Leo looked behind him. The door to his real-life closet was slowly creaking open.

He dropped the .zip into his mods folder and booted the game. At first, nothing seemed different. He loaded his flagship save, expecting a new tractor to appear in the shop. Instead, the sky in the game had turned a bruised, electric purple.

He tried to quit to the main menu, but the button was gone. The only option in the pause menu was "Continue Farming."

A figure appeared at the edge of the field—a low-resolution character model wearing a shirt that said AREAL GAMER . It didn't walk; it glided. As it got closer, Leo’s physical room began to smell like freshly turned earth and ozone. The fans on his PC began to scream, spinning faster than they ever had.

The character stopped at the tractor’s glass door and knocked. The sound didn't come from his headphones; it came from his actual desk.