What It Became
Arista sat cross-legged on her bed that evening, laptop balanced on her knees, the rest of the crew having drifted off in the aftermath of the announcement, each of them needing their own space to sit with what they'd just learned.
She'd told herself she was just going to check the official page once, out of simple curiosity, and then somehow found herself still scrolling twenty minutes later.
The new world was, by every objective measure, genuinely impressive. A full globe this time, continents she hadn't even glimpsed yet on the promotional map. Every race from the current game, carried forward, plus several entirely new ones she didn't recognize. New kingdoms scattered across unfamiliar coastlines. An expanded bestiary, dozens of new monster types, several boasting mechanics she'd never seen attempted before.
If she didn't have so many memories of Eternal Horizon, this would have been a dream.
That was the worst part, maybe, because some younger version of herself would have loved this announcement. Sixteen-year-old Arista would have opened every screenshot in a new tab, leaned close to the screen until her nose nearly touched it, and started planning which race to try first, which kingdom to visit, which corner of the new map looked most likely to contain something the developers had absolutely not intended players to reach yet. She could still recognize the shape of that excitement in herself, faint but familiar, like a handprint pressed into dust. The game looked huge and beautiful and full of impossible things, and there was no clean way to hate it for that. No obvious failure to point at, no ugly screenshot, no lazy promise she could dismiss outright. If anything, that made it worse. It looked like everything a sequel was supposed to be, and all she could think was that someone had built a brighter door and called it kindness while the home behind her was burning.
She scrolled further anyway, unable to quite stop herself, reading through the developer notes on the new crafting systems, the reworked class trees, instant travel options between major cities, and a combat overhaul that sounded, on paper, far more dynamic than anything the current engine allowed.
Instant travel, apparently, was the clean new answer to thousands of kilometers of tunnels and track.
She looked for a section on NPCs and found nothing specific, only a vague marketing line about a "living world" that could have meant anything, or nothing at all.
She closed the laptop halfway, staring at the darkened screen's edge.
This content has been misappropriated from NovelPhoenix; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
She had seen enough sequels to know better than to trust a phrase like that. Whatever the devs had actually planned, she doubted it would be them. Not really.
Maybe some version of a dwarven blacksmith would exist in 2.0. Maybe someone would stand behind an anvil somewhere, gruff and proud and familiar enough to hurt.
But he wouldn't be Gorthruk.
She opened the laptop fully again, scrolled back to the top, and read the whole announcement once more, slower this time.
A new world. Better visuals. New races stacked on top of the old ones. On paper, it should have felt exciting. An entirely new frontier to explore should have awakened the same restless curiosity that had once sent her digging through solid rock with a homemade pickaxe.
It didn't.
She hadn't fallen in love with this world because of its mechanics. She hadn't spent more than three years here chasing better graphics, or a more technically impressive physics engine, or whatever improved immersion the sequel's marketing promised.
She'd fallen in love with who was in it.
Thoth, who'd learned, slowly, painstakingly, that existing for a reason mattered more than simply existing efficiently. Squishy, Dryva, patient and curious and achingly gentle, finally, after centuries alone, surrounded by the people who'd always been meant to love him. Beelzebub, who'd worried over her like family from a throne room built on fire and brimstone.
Bram, Claire, Nettle, Colm, Petrov, Fen. They would still be out there somewhere. She just didn't know what being their friend would look like without this world to meet in.
Eternal Horizon itself had no continuation like that. When the servers went dark, that part simply ended.
A new world meant new people who hadn't been there for any of it. People who hadn't helped dig those tunnels, hadn't made those promises, hadn't spent those ordinary evenings together.
She tossed the laptop aside.
"I am not going," she said aloud, voice strained with anger and hurt in equal measure. "Whatever Eternal Horizon 2.0 actually is, it isn't this. It can't be. I'd rather spend my last three months here, with everyone who actually made this world worthwhile, than chase a fresh start with strangers wearing familiar faces."
She pulled the small octopus plushie from among her pillows and held it against her. She'd bought it once because it reminded her of Squishy. She held it a while longer, afraid that if she let go, it would simply vanish.
Eventually she got up and crossed to the large, rectangular full-length mirror leaning against her wall. A photo was tucked into the corner of its frame, herself at sixteen, on a family vacation, taken not long before she'd first become Strawberry. She studied the carefree, unguarded laugh caught in that photo for a long moment, then finally looked at her own reflection beside it.
"Okay, Arista," she told her reflection. "Three months is still a long way off. No need to worry about it now."
For one fragile, ridiculous second, she almost believed herself.
Then her face crumpled.
She shook her head hard, slapped both cheeks, and forced herself to stand a little straighter.
"If you can't be strong for yourself," she whispered, "then at least be strong for your friends."