The silence of the ruins pressed in on him again.
Kade stood in the center of the shattered hall, arms crossed, eyes flicking from broken pillar to cracked angel statue to the half-collapsed staircase that still made his skin crawl. He didn't move. Not yet.
He needed to think.
"Alright," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck, "let's just… break this down."
out."
"This place isn't right. And if I'm not hallucinating, then I've only got two options."
He raised two fingers.
"One: I've been dumped into some kind of fantasy world. No explanation, no warning, no isekai truck."
A pause.
"Two…" He hesitated. Then lowered his hand slowly.
"I'm inside MythOnline."
The words tasted wrong. Absurd. But they also fit.
His gaze swept the ruin: the crumbling stone, the gaping ceiling, the vines curling along the floor like lazy veins. Nothing moved. Nothing buzzed. No health bars. No prompts. No tutorial tips hovering politely in the corner.
Still, something about all of it scratched at his memory.
"This layout…" he murmured, stepping slowly around the statue. "It's familiar."
The arrangement of the columns. The broken floor tiles. Even the lighting—it stirred something he couldn't shake.
And then it hit him.
"This looks like that opening dungeon in MythOnline," he whispered, brow furrowing. "The Angel's Fall. Or at least… it feels like it."
The breeze stirred his pajama top.
Kade slowly turned away from the dark stairwell and looked up again at the broken angel. Its head was still gone. Its wings, chipped and crumbling. But something about the posture—the way it knelt, hands out, wings slumped like broken hopes—itched at the back of his brain.
"I've seen this before," he muttered.
Not in real life.
Not in any museum or crumbling ruin.
But in-game.
His breath hitched.
"MythOnline."
The word slipped out before he even realized he'd spoken it. A name. A maybe.
And suddenly, everything started spinning.
Because if this was MythOnline—if he was really trapped inside a game—then…
He paced back slowly, eyes locked on the statue.
In the official lore, MythOnline opened with a cinematic in a crumbling temple—players woke beneath a ruined statue of a fallen angel, once a guardian of balance, now a cursed remnant. The head always missing. The wings fractured. Just like this one.
"But that was pre-rendered… an intro scene," he whispered. "Not an actual playable location. The game didn't even start here."
Except…
MythOnline didn't have a fixed starting point. That was part of the hook. Procedural generation ruled the entire world: ruins, structures, enemies, even NPCs shifted with every new character. There were no tutorials, no quests on rails. No minimap.
"You couldn't pick a class until you found one in the world," Kade said, frowning deeper. "No HUD. No help. You had to find your role."
The headless angel… could be a coincidence.
But it didn't feel like one.
Kade ran a hand through his hair, heart pounding faster.
The thought of being stuck in a full fantasy world—no knowledge, help, no explanation—was terrifying. How do you survive in a place with no logic? Unknown?
But if this was MythOnline…
If this world followed any of its game mechanics—
His odds improved.
Dramatically.
He might not have a sword. Or armor. Or magic. But he had something better: knowledge.
Years of grinding. Raiding. Dying. Learning.
"I've cleared dungeons players didn't even know existed," he muttered. "I know the way the devs think."
He turned in a slow circle, eyes scanning the ruin again.
"But I don't recognize this place. Not exactly."
Because no one could. That was the trick.
Every ruin in MythOnline was randomized. Every layout unique. Every statue, a variant.
But the themes stayed.
Fallen angels. Cursed gods. Forgotten warzones. The game was obsessed with decay and mystery.
Kade looked at the broken angel again. "Either I'm trapped in a fantasy world with really depressing architecture… or I'm in MythOnline, stuck without my original inventory, my UI, or a logout button."
He swallowed.
"Both suck. But if it's Myth… I've got a fighting chance."
The statue said nothing.
Neither did the ruins.
Kade stood there for a long moment, the silence pressing in around him. One world might kill him with magic wolves. The other might not even follow rules he understood.
But at least one of them gave him a shot.
He stepped forward again, brushing a hand along the angel's base.
"Alright," he whispered. "Let's find out which hell I'm in."
Kade exhaled slowly.
"Okay. First rule of survival—take stock of what you've got."
He stepped away from the statue, crouching beside a low bit of rubble. He didn't expect to find a loot chest hidden behind a rock, but hey, miracles happen.
No glowing sword. No dusty health potion. Just pebbles and disappointment.
So he did the only thing he could do.
He checked his inventory.
Not a game one—his real one.
Kade reached into his pajama pocket and pulled out the battered, slightly-too-warm shape of his cellphone. The screen lit up with a soft blue glow when he tapped it.
Battery: 54%
No signal, no bars, no Wi-Fi.
Just the clock frozen at whatever ungodly hour he'd fallen asleep.
The wallpaper was still there—his dog, tongue out, mid-zoomie. Kade stared at it for a second longer than he meant to.
"Guess you didn't make the jump," he muttered. Then he sighed and checked the apps. No emergency button. No magical GPS. Just offline junk and a half-loaded Reddit post about soup.
He swiped back and reached into his other pocket.
Out came his wireless mouse.
A cheap one, too. Plastic, black, a single LED light. No weapon, no hidden blade.
But it had clicked him into this world, somehow.
"Inventory," he said dryly, holding up both hands. "One phone. One mouse. Zero weapons. A+ loot."
He dropped his head back against the stone and let out a short, humorless laugh.
"If this is MythOnline, I better find a class fast. Preferably one that specializes in sarcasm and poor life choices."
The wind rustled through the ruins again. The statue loomed. The stairs waited.
And Kade looked down at his ridiculous gear—realizing that somehow, this was the loadout he was going to war with.
"…This is either a joke," he muttered, "or the most hardcore survival mode ever made."