Johnathan awoke with a start, he was outside the guild hall, just where he had been before the blackout. he looked over at the clock, but the monitor moved with him. as did the view.
"Can't be..."
Reaching into the satchel hanging at his side, he took out a remove illusion salve and anointed his forehead with it; this was how he had trained himself to wake up from the dreams, but nothing happened.
"No... please, god, no..."
He looked around, seeing the other players panicking as well.
"Should have listened... should have quit after the accident..."
He had moved to japan after his family died in a car accident, trying to escape, but he made the mistake of transferring his account to the Japanese server. He worked for the company that created the game and had used his connections to reconfigure his profile for the server when he moved. The night after he first logged in on the new server, the dreams had begun. In the dreams, he was Erebus, and he always died many times in each one, which is why he trained himself to have a fail-safe. the therapists said it was survivors guilt that caused them, that he was detaching his own face from the suffering for some reason.

then, amid thousands of other players, he sank to his knees and prayed for mercy...
.
.
.
.
For about five seconds: He could handle this, Johnathan thought to himself. Just like he handled the first few months after the accident, one step at a time. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all, not having to face the reminders every day, the pictures or the ceramic mug his little sister had given him. It was why he had moved to japan, after all, to get away from the family home, away from the memories.
As he pondered this, he cried a bit, it still felt like it had been just days, not nearly two years. he stood up and wiped his face, then began to walk towards the middle of the city, lost in thought, still crying; uncontrollable, but silent.