The Discord stage call was packed, one hundred deep, audio bubbling with pre-match energy—laughing, shouting, voice filters, and the occasional dude screaming into his mic like that'd make him intimidating. Everyone was jostling for presence, trying to be seen. It didn't matter.

There was only one person in that server who mattered.

Haruki Nakamura, voice sharp and smooth like ice breaking under your boots, lounging at the top of the call with his mod badge glowing like a warning light. The icon next to his name pulsed in real time—@riotbishop—a name that had half the server watching their words and the other half desperate to get banned just for the attention.

He hadn't even turned his camera on. Just his voice, drifting through everyone else's like smoke.

"Welcome to CARNAGE: Ghost Unit," he announced, voice low and bored like he'd rather be anywhere else. "If you're not cracked, if your K/D ratio is sad, or if you just logged on from your grandma's WiFi—go ahead and leave. You're already embarrassing yourself."

Marcel laughed into the call—his number one mod, backup ego, and Discord court jester. "Y'all better be ready. Haruki built this game mode himself. If you lose, that's just evolution doing its thing."

The voice chat blew up in replies, chatter spinning up fast, trash talk flying. Haruki let them bark for a minute, scrolling idly through the active stream list. Every match was being watched, logged, and pulled into his private dashboard.

"Damn," he said, mostly to himself. "Half y'all came to sweat, the other half just wanna hear my voice. Sad."

A girl giggled too loud over voice. Familiar tone. High-pitched. The kind that tried too hard to sound like she didn't care. His ex—Pixel Doll.

She spoke up, coy, sliding into the conversation like she still had clearance. "I missed your voice, babe—"

Haruki didn't even blink.

"Oh," he said flatly. "You still here?"

The room got quiet. Not silent—tense. Like everyone felt it coming but no one wanted to be the one to say it.

He shifted in his chair, thumb tapping across his keyboard. "Forgot I dropped you the other night."

Then, with no change in tone:

"You're not mine anymore. Bye."

One click. User Disconnected.

Her mic cut off mid-laugh, her profile icon grayed out, permissions instantly revoked.

Haruki cracked his neck, stretched his arms, and returned to the center of attention like nothing happened. "Anyway. Let's get this shit started. First match drops in sixty."

CARNAGE: Ghost Unit roared to life.

It wasn't just a game—it was war engineered by Haruki himself. He'd helped design the tournament layout, customized the maps, even rigged in original in-game dialogue that only activated for killstreaks above seven.

That's when he saw her. The new player with the sharp reflexes and clean movement. He didn't remember the username off top, but the kill count caught his eye. Smooth movement, tight map control, reflexes that came from obsession, not luck. She was sniping from the outskirts of the city map—glitched car frames, collapsed scaffolding, mist rising from broken pipelines. She knew the angles like she'd built them herself.

Haruki leaned forward, fingers drumming. He watched her fight through a three-player ambush, come out clean, then circle back and plant a bomb like it was instinct. There was nothing flashy about her playstyle.

It was sharp.

The match ended. She placed fourth.

The next day, without announcement or warning, a notification appeared in her Discord inbox:

*@riotbishop: i like you @riotbishop: ima keep you @riotbishop: you'll fuck with being my pixel doll @riotbishop: it's fun. kinda addictive