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It had started innocently enough, as just a game. A game that captivated the hearts and minds of everyone who came across its path, save for a small few who saw the danger and confusion. They tried to warn the people around them, that it would need to be different if they were to continue, and that if they should play the game they must be careful, but the people did not listen. It only took a matter of days before the chaos began.

The reports were small, and evidence of the games involvement were excluded. Crime rates began to climb. Car accidents became more frequent. But even as the news was reported, it was ignored by the people, too involved in the game. They couldn't stop playing. They stopped sleeping so as to gain more time. Then they stopped eating. People began to drop dead in the streets, their phones still clutched in their hands with the game still running. The others merely stepped over their corpses.

The uninitiated could do nothing but watch on in horror as the world seemingly collapsed around them. At first they tried to clean up the carnage of bodies and flaming wrecks, but it built faster than they could clean it. Eventually they, too, gave up. They could only watch on as their friends and loved ones descended into madness, desperately clawing at one another's throats for the chance to capture one of the rarer, pixelated monsters on their screens. Anything to make it one step closer to completion of their collection.

It was a month before someone managed it. To collect every single kind of digital monster. The frees prayed that that meant the game would come to an end, and that the players would look up from their screens and see the madness that they had caused and the world might return to the way it was. But then another completed theirs. And another. And it stopped being a competition to see who could collect them all, as they all did, and rather became a competition to see who could make them strongest. And as they defeated one another in virtual battle, the violence began.

It became a ritual. That, when defeated, one was slain, and their phone was forfeited to the victor, who could then collect in two games simultaneously, collecting and training at twice the speed and capacity. The population dwindled, and the power of the mighty grew ever higher. The frees began to hide in fear, cowering so that there lives might not be needlessly taken. It was becoming ever clearer that they could not and would not escape the game's wrath.

The most powerful players became like gods, towering over the world. People joined forces in attempts to take them down, and were slaughtered by the handfuls. Even when they managed to conquer a god, the greed fell next upon them, and they turned against one another until a new god arose from their ashes.

The frees could do nothing. It had been only a year since the release of the game, yet the world they had known could not be further from the reality they faced. Their numbers had dwindled, as some were caught in the battles, and others could no longer resist the temptation of the game. The ones who remained questioned if they would even make it another year. They no longer believed in the future. They only prayed that they might live to see tomorrow.

The game had come, as it had once been promised. But the friendships and camaraderie it promised could not have been further from the truth.