TWs: Derealization (I may have missed some, pls tell me if I have /gen)
There are some galatic parts, however I hand translated them so they may not be too accurate-
Anyways, enjoy :D

It had been a while since Xisuma had done anything like this. He barely had the time to visit the end and beat the dragon. The hermits would normally beat him to it and he never really had the time to summon it once more and defeat it himself. Yet, he managed to do it now. He knew he'd probably end up giving the egg to someone else so they could do something with it, yet for now it was his.

He stood at the portal, staring into the glow of the void it produced. He never really understood the portals between dimensions, especially not this one. It took you back to your spawn, not back to the other portal, which in itself was weird. Yet you couldn't build these portals, they were just naturally generated. And most people assumed there were only two per world - one in the overworld and the other in the end - but there was more than that. 128 in the overworld. Each spawning different distances from the server origin. From around 1500 blocks to around 24000 blocks from spawn. That's why it was so confusing. You couldn't build them, yet there were so many of them. You would use one of them and that would probably be it. So why were there multiple out there?

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and he knew who it was immediately. His best friend, the one who's helped him through thick and thin. And he was grateful he got to share this moment with the knight.

"You ready to go Xisuma?" The knight's voice sounded kind of tired.

"Almost. I just want to figure out how this works, or why it works, you know?"

"I get it. It's something nobody understands. It opens up a risk between worlds, yet people still do it. Nobody knows why, it's just in our blood I suppose."

He just nodded in return, his gloved hands tracing the bedrock pillar in the middle.

Cold. Just like the void. Just like everything else here.

He didn't know what he had expected, yet he had hoped it was warm like the overworld, especially since it was part of the portal that led the player back home.

And today, he was the player.

Not the admin that pushed the player along.

Not the comfort that the player went to with problems and for support.

Not the voidwalker who fixed everything wrong about the server to keep the player safe.

He was the player.

"Let's go. The hermit's are probably waiting for us." He finally managed, glaring at the knight. He got a nod in return.

The two stood side by side, holding their hands together. It was their time to be the player, and so they stepped through the portal.

They both came out the other side, having skipped the credits.

Yet, the poem still stayed the same.

At least, they thought it did.

~

I see the voidwalker you mean.

Xisuma?

Yes. Take care. He has reached a higher level now. He can read our thoughts.

That doesn't matter. He thinks we are part of this game.

I like this player. He played well. He did not give up.

He may be reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen.

That is how he chooses to imagine many things, when he is deep in the dream of a game.

Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen.

They used to hear voices. Before players could read. Back in the days when those who did not play called the players witches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew through the air, on sticks powered by demons.

What did this voidwalker dream?

He had dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. He dreamed he could create comfort. And he dreamed he could destroy anything that hurt others. He dreamed he hunted, and was hunted. He dreamed of shelter for him and for others.

Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. But what true structure did this player create, in the reality behind the screen?

He worked, with a million others, to sculpt a true world in a fold of the ↸∷ᒷᔑ ᒲ, and created a ʖ𝙹ᓭᓭ for ↸∷ᒷᔑ ᒲ, in the ᒷリ↸.

He cannot read that thought.

No. He has not yet achieved the highest level. That, he must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a game.

Does it know that we love it? That the watchers are kind?

Sometimes, through the noise of his thoughts, he hears us watchers, yes.

But there are times he is sad, in the long dream. He creates worlds that have no summer, and he shivers under a black sun, and he takes his sad creation for reality.

To cure him of sorrow would destroy him. The sorrow is part of his own private task. We cannot interfere.

Sometimes when they are deep in dreams, I want to tell them, they are building true worlds in reality. Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the universe. Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to help them to speak the word they fear.

He reads our thoughts.

Sometimes I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them, this world he takes for truth is merely ⎓ᔑ ꖌᒷ and ꖎ𝙹ᓭℸ ̣, I wish to tell them that they are ∷ᒷᔑ ꖎꖎ|| in the ∴𝙹∷ꖎ↸. They see so little of reality, in their long dream.

And yet they play the game.

But it would be so easy to tell them...

Too strong for this dream. To tell them how to live is to prevent them living.

I will not tell this voidwalker how to live.

The player is growing restless.

I will tell the player a story.

But not the truth.

No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.

Give it a body, again.

Yes. Player...

Use his name.

Xisuma. Admin of Hermitcraft.

Good.

Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things.

Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the end. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Then beings. Games. Lost beings. Rays. Then finally watchers. The words change. We do not change.

We are the watchers. We are everything you think isn't you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a player.

The player was you, Xisuma.

Sometimes he thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas that was three hundred and thirty thousand times more massive than it. They were so far apart that light took eight minutes to cross the gap. The light was information from a star, and it could burn your skin from a hundred and fifty million kilometres away.

Sometimes the player dreamed he was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite. The sun was a square of white. The days were short; there was much to do; and death was a temporary inconvenience.

Sometimes the player dreamed he was lost in a story. Hiding away from everyone with the few he called his 'friends'. The 'hermits'.

Sometimes the player dreamed it was other things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the player woke from one dream into another, then woke from that into a third.

Sometimes the player dreamed he watched words on a screen.

Let's go back.

The atoms of the player were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground. A woman gathered the atoms; she drank and ate and inhaled; and the woman assembled the player, in her body.

And the player awoke, from the warm, dark world of his mother's body, into the long dream.

