Suddenly, his phone buzzed. A notification from his banking app: -$0.01 . Then another: -$0.02 . The amounts doubled every ten seconds. Panicked, Elias reached for the power button, but his hand froze.
He opened it. It contained only one line: "The game is played outside the screen."
A new window popped up on his desktop. It was a live feed of his own room, filmed from his webcam. Layered over his own face was a low-poly digital mask of a grinning jester. A quest objective appeared in the center of the screen: