But then, the screen flickered again.
"This is not a dream, Alexander Walker."
His breath caught in his throat.
No. That wasn't possible. That wasn't just code running a script.
His name. It knew his name.
His pulse spiked, adrenaline sharpening his focus. His entire body tensed, fingers tightening on the armrests of his wheelchair. He had pulled the power cord.
And yet, the words remained.
Another flicker—this time, the screen distorted like a pulse of static, but instead of returning to normal, he saw something new.
A vast, frozen tundra. Snow-covered peaks cutting into an iron-gray sky. A great city of stone walls and towering spires perched on a mountainside.
He knew this place.
Skyrim.
Then, more text appeared.
"Come and see."
The cursor moved on its own, hovering over that single word.
"ACCEPT?"
Alexander swallowed hard. His muscles twitched with old instincts—assess, analyze, react.
Every logical part of him said this was impossible. He should reboot, get a diagnostic, call someone—hell, just roll away and wait for the power to come back.
But then another thought crept in, unshakable and raw.
What if it's real?
What if it was real?
Alexander exhaled slowly, his pulse steady, his thoughts anything but. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, hesitant. Could he even type? He pressed a key—it worked. Small victories.
He hesitated, then typed:
Who are you?
For a moment, nothing. Then the words vanished, replaced by a new response, appearing one letter at a time.
"One who watches."
The screen flickered, faint static bleeding through the black background before stabilizing. More words.
"One who waits."
Alexander frowned. That didn't tell him much.
His fingers moved again, slower this time.
Waits for what?
The screen stayed still. No distortion. No flicker. Just text.
"A moment that must happen."
Something about the phrasing unsettled him. Not a choice. Not a possibility. Something inevitable.
Another flicker. A pulse, more like a heartbeat than a machine glitch. A brief flash of snow-covered peaks, a city nestled against a mountain, a silhouette moving through fog—but gone before he could fully grasp the images.
Then the final message.
"Come and see."
Alexander swallowed. His fingers hovered over the mouse.
Alexander always prided himself on his instincts, and they weren't screaming bullshit—but his head just couldn't believe it. This had to be some asshole messing with him. A prank, a scam, some kind of elaborate virus designed to screw with his system.
Then the screen changed again.
This time, it wasn't text. It was a portal.
Two options appeared below it:
ACCEPT | DECLINE
Alexander exhaled through his nose. Yeah, okay. Classic setup.
If this was some elaborate virus, hitting "accept" would probably install god-knows-what onto his PC. Maybe lock it up entirely, fry his system. But honestly? Who cared?
He could buy another computer.
Without hesitating, he clicked ACCEPT.
The moment he did, his screen went black.
Silence. No flicker, no distorted text, no cryptic bullshit. Just darkness again.
Dammit.
For a second—just one stupid second—he had let himself hope. Like holding your breath, waiting for something real when you know deep down it isn't.
Then, out of nowhere, a single white dot appeared on the screen.
Too bright. Too sharp.
Wait.
That wasn't his monitor. His entire setup—his screen, his desk, even the air around him—was breaking apart. The pixels weren't pixels anymore—they were pieces of his reality shattering, folding inward, twisting into something unrecognizable.
The last thing Alexander saw was his entire world exploding into white light.
The brightness expanded, consuming him, pulling him in, swallowing everything. His wheelchair, his broken body, the room, the apartment—left behind.
Then, in an instant, the light condensed—ripping him away with it.