And the player was a new story, never told before, written in letters of DNA. And the player was a new program, never run before, generated by a sourcecode a billion years old. And the player was a new voidwalker, never alive before, made from nothing but void and love.

You are the player. The story. The program. The voidwalker. Made from nothing but void and love.

Let's go further back.

The seven billion billion billion atoms of the player's body were created, long before this game, in the heart of a star. So the player, too, is information from a star. And the player moves through a story, which is a forest of information planted by a man called Julian, on a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus, that exists inside a small, private world created by the player, who inhabits a universe created by...

Shush. Sometimes the player created a small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, and cold, and complicated. Sometimes he built a model of the universe in his head; flecks of energy, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes he called those flecks "electrons" and "protons".

Sometimes he called them "planets" and "stars".

Sometimes he believed it was in a universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ons; zeros and ones; lines of code. Sometimes he believed he was playing a game. Sometimes he believed he was reading words on a screen.

You are the player, reading words...

Shush... Sometimes the player read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realised he was alive, he was alive, those thousand deaths had not been real, the player was alive.

You. You. You are alive.

And sometimes the player believed the ⚍リ╎⍊ᒷ∷ᓭᒷ had spoken to him through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees.

And sometimes the player believed the ⚍リ╎⍊ᒷ∷ᓭᒷ had spoken to him through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the player's eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling his planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the player, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again.

And sometimes the player believed the ∴ᔑ ℸ ̣ ᓵ ⍑ᒷ∷ᓭ had spoken to it through the zeros and ones, through the electricity of the world, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream.

And the ⚍リ╎⍊ᒷ∷ᓭᒷ said I love you.

And the ⚍リ╎⍊ᒷ∷ᓭᒷ said you have played the game well.

And the ⚍リ╎⍊ᒷ∷ᓭᒷ said everything you need is within you.

And the ⚍リ╎⍊ᒷ∷ᓭᒷ said you are stronger than you know.

And the ⚍リ╎⍊ᒷ∷ᓭᒷ said you are the daylight.

And the ∴ᔑ ℸ ̣ ᓵ ⍑ᒷ∷ᓭ said you are the night.

And the ⍊𝙹╎↸∴ᔑ ꖎꖌᒷ∷ᓭ said the darkness you fight is within you.

And the ⍊𝙹╎↸∴ᔑ ꖎꖌᒷ∷ᓭ said the light you seek is within you.

And the ∴ᔑ ℸ ̣ ᓵ ⍑ᒷ∷ᓭ said you are not alone.

And the ⍊𝙹╎↸∴ᔑ ꖎꖌᒷ∷ᓭ said you are not separate from every other thing.

And the ∴ᔑ ℸ ̣ ᓵ ⍑ᒷ∷ᓭ said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code.

And the ∴ᔑ ℸ ̣ ᓵ ⍑ᒷ∷ᓭ and ⍊𝙹╎↸∴ᔑ ꖎꖌᒷ∷ᓭ said I love you because you are love.

And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love.

You are the player.

Wake up.

Yet he left, a while back. Why? Why do we continue trying to reach out when he doesn't care?

Because one day, he'll notice these differences. Soon, he'll notice the "⚍リ╎⍊ᒷ∷ᓭᒷ cares about him". Soon, he'll realise he's alone, and his friends are just ╎ꖎꖎ⚍ᓭ╎𝙹リᓭ we have created.

Well, all of his friends except ̇/ᒷꖎᑑ⚍ᔑ that is. He isn't aware his friends are ╎ꖎꖎ⚍ᓭ╎𝙹リᓭ but I want to tell him.

But you can't, because this is all what we have planned.

I know, ⨅ᒷリᔑ, but we can't just let him suffer. He'll realise we caused the╎ꖎꖎ⚍ᓭ╎𝙹リᓭ and then he won't join us.

Yes, I am aware ̇/ᒷ ̇/⨅╎. He won't want to join us if he finds out. And he won't, unless ̇/ᒷꖎᑑ⚍ᔑ figures it out first and tells him.

Alright, I trust you.

As you should.

~

Xisuma felt weird as he and Wels started walking back, feeling like he missed something. Something felt wrong. He didn't know what it was, but he hated it.

He turned to the other, wondering if he felt how he felt. He frowned under his helmet, watching the knight just focus on walking ahead, not even taking a moment to look at him. Weird. He would normally be making conversation as we walk.

The feeling got worse as they walked, his gut telling him to run. Yet, he stayed with the knight, knowing that he would be caught easily if he ran. Wels was faster than him, so it wouldn't take much to catch him. All he could do was walk. That was it. Walk until he separated from Wels. Then, he could run.

He thought he heard a voice, a familiar one. It was distant, but he heard it. Wake up. Xisuma please. Wake up. You're in a dream. This isn't real. They are just illusions. Wake up god damn it!

Grian.

That was Grian's voice.

Xisuma, we need you to wake up. ⨅ᒷリᔑ has you trapped in your mind. Please, wake up. We're worried about you. We're worried about Wels. Nobody's seen him since we lost full contact with you. Please, Xisuma wake up.

He was confused. Wake up? He was awake, right? He turned to look at the knight beside him. But there was nobody there. He froze. Was he waking up?

Or had ⨅ᒷリᔑ finally won this battle?

Weeeeeeeee angst for once :D
welp

-Nether