John tugged at the collar of his shirt and tried to calm his panicked breath. His eyes darted across the absence, desperately looking for some trace of reality.

There were times when, just in his peripheral vision, he noticed flickers in the whiteness, glimpses of his home and friends and recent past, all viewed through broken static. Sometimes the glimpses were of places he had never seen but he somehow knew, places he had seen in long forgotten dreams.

Was he going crazy? When he turned to look directly they were gone. There was no trace that they ever even were.

He shifted and hugged his legs. With a whimper he closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against his knees. "I don't understand."

I understand.

John didn't so much hear the voice in his mind as he saw it. It spoke with a line of constantly changing color, a rainbow patchwork that he could somehow hear.

He lifted his head and looked around the void. Nothing but white. "Hello?"

The multicolored text scrolled though his mind once again.

Have you had a good year, John?

"What is this place? Why am I here!"

A tear in the nothingness appeared in front of him. He could see his room just beyond his reach. He could feel the reality of it.

You like this world, don't you? You like your world.

"How do I get back? Please, just put me back!"

I can't do that.

"Wha?... Who are you?"

I'm the one who made your world. I-

"THEN JUST PUT ME BACK!"

I can't. Someone has disrupted my methods. They've ruined this world, changed the timelines so that it never even existed.

"But... If you can create worlds, if that's really true you can just... Can't you just stop them?"

The changes to the timeline have left me powerless. I carelessly overlooked the prevention of this problem.

"How did this happen?"

Do you remember your dream?

John instantly knew the dream the voice was referring to.

You once played a game with people you called your friends. You took a shortcut.

"I defeated that thing?" John asked in disbelief. "I don't remember..."

You didn't defeat it. You realized your true potential and left the game. That was when my powers were awakened. I saved your world. I rebuilt the Earth that was destroyed by meteors. I fashioned it, returned it to just how you wanted.

John was starting to remember now. Only vaguely, but he remembered the game. Though a haze he remembered the countdown and the meteor that destroyed his home.

The other players didn't want you to leave, John. One of them has altered the timeline. They've gone back and stopped you from reaching your potential. Everything has been reset to that point. The past year of your life is gone, it never happened.

Through the tear in the vacuum John watched his room fade to nothingness. The rip was gone, taking his home and his life with it. His jaw dropped.

"Never happened? Reset? What does that even mean? That I'm just stuck here? That I don't exist? That I'll never live, I'll never see my friends again?"

No, the paradox that you are still here is proof that you can correct this. You can bring everything back.

"How?"

There is still time. You can go to the newly created timeline and reset it again.

"So..." John tried to figure this out in his head. "So I have to stop the other players from stopping me? I just have to convince them to let me leave, right?"

No. It's not that easy. This timeline has already faded too far. You must sever the link that the new timeline is built upon. You must remove thing one thing they changed to create the new reality that is conflicting with this one.

"What's that?"

You must kill yourself.

"WHAT!"

It is the only way to return to your life. You and this other John cannot exist at the same time. Once the alternate version of yourself, the you that has yet to exit the game, is gone, then his reality will fade and yours will return.

"I don't know..."

It is the only way. If you do not act, you will not exist.

John looked around the vacuum. He could almost feel the tide of reality pulling away from him. He stood up and clenched his fists. "I'll do it."

A new rip appeared from above, and a hammer fell at his feet. The deadly looking weapon had a long black handle leading up to a head with gruesome spikes at each end. He equipped the Grim Re-Reaper into his strife specibus.

John felt another tear open to his left. Through it he saw a thirteen-year-old himself touching down near an oily river to readjust his rocket pack. It was now or never. He leapt through the opening into the alternate timeline that was stealing his existence.

From somewhere in the void that he left behind, a voice of colored patchwork text let slip a cruel laugh.