Tangurple woke up to bright white lights. He heard the sounds of beeping and muffled voices. Then came the recognizable sound of a defibrillator.

Tangurple sat up in force, nearly making himself puke. His vision cleared up and fine-tuned the resolution. He saw the forest again coated in its thick layers of glistening white snow. He turned his head to the left. Next to him was Falcher who was also seemingly trying to piece together what happened. He then looked to his right. The mouth of the cave suddenly had a purple and black checkered pattern acting a texture glitched door. There was static echoing from the broken texture as it began to fidget, showing random textures flickering all about in place of the purple and black checkerboard.

Tangurple slowly walked up to it in curiosity. He watched the textures teleport all over and nervously reached out to touch it.

"NO!" yelled Falcher who scrambled to his feet.

Tangurple quickly retracted his hand and turned around to look at Falcher. "Why? It's just a broken texture."

"It's a glitch, something that isn't supposed to be there. God knows what that could do to you. In here, you're a program, not human. If good code contacts bad code, you could become completely dysfunctional."

"What do you suppose caused this break?" Tangurple asked.

Creoft, startled awake by Falcher's yell, sluggishly pushed himself to his feet and trudged over. "It could be any number of things. My guess would be someone's tampering with the game and either deleted code or the images themselves." Creoft sighed heavily. "Someone keeps breaking my things... must they always touch my goods?"

Falcher cocked his head questioningly. "Who are you referring to?"

"Either my developers are probing the system and trying to fix it or some third party has broken the firewall and invaded the system. I'm leaning more towards the latter." Creoft told him. "My devs are competent and something of this nature would stick out like a sore thumb when the code is test run. There should be error messages but whether they actually acknowledge it is a whole other story."

Tangurple glanced between Creoft and the glitch and then pointed to it as he spoke. "What if I touched it? What would happen?"

Creoft shrugged his shoulders. "I honestly don't know. I wouldn't advise it but considering it seems to only be a texture glitch, I doubt it'll do much harm."

Falcher firmly grasped Tangurple's shoulder. "Hold on one second." He turned to Creoft. "It's more than just a texture glitch. Everything went dark, all noise was drowned by static and I saw something rather odd."

Creoft tilted his head questioningly. "What do you mean?"

"I saw what I think is a hospital. It was mostly bright lights but the noises, the noises were unforgettable." Falcher explained that blip in reality's puncture into the digital realm. "Murmuring, people dressed in white. I think I saw the real world."

"Okay? So what are you saying, that this glitch is a doorway home?"

"It very well could be. I think I saw the real world. It sure as hell felt real."

Tangurple rolled his shoulder and shook off Falcher's hand. He took a few steps forward towards the large glitch which was still flashing random chunks of textures all throughout. He gulped air and took one last look at everyone. He nodded timidly and approached the glitch. His hands shook from fear and panic as his heart and mind raced. Thousands of outcomes, both positive and negative flooded his mind overwhelming him with the sensation of nausea. In a single moment, with one bold move, he reached out to touch the glitch.

He opened one eye, then the next. The texture glitch was still there with his hand through it. He pulled his arm back and down to his side. He hastily stepped back in fear and turned around. Falcher and Creoft stood there idly with a look of concern stretched upon their faces. Tangurple glanced down at his hand which seemed unaffected by the glitch. He then looked at Creoft and Falcher and shrugged his shoulders. "Nothing. Nothing happened." He told them.

Creoft rolled his eyes in relief. "Phew. that's a relief. One less thing to worry about."

Falcher wasn't convinced. Something was troubling him and it was obvious to Tangurple who walked up to him and questioned him about it. Falcher ignored Tangurple's curiosity and searched the immediate vicinity for something. Or perhaps it was someone. He wasn't sure. He looked for signs of Poison Oath of which there were none. He looked for signs of a charge of mobs of which there were none.

It wasn't until he saw packed snow that he finally realized what it was. "Tang, where's Night?"

Tangurple hadn't realized this, he'd been too focused on the glitch. He, along with Falcher and Creoft, searched the area for any sign of her, of which there were none. Tangurple denied her disappearance. "Nein! She can't have just vanished. She's here. Somewhere." Tangurple ran off towards the forest calling out for her.

