The game was called echoes of Halcyon. A horror-survival multiplayer experience that dropped six players into an abandoned research facility hidden deep within the Arctic Circle. No one knew who made the game—there was no studio name, no credits, no support page—just a cryptic tagline: "Once you're in, the echoes find you."

Claire, Sara, Blair, Max, Ava, and Dave were close friends who loved exploring obscure indie horror titles. They booted up Echoes of Halcyon one cold Saturday night, laughing over headsets, excited for a few scares.

The game loaded without a menu. Just darkness… then static.

Each player spawned in a different part of the facility. Claire was in a flickering lab, Sara in a rusted elevator shaft. Blair wandered an operating room with blood-stained walls. Max found himself locked in a cold storage room. Ava spawned in a. hallway lined with broken cameras, and Dave in a room filled with obsolete computer equipment.

“Guys? Can anyone hear me?” Claire’s voice crackled through the in-game comms.

“Yes—but it’s glitching,” Sara replied. “Is that… screaming in the background?”They thought it was ambient noise—until Dave’s voice cut in. “I just saw someone run past the window. Not a player.”

None of them had encountered an enemy yet. Just whispers, flickering lights, and a timer counting down from 66:06. Then Blair’s character froze in place. “I can’t move. My screen’s—what the hell—”

Her voice cut out.

“Blair?” Ava called. “Can you hear us?”

Suddenly, Blair’s character turned toward the screen on its own. Her avatar's mouth opened unnaturally wide, and a distorted voice came through: “She sees you.”

Then her player tag vanished.

Panic set in. Max tried to quit the game, but the button did nothing. Dave unplugged his PC—but the screen stayed on. Static turned to whispers.

Sara found a journal entry in the elevator shaft:

Project Halcyon is not responding. The test subjects are mimicking players. Memory leak confirmed. Termination impossible.

One by one, the friends began to disappear from the lobby. Not from death—but from corruption. Their avatars glitched, eyes went black, names distorted.

Claire was the last one left. Alone, cornered in the lab as something invisible dragged claw marks across the walls. Her headset vibrated with a voice—low, female, and far too real.

“You played my game. Now I play yours.”

She reached for her headset to rip it off.

But then—darkness.

Outside her window, Claire’s PC monitor lit up again.

Someone was watching.