Silas backed away from his desk, his heart hammering against his ribs.

The progress bar didn’t crawl; it snapped to 100% instantly. A single executable file appeared in the folder: Hyperion.exe .

Not with an explosion of glass and metal, but with a torrent of pure, blinding radiance that flooded the room. Silas shielded his eyes, the heat of a thousand summer suns washing over him. He felt weightless, as if the floor beneath him had dissolved into the digital ether. And then, just as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

Silas opened his eyes. The blinding light was gone. His room was dark, save for the pale glow of the moon shining through his window. His PC was off, the power cord lying uselessly on the floor.

He pulled up the forum where he had found the link. The thread was deleted. He checked his browser history, but the logs from the last hour were wiped clean. It was as if the last hour had never happened.

Relieved but shaken, Silas launched the official Valorant client to clear his head. He clicked on the Agents tab to look at his collection.

Silas hovered his cursor over it. The community was buzzing with rumors about Project Hyperion. Some said it was a canceled map set in a massive Kingdom Corporation orbital laser. Others claimed it was a scrapped sixth Duelist who could manipulate gravity and light. He clicked extract.