I woke up inside my friend's video game

Ughh… My head throbbed like a relentless drum solo, each beat sending waves of pain through my skull. A groan slipped from my parched throat as I forced my heavy eyelids open, revealing a blurry scene of flickering candlelight dancing on jagged stone walls. The air was thick, cloying with the scent of damp earth and an acrid, metallic tang that made my nose twitch and my eyes water.

As my vision sharpened, I became aware of the cold, unyielding ground beneath me, a coarse blanket tangled around my aching limbs. Strange murals adorned the cavern walls, grotesque figures frozen in eternal rituals beneath the hollow-eyed gaze of eldritch deities. A low, guttural chant filled the air, the rhythmic incantation swelling from a faint whisper into an overwhelming chorus. A shiver crawled down my spine.

Panic clawed at my throat as I scrambled upright, the world tilting dangerously. My fingers met unyielding iron, and I turned sharply—bars. Rusted, solid, confining. My pulse spiked. I was caged like an animal. Across the chamber, another cage mirrored mine, a shadowed figure slumped within.

"Nikolai?" My voice rasped, barely audible over the sinister melody.

A low groan answered. The figure stirred, pushing himself upright. The dim light caught Nikolai's familiar features—his face drawn, eyes flickering between confusion and dread.

"Jayson?" His voice, usually brimming with wry amusement, was a shaky whisper.

"Where the hell are we?" I demanded, my throat tightening. The grotesque murals, the chanting, the iron cage—this wasn't real. It couldn't be.

"Ugh, my head…" Nikolai muttered, rubbing his temples. His gaze swept across the chamber, his expression shifting from disoriented to something far worse. "This place… looks familiar."

A cold realization settled over me like a leaden weight. "The Grenmoril Witches' cave," I breathed, my mouth suddenly dry. The words tasted like bile. Images of El Nido flashed through my mind—the storm, the frantic warnings, the endless drinks, then… nothing. A void where memory should have been.

Nikolai's eyes widened. "What the—how did we even get here?" He gripped the bars, rattling them with growing desperation, the clang slicing through the cavern's oppressive stillness.

"I don't know!" I admitted, frustration and fear tangling in my chest. "One moment, we were at El Nido, and I was trying to warn everyone about the storm, and then…" My mind stalled, the details slipping like sand through my fingers. The storm. The chaos. Then… what?

Then Nikolai's next words cut through the fog.

"Jayson, am I drunk, or—" He swallowed, his voice thick with disbelief. "Why are we inside Skyrim?"

Ice sluiced through my veins.

I stared at him, the words echoing through the cavern, bouncing off the stone walls, weaving into the very fabric of the nightmare around us. Skyrim? No. Impossible. That world belonged to my late-night escapades, my reckless adventures, my conversations with Sheogorath. Not here. Not real.

"Don't be ridiculous," I scoffed, clinging desperately to the last threads of sanity. "This is some… some crazy hangover hallucination. We're not—" My voice faltered as reality pressed in, unrelenting.

"Then why does this place look exactly like the Grenmoril Witches' cave?" I whispered, the admission burning my throat.

Nikolai let out a sharp, humorless chuckle. "See? I told you!" His grin was brittle, his eyes wild. "But how—how is this possible?"

A cold sweat broke across my skin. The chanting swelled, the weight of unseen eyes pressing down on us. We weren't in El Nido anymore. We weren't drunk. We weren't dreaming. We were trapped.

This was real.

"This doesn't make sense!" I shouted, my voice raw with fear and denial. "We can't be inside Skyrim!"

Nikolai laughed—sharp, manic, bordering on hysteria. "Hahaha, man, what did we drink? Are you sure no one spiked it?"

"Nikolai!" My voice cracked with desperation. "We are inside Skyrim!"

With a frantic cry, I lunged at the bars, shaking them with all my strength. The cold metal bit into my skin, vibrating under my grip. My heart pounded against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat that matched the rising crescendo of the witches' chant. The seconds stretched, warping under the weight of our reality.

The amusement drained from Nikolai's face, leaving behind stark, unfiltered horror. The party, the storm, Maricar's teasing, Glenn's infectious laughter—all of it was gone. In its place stood two prisoners, trapped in a world that should never have been real.

"We… we need to get out of here," he stammered, his voice barely a whisper above the chants. His gaze darted around the chamber, searching, hoping.

But what hope was there in a world where fiction had become our prison? Here, we were unarmed, caged, surrounded by cackling witches and the looming specter of our impending doom.