Euclid stared at the fire pit that rested on the concrete floor. Having been awake for a few minutes now, he was trying to get a grasp of his surroundings. Moonlight was shining through a small window down on to the fire pit, which lay dormant. On the outside, a raging snowstorm blanketed the land in a sheet of white. A lighter of some sort was near him, just out of reach. He rose to his feet and moved over to the window, fingers trying to find a surface to grasp on to so he could pry the damned thing open, but there no luck. Bending his arm, he then tried the more dangerous option of breaking the window, but he first had to psych himself up.

"Okay," he started, shaking out the soreness of his muscles and readying himself. "Just one motion. All you have to do is break the window and try not to get yourself cut."

Once he was ready, he swung his elbow at the window with all the force he could muster, but ended up hurting himself instead. The window remained intact. Cursing himself for being stupid, he looked around the room for an exit. He found nothing and, feeling defeated, he slid down the wall and sat on the ground, sighing as he held his head in his hands. After a few seconds, a low melodic hum started to resonate several feet away from him. Raising his head, he saw a small, two-dimensional rectangle with a transparent white border, hovering a couple feet above the fire pit. Inside the rectangle were the words "light the fire". Above the rectangle, a couple sentences formed some kind of message, stacked atop one another.

[i]The room is cold.
The fire is dead.[/i]

Euclid stared at the rectangle for what seemed like forever, watching it bob up and down slowly. Resolving himself to get up, he grabbed the lighter and walked over to the fire pit. His thumb found the wheel and he flicked it, producing a small flame. He moved the lighter over to the pit, and fire blossomed from its foundation instantly, causing him to jump back. Over the fire, the rectangle filled with white and the words inside it switched to a black color. Over a few seconds, he started to notice that the white inside the rectangle was starting to deplete, as if the rectangle itself was a timer. Soon, it was empty, the words reverted back to white, and the fire died. Above the rectangle, a new message appeared.

[i]The room is warm.[/i]

He lit the fire again, and the rectangle filled with white once more, starting to deplete almost immediately. When it emptied, he lit it again, and again, and again. At that point, he didn't care about leaving just yet. He only wondered to what end lighting the fire was going to go.

[i]The room is hot.
The fire is roaring.[/i]

Hours passed and Euclid stared at a fire that kept dying, that he kept lighting. He started thinking about what happened, why he made the choice to click the link that popped up in his inbox on the Guild's new site. He was forced to do it, he saw no other way - but there was. He could have gotten up and unplugged the computer. Why he didn't think to do this before, he didn't know; not that it mattered now. He was in a room with no door, with an unbreakable window, relinquished to the task of repeatedly lighting a dying fire. Before he gave in entirely, a new message popped up, one different from the others.

[i]A weary traveler stumbled through the door.[/i]

An "@" symbol appeared on the wall to his right, glowing faintly in the darkness. Euclid rose to his feet and walked over to it, examining the surface of the wall. He looked back over at the fire. Another new message appeared.

[i]It's time.[/i]

Turning back around, Euclid raised a hand to the symbol, lightly touching it. The symbol's glow pulsed, leaving its source and forming a large vertical rectangle around it. With a gentle push, Euclid opened the newly formed door outwards, being greeted with a blinding flash of light. He met with the sight of a large landscape that was rife with vegetation. The sky was painted in a dazzling sea of blue and white, and the sun hung high in the sky. He was almost overwhelmed by the expanse, turning around in time to see the rectangle above the fire pit disappear, the door of the room closing and sealing itself shut forever.

It took a few moments before he realized the area that he was in. It was one of his own RPs, albeit a failed one that never saw any true existence. Feeling saddened, he immediately sat down and took in the beauty of the world he created - Atlas Novus.

But, something was off.

Euclid started to notice several patches of strange activity across the land, patches where areas existed - areas he didn't create - that were interlaced with his own. He took a mental note of it, scanning his environment for anything else out of place.

[i]Something's wrong,[/i] he noted. [i]But, what was it?[/i]