Work Text:
Avery looked at his screen. His head ached, and a loud, shrill ringing filled his ears.
For several minutes, he sat there frozen. Or has it been seconds? He couldn't tell.
He was only jolted out of his trance when a tear ran down his cheek, causing him to blink and wipe it off.
Why was he crying?
He looked puzzled at the time in the bottom right corner of his screen. It was 1 p.m. on January 1, 2026.
It was New Year’s Day, and he had fallen asleep at his computer on such a day. It was kind of embarrassing to be honest, even for him.
But what exactly had kept him at his computer until late into the night? He wiped his face and leaned back in his chair. What was the last thing he remembered? He had been home all day yesterday, cooked himself dinner, and watched a YouTube video while he ate.
But what did he do after that?
He tried to shake off the headache, but he couldn't. He felt as if he had only slept for a few minutes; had he perhaps fallen asleep so late? He had nothing to do that day, so it would be best for him to finally lie down in bed and rest.
"Happy New Year," he whispered as he leaned forward to turn off his laptop after it had been on all night. Luckily the charger was plugged in. But as his finger hovered over the power button, he focused again on what was displayed on his screen. He had OBS open, but no recording was in progress. Nothing else was open besides OBS—no Spotify, no video game.
He hesitated.
Something was strange.
Instead of pressing the power button, he grabbed his computer mouse. Avery opened his files and clicked on the folder where OBS automatically saves its recorded videos. The folder contained three videos; the oldest was a Skyblock video, only a few minutes long. The next one, oddly enough, had no title; the thumbnail showed him in a seemingly normal survival world. The last video was the most recent. It was 15 hours long and also lacked a thumbnail.
It was strange. He could clearly remember filming the Skyblock video just a few days earlier. But he couldn't remember ever filming the other two, especially not just a few hours ago.
Just looking at these videos, not remembering ever recording them, gave him an uneasy feeling. He noticed his mouse cursor was trembling and looked at his shaking hand. He briefly lifted it from the mouse and made a fist a few times before grabbing his mouse again and moving his cursor to the videos.
Still slightly trembling, he opened the longer, most recent video, skipping past the shorter one. His Minecraft skin appeared on screen, standing in a cave. It felt like someone had logged into his account and recorded this as some kind of prank.
He watched as his character typed something into the chat. He tried to read it, but the moment he focused on the text, everything blurred. His headache came rushing back, far worse than before.
When he finally managed to focus on the screen again, he watched his character flying through a maze of corridors and passages in Creative mode. The world was filled with astonishing structures, far more detailed and breathtaking than anything he could ever have built himself. He was certain he hadn’t created this world.
Avery repeatedly noticed him stopping and typing something into the chat, something he had by then given up trying to decipher. It was as if something was holding him back with all its might, and he feared he would pass out if he continued trying to make sense of it.
The first thing in the entire video that seemed familiar to him in some way was when he turned left at a crossroad and saw a golden door. His body immediately tensed and a shiver ran down his spine. Before he could see himself walking through the door, he paused the video.
His head throbbed, his back stiff from sitting at the computer for too long, and his eyes burned. With a quiet groan, he rolled back in his chair and pushed himself to his feet, stretching out the tension. His throat felt painfully dry, as if he hadn’t had anything to drink in days, so he made his way to the kitchen. Grabbing a glass, he filled it to the brim with water and took a long, desperate gulp.
He should just turn off his laptop and go to sleep, maybe watch the creepy video later. Or never. There was no reason for him to torture himself any longer.
Looking over the kitchen counter, he could see the paused video on his laptop.
A laptop that didn't really belong to him. Not originally.
The headache hit him again, sharp and sudden, and the glass slipped from his hand, shattering on the floor. As if in a trance, he ignored the shards and stepped over them, drawn back to his laptop. Something important lingered at the edge of his memory, but the moment he tried reaching for it, it slipped away.
As soon as he reached his laptop, he clicked play and sat back down in his chair.
His heart pounding, he watched himself walk through the door, just for there to be only a block of gold. Avery let his tense shoulders drop and tried to calm his rapidly beating heart with deep breaths.
He watched as his character broke the gold block and stepped into a corridor lined with countless doors. Hearts appeared above his inventory. He had switched to survival mode.
Mesmerized, he followed as his character moved through different parts of the world: crossing vanishing bridges, wandering through Mars-like landscapes, and passing through entire villages. A thought crept in; would this just keep going, uninterrupted, for the next fifteen hours?
Impatiently, he skipped to the halfway point off video, but he didn't see what he expected. Instead of seeing himself solving a puzzle or exploring the world, he saw himself walking around a church, destroying and placing flowers, carrying water, and staring at a book. Perhaps he had to do this to solve the next puzzle?
Confused, he moved his cursor further forward, but for hours he only saw himself walking around the same room.
Only when he reached about the 14-hour mark, did he see a change. His character spotted two signs that read:
You are real
You are special
Remember who you are
Avery didn't know why, but these signs gave off a strange sense of calm and security. It was like a ray of light in a seemingly endless tunnel off darkness.
The signs seemed to have an effect on Avery in the video as well. He finally threw away the flowers and went into the next room.
He traversed another breathtaking landscape over the next half hour until he passed through another door and finally arrived at what appeared to be a library. It seemed almost endless—infinitely many floors, infinitely long and wide. He looked at some of the books that Avery still couldn't read.
As his character continued exploring the library, he glanced at a comic book he had lying next to his laptop and opened it. He could read the writing inside without any trouble. Puzzled, he closed it again and turned back to his laptop, where he saw another open book he couldn't decipher.
Despite his headache, he leaned closer to try and make out individual letters, but just as he thought he could finally identify the first word, the book disappeared and he fell down.
After only a few blocks, he hit the ground and, after some confusion, turned around.
Another Minecraft player stood in front of him. He had a knight skin with a distinguished-looking golden helmet on his head. Above him was his name, the first thing Avery could read in the entire recording.
d3rlord3
"Derek," Avery whispered.
No, he did not build this world.
Derek hadn't built this world either.
Derek, who wanted to warn him.
Derek, who had seen the King in Yellow and still managed to survive.
Derek, who desperately wanted him to live.
Derek the one who...
had sacrificed himself for Avery.
Avery remembered. Avery remembered absolutely everything. He remembered how he had first found this mine, how he had explored everything, and how he finally ended up in the chamber with the countless golden eyes.
Derek... had pushed him off the platform. Derek had recited the text to merge with the king. Derek had done something impossible to survive.
His eyes wide, he stared at the few messages they had written. He could finally read them, leaning forward on his desk, his hand covering his mouth in shock. He couldn't get his body to move, so he just read word for word what they had written back then. Derek told him he should read the book, at which point Avery built up to read it.
As he began to read it, Derek sent in this strange combination of numbers and letters. Avery frowned. Back then, he hadn't paid any attention to the code, but this time something caught his eye. The length and arrangement of the letters weirdly enough reminded him of a Google Drive link.
He immediately took a screenshot and, with still trembling hands, copied the combination of numbers and letters. He pasted this into the Google Drive link and pressed enter. In the Google Drive file were and a Word document and a video. After thinking for a moment, he decided to open the video first.
It was really from Derek, Avery realized with shock. It showed his point of view, how he walked through the same world as Avery. However, Avery didn't have time to watch everything, so he fast-forwarded to the exact moment Derek had knocked him off the platform.
He had to know, had to know what had happened to Derek.
Derek turned back to the eye, which was slowly disappearing in front of him and begged him to undo what he had done.
"Please tell me you changed your mind, Derek," Avery whispered, staring intently at the screen.
The eye gradually disappeared.
"Please," Avery pleaded one last time.
But it never happened. The eye had disappeared.
Derek stood in an empty room. He switched to F5 and looked at the camera. For a moment, he opened the chat, but then closed it again, after which the video ended. The black screen stared back at Avery, as if it was mocking him.
He clicked the red cross to close the video and opened the document titled "goodbye". The document contained a single link to Derek's last video.
It began with him saying goodbye. Tears streamed down Avery's cheeks at the very first words. He closed his eyes and listened only to the voice. Derek spoke of the power, of the infinite knowledge he had attained, and how he could never use it.
"Please don't think you failed, Avery," Derek said. Avery flinched as he heard his own name and looked back at the written words in shock.
"When you hear this, don't think you let me down. You did it. And it's thanks to you and all that you did that millions live to see another day.
And thanks to you, I got the chance to see the universe. A chance no human will ever get again. I'm grateful I saw it all."
Avery buried his face in his hands and began to sob loudly. He wasn't sure if it was triggered by his grief for Derek, or by the honor of hearing such words from him. It was probably a combination of both. Avery wanted to turn back time, didn't want Derek to knock him off the platform. Avery wanted to die for or with Derek, if necessary. Wanted to share the burden of knowing everything in the universe with Derek, to understand him completely. More than anyone else ever could.
Never wanting to see him standing alone on that platform again, awaiting his self-sacrificing death.
"You're capable of great things, you'll do great things. So believe in yourself. And I don't just say it because I saw it. I know it, because I know you.
Goodbye, my friend
Whatever you do at the crossroads. Keep going forward.
Or something like that
(I was never really good with endings)"
A slight smile appeared on Avery's lips when he heard the last sentence.
Derek had only spoken to Avery for a few minutes, yet he knew him better than anyone before. And he believed in him. Believed, he would accomplish great things. Told him to always believe in himself. Told him he should always go forward.
