After the newly married couple went off to start their wedding night, a relaxed air settled over the reception party. Eventually, guests came down from their excitement and began to network with each other. Since a large part of the guest list included the couple's former classmates, Camilla was swamped with drunk peers eager to re-connect and reminiscence over their schooldays. While she intended to give Isabelle and Arthur some alone time, a few minutes turned into a couple which was now over half an hour. Once in a while, Camilla looked back at the pair who looked to be talking comfortably with bright smiles on their beautiful faces. She patted herself on the back at the sight.

[Ah, just look at that!] she inwardly cheered. [Just one conversation alone, and they already looked like a couple!] Images of her two favorite characters together and the three of them hanging out with an air of harmony flashed through her mind, and Camilla felt as if someone had injected pure ambition and excitement into her veins.

The pair spotted her through the crowd, and Camilla gave her friends a sheepish smile as she held up a small tray of three champagne flutes and a look that said, 'I swear I'm not messing around!'. Isabelle rolled her eyes and pouted while Arthur gave her an understanding nod. She heard someone call out her name, and just like, she was dragged farther away with the couple glaring at the group forming around her.

Camilla laughed, joked, and caught up with old characters she hadn't seen in a couple of game years. She threw her head back to encouragingly laugh at a shy former classmate's joke, and when she opened her eyes, the poor classmate was missing a face.

Camilla jumped back and tried to muffle her scream. Still, her obvious shock and horror seemed to set off everyone else, and soon the crowd around devolved into chaos. Her eyes lept from person to person and saw that many were faceless, some were missing half their body, and even a few were just a multi-colored blur.

She whipped her head around and tried to find Isabelle and Arthur in the panicked crowd. Relief flooded her once she saw that they were still where she left them, but that relief turn morphed into terror once she saw their state.

Isabelle was still sitting down at the table. She looked down at her hands that glitched in and out of existence with a look of numb horror. Meanwhile, Arthur was on his feet, clenching his shoulder that seemed to be dissolving from reality under his very fingers. Their eyes met, and when he opened his mouth to call out to her, the only thing that came out was harsh static.

The room felt like it was spinning as the game seemed to be falling apart right before Camilla's eyes. She looked around at the characters she spent so much time bonding with, and her heart tightened at their fearful faces and pained screams.

'It's going to be ok,' she wanted to say, but the shock sealed her lips shut. 'I'm going to fix this. You're going to be ok, I promise!'

[System!]

"Yes, {CamilZZZZZa} ?"

Worry and dread gripped her heart, but Camilla forced herself to focus on her next order.

[Exit and reset!]

Something was clearly wrong with her DreamStation. Camilla wasn't sure if the problem was with the console or the actual game. Still, she knew she had to close down everything to save the characters around her from any more pain.

"PrepZZZZaZZreforexitZZZZZ"

Camilla felt as if a physical gust of wind hit her at full force, and for a moment, the shambling world around her went dark.

***

When Camilla finally opened her eyes again, she found herself floating around the home selection. She groaned as she realized that her System just took her out of the game and completely forgot to disconnect her consciousness from the console. She opened the main menu with a flick of her wrist and tried to exit the System manually when she saw something that made her blood turn cold.

The exit button was missing.

She felt her heart hammering against her ribs as her breaths came out in short, harsh pants.

"System!" She cried out. "System, exit console now!" Camilla received no answer in return, and she felt her hands beginning to shake.

[F***, this is bad. This is bad, bad, bad!] She inwardly cursed as she began curling into a small ball. [Calm down, just breath and THINK]

Camilla forced herself to take in deep breathes as horror stories on the internet of DreamStation users fainting or even having heart attacks while playing flashed through her mind. She pushed the gory details out of her head and tried to focus on the facts instead. The DreamStation company thankfully planned ahead for those types of scenarios. Those stories all ended with the healthy users being forcibly disconnected after two hours of no activity while users at risk were automatically disconnected. Their System even connected their local authorities for help.

[Just two hours,] Camilla consoled herself. [All I have to do is float around for two hours, and everything will be fine.]

And who knows? Maybe one of her brothers would call her and get worried about her not answering the phone? That sounded like something Alexander would do.

[I'm just over-reacting. There's just some glitch in the System and would probably fix itself before I even disconnect.] She thought, staring at the blank menu and unable to shake off the sense of dread that was slowly overtaking her.

In the corner of her eye, Camilla realized that those consoling thoughts were complete lies.

The entire game selection menu seemed to be infected with the mysterious glitch. The covers dissolved, disappeared, or blurred together as the glitch seemed to spread out to the home menu. Once again, Camilla felt like the world around her was falling apart. Except for this time, she was just as trapped as the rest.

Camilla's surroundings quickly turned into a multi-color mass of squares, raw lines of code, and soft static buzzing. A part of her wanted to just close her eyes and ignore what was happening. Still, as the glitches started to move closer, she knew that she needed to find a new escape route before the worse happened.

The fact that her feet looked as if they were slowly disappearing the closer the glitching moved proved her theory.

She tried to hide in other menus and selections, but it soon became clear that the inflection was overtaking her DreamStation entirely. Eventually, it seemed that the inflection led her around in one big circle, and she ended up exactly where she started, floating right above the game selection menu.

The glitching inflection seemed to be reaching out to her, eager to consume her as it did with everything else. Fear nearly made her body stiff while the adrenaline pumping within her terrified heart pushed her to keep moving forward. Her heels and feet had disappeared entirely, and the inflection was quickly spreading to the rest of her.

Camilla's whipped her head around, desperately trying to find a safe place or even an escape route. That's when her eyes caught something within the technicolor mass; it seemed that one of the games survived the infections, its cover looked entirely untouched. It looked like an oasis in a sea of fire for Camilla, and she dived straight towards it.

She entered the game without any issues, but Camilla soon realized that she just dived headfirst into a whole different sea of problems when she opened her eyes.