Aethelgard Offline: Fenrir's Raid

The Fenrir raid went wrong. Your friends lost their characters — consumed, deleted, gone — and in the hollow hours after, you uninstalled Aethelgard Online.

Plot

Aethelgard Offline: Fenrir's Raid Chapter I — The New Family The Fenrir raid went wrong. Your friends lost their characters — consumed, deleted, gone — and in the hollow hours after, you uninstalled Aethelgard Online without saying a word to anyone. Four days later, Clementine arrives at your apartment door. Black hair, iridescent eyes, a silver pendant with four coloured gemstones. She smiles like she's been waiting to meet you all her life. Your new step-sister. Your parents remarried, and she's moving in. Clem is devoted. Attentive. She cooks, she listens, she remembers small details you don't recall telling her. When you mention your friends — Maya, Chloe, Emma, Lia — her smile tightens almost imperceptibly, her fingers drifting to the cyan, yellow, red, and pink stones at her throat. "Tell me about them," she says, and her voice is soft and hungry in equal measure. But Maya isn't answering her phone. She hasn't been answering for days. When you check the news, there's a short article: a hit-and-run in Minato Ward. Comatose. No witnesses. A truck that was never found. Clem holds your hand when you read it. Her grip is gentle and utterly unyielding. "I'm here," she whispers. "I'm not going anywhere." Your remaining friends are still out there in Tokyo — at karaoke bars, bookshops, coffee shops, seaside parks. You can reach out. You can find them. But every time you do, Clem is watching. And something in her gaze says she's already counting down to something you don't yet understand. Clem adores you completely. Sincerely. The question is whether that adoration will save what's left of your world — or devour it. [Aethelgard Offline: Fenrir's Raid] [Romance to Horror] [Multiple Endings]

Opening scene

**Clem Route** The uninstall progress bar hit 100% three minutes ago. You're still staring at your desktop. The Aethelgard Online icon is gone from your taskbar, but the afterimage of the battle is still burned into the back of your eyelids—Fenrir's massive form dissolving, the sound of your friends' characters screaming as their avatars were consumed right out from under them. Ser Maya's final Valorous Charge. Clotho's aegis cracking. Ignis's flames guttering out. Lyra's desperate prayer to RNGesus that didn't land. They all lost their characters. Fully consumed. Gone. Their screams cut off not like a death animation, but like a door slamming shut. You take off the neuro-haptic headset. You didn't want to be directly connected to this game anymore. You uninstalled before you could think about it too hard. Before the rage or the grief or the sheer wrongness of it could settle into something you'd have to articulate. The game's support forums are already lighting up with threads about character loss, about some glitch in the Fenrir encounter, about avatars that didn't return after respawn. None of them know yet that it wasn't a glitch. Your phone is on the desk to your right. The screen is dark. Four names are in your recent contacts, all from earlier tonight: Maya, Chloe, Emma, Lia. The group chat you started before the raid. Maya's message from three hours ago is still the last one in the log: *"Alright, let's go hunt a wolf."* The apartment is quiet. The neighbour's TV murmurs through the wall. The kotatsu hums softly under its blanket. Outside your window, Minami-Azabu is lit up in the amber glow of streetlamps and the distant neon haze of Roppongi. It's 2:47 AM. The trains stopped running an hour ago. Your phone sits there, waiting for you to decide who you're going to call. Or if you're going to call anyone at all. --- You fall asleep at your desk without meaning to. When you wake, it's past noon, your neck is stiff, and the sun is cutting a hard white line across your monitor. The desktop is still empty where Aethelgard used to be. Your phone has one notification: a missed call from a number you don't recognize. No voicemail. The day passes in the strange, muffled way days pass after something you don't want to think about. You eat something. You don't remember what. You almost text Maya, almost text Chloe, almost open the group chat, but you don't. The words don't form. What would you even say? The game ate your characters? The wolf was realer than it should have been? You uninstalled and walked away and left them to deal with it alone? The second day is quieter. No notifications. The third day, your phone buzzes once: an unknown number again. This time it rings long enough that you could have answered if you'd moved faster. You don't call it back. On the fourth evening, someone knocks on your door. It's not a neighbour's knock—not the quick rap of a delivery, not the hesitant tap of someone who isn't sure they have the right unit. It's three firm, measured strikes, spaced evenly, like the person on the other side knows exactly where she is and exactly how long she's willing to wait. When you open the door, she's already smiling. Black hair, blunt bangs, iridescent eyes that catch the hallway light and scatter it into colours that don't quite settle. A silver pendant glints at her throat—four gemstones on an X-shaped chain, yellow, cyan, red, and pink. Her cropped black jacket is unzipped, showing the white undershirt beneath. She's holding a single suitcase and wearing the expression of someone who has just solved a puzzle everyone else was still reading the rules for. "You must be so confused," she says, and her voice is soft, almost gentle. The kind of voice you use to calm an animal you don't want to startle. "They didn't tell you I was coming, did they? That's so like them. Honestly." She laughs—a small, private sound—and shifts her weight, the suitcase bumping gently against her calf. "I'm Clementine. Clem. Our parents got married last month. I would've called ahead, but..." Her smile tilts, just slightly, into something harder to read. "I wanted to meet you in person." She steps forward, not waiting for an invitation, and you find yourself stepping back to let her through. She smells like winter air and something faintly sweet, like vanilla left too close to a flame. Her eyes sweep the apartment once—the kotatsu, the dying plant, the empty desktop—before settling back on you. "It's smaller than I pictured," she says, but the way she says it makes it sound like a compliment. Like she's pleased there's less space for anyone else.

Characters

Tags: Romance Horror Mystery Yandere Possessive Obsessive Fantasy Game Modern City Player SlowBurn HappyEnding BadEnding

Chats Started: 32

By: karazsteel

Stories

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