Avery opened his eyes again, the tears on his cheeks beginning to dry.
Avery never turned back, no matter who was chasing him in the Minecraft world, no matter how scared he was, no matter how many obstacles were put in his way. He never gave up, and he wouldn't now either. Especially not now.
He closed both the video and the document and opened Minecraft. He had to wait far too long for the green progress bar to complete loading. Finally, the title screen appeared, where he immediately clicked on singleplayer.
But instead of seeing the world he had played on, he saw nothing. Not a single world was saved on his laptop. He quickly clicked on "Create new world" and scrolled to the seed.
But when he tried to enter the seed, he realized he didn't know it. Who even looks at the seed when playing a Minecraft world? And even if they did, who could remember it off the top of their head?
"Shit," Avery hissed as he exited the new world creation menu. Just to be sure, he went back and selected multiplayer, hoping the world had shifted there. But that didn't work either; he only saw the servers he had added some time ago to play Skywars and Bedwars.
He angrily shut his laptop with a jerk.
There was no chance left; the only access to that other world had been slammed shut right in front of him. He simply wasn't as smart, as brilliant, or as cunning as Derek.
If he were trapped in this world and Derek had to get him out, that certainly wouldn't be a problem for him.
Avery looked down at the laptop. The laptop he'd found in a storage unit, with the world already pre-installed. Derek's laptop.
If he had found it in a storage locker not far from his apartment, Derek must live pretty close to him, since he himself had locked the laptop there. At least Avery hoped so.
If there was no way to reach him through the Minecraft world anymore, then perhaps he could find him in real life instead.
Should he go to the police? Tell them something bad has happened to someone in this city named Derek? Is that even possible, especially if his reason is a Minecraft world? And what if Derek is found in a supernatural state? Would they lock him up?
Avery paced his room, considering all the possibilities. If only he knew more about Derek. He could go over and see for himself without putting him in any possible danger.
He glanced back at the laptop on his desk. If only he had a full name or some clue as to where Derek lived. Avery picked up the closed laptop and turned it over, hoping to see a nameplate or an address.
"That would have been too easy," he muttered to himself. He set the laptop back on the table and opened it again. He hadn’t taken the time to examine it in detail; maybe Derek had left some hint about who he was somewhere.
Quickly, he clicked on the computer’s profile, only to find his own Windows account logged in.
The files where Avery had hoped to find old screenshots or videos of Derek were also empty. But Avery wasn't ready to give up.
He quickly typed D3rlord3 into the Google search bar. There were only a few results, one of which was NameMC, where he only saw his skin and his deleted name history.
Avery quickly clicked out and started scrolling through the other results. Most of them seemed to think d3rlord3 was a typo and showed him other people with similar names.
But one result caught his eye. It was a Steam profile named d3rlord3. He quickly clicked on the link. Derek was only level 8 on Steam, and it was clear that he had played some puzzle and story games in the past. His activity had stopped about three months prior.
If only Avery could log into his account, he could probably find his address. But how would he know the password? Derek didn’t seem like someone who would keep a document listing all his passwords.
Just to be sure, Avery searched through the files for anything named “Passwords,” but only his own documents appeared. Frustrated, he moved the mouse quickly to the left, planning to scroll through his own files.
However, his mouse was so close to the laptop that it bumped hard against its side. A soft click followed.
Puzzled, Avery looked down at the CD case that had popped open. Just as he was about to close it again, he saw a small piece of paper inside. A piece of paper containing various passwords for Derek's video game platforms.
Avery immediately grabbed the piece of paper and glanced at the Steam account password while already opening Steam on his laptop. He quickly entered the account name and password. The loading screen lingered for several seconds—far too long in Avery's eyes—before Steam finally opened.
Unable to suppress a small squeal of delight, he immediately navigated to the next best game and clicked “Buy.”
And there it was, the billing address. Derek’s address.
Avery immediately jumped up and entered the address into Google Maps. It was only about a 40-minute walk or a 12-minute drive away. Unfortunately, Avery didn't have a car, but luckily there was a bus stop nearby that could take him close.
The world spun briefly as he jumped up so abruptly, forcing him to steady himself by leaning on his desk for support. Looking down, he saw that he was still wearing his pajamas, so he quickly threw them off and grabbed the nearest pair of jeans and a t-shirt off the floor without checking if they were dirty.
He quickly grabbed his key and closed the door behind him.
"85, 84, 83..." Avery ran down the street, getting closer and closer to his destination. It was now 3:33 pm. Who knew how much time had passed since Derek had written his final note.
"82, 81, 80..." he continued counting in his head. He didn't know what to expect. Maybe he'd find the apartment empty, maybe he'd find him there but not breathing...
