She moved left and touched a tomb. She didn’t recoil as she had the first hundred times she’d touched the slabs of dark stone. This time she felt at it, muttering to herself.

She didn’t pray for the forgiveness of whomever’s grave she was intruding upon. She wasn’t religious.

But she still apologized.

“Sorry, friend. I need to check something.”

Aha. In the darkness, her fingers found little engravings on the front of the tomb. The iPhone was retrieved. She flicked it on for twenty seconds and read.

“Secaris Ladel IV. Son of Secaris III, beloved son of Daeltren, died as he lived in earnest work. Survived by two daughters; died of heartbreak after disease took his wife. [Farmer], Level 23. What the hell?”

It made no sense. Part of it did—it was clearly the equivalent of a plaque. A memorial for the dead. This man had been a decent fellow: a farmer. But, why was he called a [Farmer]?

They’d even put it in brackets. And—Level? Was this some sort of…game?

The young woman hadn’t grown up with video games, not exactly, but she had a passing familiarity from the few she’d tried. Someone had tried to get her to play Dungeons and Dragons and this all sounded…too familiar. In the darkness, she frowned.

“Someone is pulling my leg. It can’t be—”

She moved left. After a dozen feet—or three metres, the proper way of measuring it—she reached another tomb. Bumped her knee. Cursed—and then turned on her iPhone for another look.

“Aidai. Daughter of Shamei. Wife of Secaris IV. Fuck. That’s not good. Let’s see…beloved daughter…survived by her husband…and leaving two daughters behind? The plague? Is this from The Black Death? [Farmer], Level 14? [Midwife], Level 18? What is this garbage?”

But after the sixth tomb that listed names and levels, she began to believe. In the darkness, the young woman shivered. The tombs were all alike.

They listed names, relations, cause of death—from old age to sickness, to, in one case—monster attack?

And then the levels of the deceased. As if that were just a fact of life. She…didn’t know what to think.

“Let’s see, Sid. If this is some kind of joke—someone spent a lot of money on it.”

To test her theory, she had run straight ahead until she was tired and then checked another tomb. But they were all the same.

“Lord Merigal…fell to Goblin treachery…Level 38…Goblins?”

They were all tombs. If she was in some kind of—of—simulation, a prank, or experiment, it was hard to imagine what for.

Which made it even more disturbing to think this was reality. But what else could explain this? Sid—

well, that was her nickname—shivered. Panic was setting in again.