Reality Hacker: Apocalypse Loop

"Ethan! Your breakfast is ready!"

A sharp pain throbbed behind Ethan Cross's temples. His eyes were faded; shadows swirled at the edges. Someone was yelling for him — a voice that was familiar yet playing tricks on him.

A shadowed figure leaned into his haze, reaching toward him, thumbs grazing his before splaying and disintegrating like smoke.

"Ethan, come out now."

She was closer this time. To sweetly. To smug.

Mom?

But something was...unsettling about it.

Ethan groggily rubbed his eyes and mumbled, "Just leave it on the table. I'll eat later."

The door creaked open.

His mother stood there — her lips twisted into a too-wide, too plastic smile. "Why won't you come out, sweetheart?"

Ethan buried his snickering. "I'll be out in a few...'

Then her skin melted to a rancid green.

Not sickly. Not pale.

Spinach-green.

Then her jaw opened like a wet snap and foam spewed between her teeth. The eyeballs bulged and dangled from glistening tendons—

Sproing!

They sprang forward and hung pendulously like sickening weights.

Ethan's brain was reset.

"Oh, Ethan…" Her hands - now coarse and mottled - jerked out. "You're just a little lamb."

Bones crunched. The darkness swallowed.

A NEW GAME?

Ethan shook himself and gasped. His neck—perfectly unbroken-tingled — tingled under his fingers.

What the hell just happened?

The bedroom. The same dumb pajamas. Even the faint smell of bacon.

But he had died. He had felt it.

A bell mocked him from inside his skull. Red text seared into his vision:

(WELCOME TO DOOMSDAY RESET)

» Objective: Survive weekly apocalypses in different worlds

» Ability: None (yet)

» Awaken tokens: 0 (newbies get ONE freebie! Whoops.)

» First death: ✔️ (Mom's Special Breakfast is deleted!)

Pro tip: Run faster next time.

Ethan's stomach fell.

The "game" had automatically used his token to turn time back, and put him back in a prison of sorts — no respawns.

Outside, the door knob turned.

"Ethan~ "

That thing was not his mother.

And it was hungry.