Whatever was waiting for him in that house, he wanted to see it with his own eyes.
"79," he said loudly, and stopped. He quickly walked toward the house and looked at the mailboxes. An old woman lived upstairs, but a man named Derek Hutchins lived downstairs. His heart pounding, he rang the doorbell once, without much hope that anyone would answer. Nevertheless, he waited a few seconds, hoping to hear footsteps. But nothing came.
Immediately, he went into the garden and began to walk around the house. Through the first window, he could see a small kitchen. It was sparsely furnished, yet looked very clean, unlike Avery's kitchen. He continued on, passing a bathroom, until he reached the last window.
He looked inside and saw a large couch with a television mounted on the wall in front of it. In the center of the room stood a large dining table surrounded by four chairs. At the far end of the room, a monitor was switched on—and directly in front of it, on the table, lay...
"DEREK!" Avery shouted, banging on the glass, which vibrated beneath his hand.
"SHIT!" he yelled, staggering back from the window as he heard a dog barking in the distance. He immediately looked more closely at the window, but it was firmly closed. Without hesitation, he ran to the previous window and checked it; as soon as he pushed against it, it opened.
He climbed inside so quickly, you could think the King in Yellow was chasing him. He rushed through the bathroom into the living room, where Derek was sitting. Many smoothie bottles were scattered around him, and a soft humming sound came from the refrigerator next to him, as well as from the still-on computer.
However, Avery paid no attention to these things and placed his hand on the shoulder of the taller man to shake him.
"Derek, Derek," Avery said, the second time a little more desperately. But Derek didn't move.
His forehead rested on the desk, his hands still on the keyboard. Avery grasped Derek's shoulders and pulled him up until he was sitting, then walked around him to look him in the face.
"AHH," Avery screamed, letting go of Derek's shoulders in shock, causing his forehead to slam back onto the table.
Derek's eyes were open, not closed as Avery had expected. But they weren't normal, human eyes looking back at him. Both his irises and sclera were golden. His eyes were wide open and, in the brief moment Avery looked at them, completely frozen.
"Fuck," Avery hissed, once he had calmed down a bit. He stepped toward Derek, not realizing he had flinched away from him. Carefully, he reached out and placed a hand on Derek’s pulse point at his neck.
His heart was still beating.
"There is no way," Avery whispered as he withdrew his hand. His eyes showed that the king had already merged with Avery to some extent, but if he had full control over him, the king might have already wiped out humanity. However, the two were not yet dead, as both off them had assumed.
However, they would probably die in this frozen position as they couldn't drink nor eat.
Finally, he turned his attention to the monitor in front of him. The Word document Derek had written his last word on was still open. Avery couldn't suppress a slight, sad smile as he scanned through the words again.
As he reached the end, he glanced at the taskbar below. Minecraft was still open. Curiosity got the better of him, and he carefully reached for Derek's hand to move it away from the mouse.
Avery clicked on Minecraft. But the menu didn't open like he expected. Instead, a world opened. His world. No, the world of the King in yellow.
The world he could no longer access from his computer, having been erased for him. Derek's Minecraft character still stood on the platform from which he had hit Avery just a few hours earlier. But around him were not only the black, indestructible blocks, but a net of various purple glass blocks. Gates were anchored in these glass blocks. However, unlike all the previous gates, these were not yellow, but purple instead.
Avery stood there starring at this world he had never seen before. One short glance at Derek was enough for him to secure his decision.
Avery slid his arms under Derek’s armpits and lifted him slightly out of his chair. He gently pulled him closer, then brushed his hand over Derek's eyes to close them. He then picked him up and dragged him across the floor to the couch, where he laid him down.
This was probably about to make a big mistake. Perhaps he should have called an ambulance after all, so the doctors could take care of him. But what would happen if they ran tests on him and discovered the abnormality in Derek?
Perhaps he should have left everything behind, just as Derek wanted. Live his own life to its fullest. To let him die, accept the sacrifice of his life for his own.
"You're capable off great things, you'll do great things."
No, he wouldn't give up that easily.
"So believe in yourself."
Perhaps this would be the last thing Avery ever did, but his mind was made up the moment he first opened that strange book.
"And I don't just say it because I saw it. I know it, because I know you."
He looked one last time at Derek, who looked almost as if he were peacefully asleep. Avery leaned forward and pressed his forehead against Derek's, which still had a red mark.
"Don't worry, I can do this. I'll bring you back, Derek. I promise," he said confidently to Derek, who definitely couldn't even hear him. He stayed there for a second, leaning against Derek.
Without hesitation, Avery stood up and went to the computer. He wouldn't turn back. He wouldn't give up on Derek. Never.
"Whatever you do at the crossroads. Keep going forward."