In that narrow corner of the room, the only sound was the soft hum of an old fan, struggling against the heat of a dying night. The monitor's light flickered weakly, its brightness a feeble attempt to defy the encroaching dark. On the screen, a digital map unfolded - a once-vibrant world now swallowed by an abyss of blackness, speckled with fading dots that disappeared one by one.
Like stars dying in a virtual sky.
Thin fingers tapped the keyboard, typing out a string of code that would never be seen by another soul. A message without a recipient. A sentence without an answer.
[User Root: Midnight]Log #2765:
This world was never theirs. It will never be.
The monitor's light never flickered out. Even as other servers were decommissioned, as entire worlds were erased, one screen remained illuminated - showing the map of a digital world long abandoned. A still point, unmoving, as though it were waiting for something. Waiting for a presence that had never arrived... or perhaps, one that never would.
People called Project Zero a cursed game. Once an ambitious MMO designed to create a digital world where players could escape the constraints of time, its promise had crumbled. Behind the scenes, the lead developer remained a mystery, choosing to go by the alias Midnight - an enigma whose obsession wasn't merely to create games, but to craft a world from which players could never truly escape.
That night, the servers reset.
All data erased.
Characters deleted.
Footprints wiped away.
But one file never vanished.
That file always returned.
Midnight_Prototype.ver0.99
Reformat, overwrite, even manual isolation - it didn't matter. The file appeared again. Sometimes, for no reason, on a vacant server. Other times, in storage long abandoned. The monitor screen displayed a long vertical line, constantly glowing, as if something - or someone - longed for its presence.
Strangely, no one ever seemed to notice who was telling this story. It was as though the digital world itself was speaking. Or perhaps... only one person ever really knew.
[User Root: Midnight]
I'm still here. Watching you all. Every choice. Every mistake.
No one is truly offline.
This world is like a space that never stops turning time. Every mistake made, every trace left behind, circles back - to the same point, to the same file.
That night, the light of the monitor never dimmed.
Because in the digital world... not everything that's offline is truly gone.
And just like the sequel emerging from the ruins of that game, new names began to appear.
Virtual Heroes. Eden Code.
The world changed. But the traces... remain.
[4URmn_x]: Too easy. Victory is mine.
The message flashed in the global chat, accompanied by the sharp ping of the Eden Code notification sound. One by one, the other players exited the arena, their screens flashing "DEFEATED" in bold red letters.
"Damn, who's that? The damage is like a bug."
"I'm reporting this guy."
"Fix, this is a cheater. Why is the admin silent?"
A stream of familiar rage messages flooded the chat.
As always.
The gaming world may evolve, but the people behind the screens never do.
Midnight sat motionless in the corner of the map, his virtual character perched on a craggy rock, staring at the screen. No expression, as though the endless chatter around him was nothing more than static.
[4URmn_x]: Pathetic. Just like usual.
The digital winds howled, reshaping the shadows of a world long past its prime. In the distance, the looming tower of Eden Code stood - the remains of an old server that was supposedly wiped clean. But if you looked carefully, something was wrong. On one of the tower's walls, barely visible, there was a faintly scrawled name.
Letters nearly faded, yet unmistakable.
MIDNIGHT_Prototype.ver0.99
No one paid much attention. Or perhaps... no one wanted to.
Maybe they were content in their new world.
A world they could leave whenever they chose.
But behind the screen that never went dark, there was one who knew.
And Midnight still waits.