Creoft turned to Falcher. "Should we follow him?"

Falcher sighed and shrugged. "He should be fine, he's always been capable. I think we have other places to search. Head back to Uskor and inform Dailin and tell her what I told you. I'll stay around these parts until the guild shows up."

Creoft nodded. "Stay safe, brother." Creoft took a deep breath and broke out into a full sprint back to Uskor.

Falcher glanced around him. The cave's mouth was still glitching out and with those two away, he could get some work done. With a huff and a silent nod to his own idea, he ventured down to the lake and the adjacent fields. He walked the perimeter of the lake, gazing out into the vast fields in nearly every direction. He saw nothing. No sign of struggles, combat or even matting from movement. Just vast fields of untouched pristine grassland. He turned to the north. Then to the south. He once again nodded to himself and jogged further south, towards the boundary wall.

Creoft burst through the doors of the great hall. The workers present paused and stared at the intruder, unsure if they should scream for the guards. Creoft looked up, panting and breathing heavily. "Is... Dailin..."

The workers in unison shook their heads. One of them pointed up towards the ceiling. Creoft glanced over his shoulder and saw the staircase leading to the second floor. With exhaustion nearing the breaking point, he scrambled up the stairs, clawing his way to the second floor. He pushed yet another set of doors wide open.

Inside, Dailin, along with the council, was busy chatting away with Rothguard. However, due to Creoft's sudden appearance, everything fell silent and Dailin leaped from her seat. "Creoft? What the hell are you doing?"

Creoft spoke in between breaths. "Night... She... Missing..."

Dailin nodded and turned to the council. "Excuse my departure but I have something to deal with. Continue the discussions, I'll return in a few hours." She then lifted Creoft up onto his feet and carried him out the doors.

Down in the hallway, she began questioning him. "What do you mean she's missing?"

"We were troll hunting. Tang accepted a quest from an NPC. Something went wrong, both of them collapsed, hell, all four of us collapsed."

"I don't follow, how did you guys collapse?"

"I don't know but when we woke up, there was a glitch, right in front of us. I presumed it a texture glitch but it's doing something wonky. It was all discolored and freaking out. There's something going wrong with this game but I don't know what's causing it." Creoft explained. "Whatever this glitch is, it's caused Night to vanish without a trace."

"Where's Falcher and Tangurple?"

"Out searching for her in the southern forest near the glitch."

"I'll rally some hunters, they got tracking skills. Let them know I'm coming with assistance."

"What of the council."

"They can work without me for a bit." She told him. "Now go, before Tangurple does something stupid and gets himself killed."

Creoft nodded and ran out of the castle heading back towards the south. Dailin turned around and went back into the council meeting. She apologized to them for the distraction. "If I may have your attention for the moment, I need a small group of trackers. One of my close friends has gone missing due to a glitch."

A faint murmur broke out amongst the council members. An older looking man with wrinkles and grey hair who wore the tabard of the German Guild, Flugel der Freiheit, stood up and spoke with a thick German accent. "Glitch? What sort of glitch?"

"You all remember that moment of the blackout, correct?" She began. "That blackout created some sort of glitch in the system that caused her to vanish without a trace. It also created a visible texture glitch down south somewhere."

Another councilman stood up. He was younger but dressed very fancy. His robes shined and shimmered. His guild was the Remnants of Rome. "How do we know to be factual. We don't have many soldiers left after that failed push through the crevice."

"My Company Commander, Creoft explained the situation to me."

"All right, and what's the value of this girl?"

"A life is a life, it is invaluable." She glared at him. "Surely you'd send a rescue party if one of your soldiers went missing."

"Only when we knew enough to be certain they were alive and the general area where they were. You just laid this out on the table without so much as giving a detail about the location of this glitch and where she could've gone." the lavish councilman argued.

She had feared he'd play that card. She knew he was a tough bargain. Remnants of Rome is famous for tough business deals and formidable defense formations. She was left speechless by his argument which was completely accurate and she knew it.

"In any case, while a life is invaluable, it is better to lose one rather than twenty. I'm sorry Dailin, I know how important friends are but if we sacrifice too many people here, then we'll never escape this hellhole. You know as well as I do that this game is far from over and the next zones will only get worse from here. We cannot give you trackers to find a single friend."