Ohritro

Eli Turner had perfected the art of coasting through life, gaming, lounging, and vibing with no grand ambitions beyond the next high. But his laid-back existence is upended when his laptop inexplicably transforms into a gateway to another world. What starts as a surreal escape becomes a perilous journey as Eli finds himself wielding a mysterious system that allows him to level up, fight monsters, and gain abilities beyond his wildest dreams.  

At first, the portal world feels like a haven, offering purpose and adventure Eli never knew he craved. Guided, or manipulated, by Azrael, a mischievous god orchestrating the game, Eli rises as one of the system's chosen players. But as the quests grow more dangerous and Azrael’s true intentions begin to surface, Eli struggles to balance the fantasy world with his life back home. His girlfriend, Sara, and his friends are left grappling with a version of Eli they hardly recognize, as the lines between his two lives blur.  

When the system expands to players worldwide, Eli crosses paths with others drawn into Azrael’s cosmic experiment: Yumi Tanaka, a fiercely disciplined Japanese student with a perfectionist streak, and Arjun Mehta, a charming Indian playboy with secrets of his own. Each carries their own burdens and ambitions, but all three must face the harsh truth: Azrael’s game is far more than it seems.  

As alliances are forged, rivalries ignite, and the stakes escalate, Eli must confront not only the dangers of the portal world but the growing rift between the person he is and the hero he’s becoming. In a game where every move is a test and every choice ripples across both worlds, the question remains: can Eli, Yumi, and Arjun uncover the truth before the system consumes them all?

I Got a Notification on my Laptop and Got Legendary Powers

The air was thin in the reconstructed system, every breath feeling like it was being drawn through a fractured reality. Glitches still flickered along the edges, distorted pixels hanging in the air like frozen dust particles.

Yumi sat cross-legged on a data pillar, her interface glowing faintly in her hands. The decryption program was running in the background, but her mind was elsewhere—on the entity, on Azrael's words, on the sinking realization that their battle was far from over.

She wasn't afraid. She was angry.

Eli paced nearby, restless as ever. "So we just wait? Let it come back when it decides?"

Azrael leaned against a fragment of code, watching the broken skyline. "No. We prepare."

Arjun, sitting with his back against a collapsed data bridge, looked up from his tablet. "I've been scanning the framework. The system's still healing, but I found something—an echo."

Arjun tapped his interface, pulling up a holographic projection. A pulse rippled across the screen, a repeating pattern buried deep in the system's core.

Eli squinted at it. "That's a… heartbeat?"

Arjun nodded. "Not just any heartbeat. This matches the frequency of the entity's presence before it withdrew."

A cold silence settled between them.

Yumi's grip tightened on her interface. "You're saying it's still here?"

Arjun shook his head. "Not exactly. But it left something behind—a fragment, a trace, maybe even a backdoor." He turned to Azrael. "You said it was measuring us. What if this is how?"

Azrael's eyes darkened. "Then we need to find it."

The signal was weakest at the surface of the reconstructed world, but as they moved deeper—through data corridors and into abandoned substructures—it grew stronger. The sensation was eerie, like walking into a place that had been hollowed out and left to decay.

The echoes followed them. Glitches flickered in and out of existence, forming whispers of past battles, distorted figures trapped in loops of time.

Eli muttered, "Yeah, this place is very haunted."

Arjun glanced at his screen. "The frequency is stabilizing. Whatever's here, it's close."

They reached a cavernous chamber, its walls lined with shattered data constructs. The ground pulsed beneath them, and in the center—

At first, it was indistinct, a shadow blurred by static. Then, slowly, it took shape.

Yumi's breath caught. It was her.

Or at least, it looked like her—a distorted reflection, her face shifting between recognition and corruption, her body flickering in and out of code.

The echo turned its head, staring at them with empty eyes.

Echoes of the Unwritten