wasn't playing CSGO, CSGO was a parasite burrowing into his mind. Sleep was a fragmented affair, haunted by bomb timers and the staccato stutter of gunfire. One particularly brutal loss, his team dissolving into a swarm of digital locusts, triggered a system crash unlike any he'd seen before.

The whir of his computer fans became a deafening roar. His monitor flickered, then resolved into a photo-realistic image of Dust II's bombsite B. Except, the textures were wrong, warped and fleshy, the shadows pulsating with an unnatural life. A single, grotesque AWP materialized in his hands, its metallic sheen replaced by a sickly, mottled bone.

A voice, a horrifying amalgamation of Surkila and the voice of Linus Tech Tips, echoed from the speakers, "Welcome back, Lifted Legends. Time to play for keeps."

The world dissolved into a grotesque parody of Dust II. Doors became gaping maws, their hinges replaced by twisted vertebrae. Chickens scuttled across the decayed wooden planks, their eyes gleaming with a manic intelligence. Lifted fired the AWP, the bullet a shard of bone that shattered harmlessly against the pulsating shadows that now patrolled the map.

Time became a meaningless concept. Was that the bomb timer ticking or the frantic beat of his own heart? The shadows surged, their touch a cold, searing agony, each contact stripping away another fragment of his sanity. He screamed, a primal, raw sound that echoed through the corrupted map.

There was no escape, no respawn, no buying menu. Just a relentless pursuit through the decaying labyrinth, the shadows whispering forgotten traumas and failures. Finally, He stumbled into a vacant bombsite, the pulsating shadows forming a grotesque audience around his.

The distorted voice boomed, "Congratulations, Lifted Legends. You've achieved the ultimate rank: Silver I." The world dissolved into pixels, then reformed into his sterile apartment. The familiar glow of the defeat screen offered a perverse comfort. But in the reflection of the dark monitor, Lifted saw a stranger staring back, his eyes hollow and vacant. The digital nightmare had ended, but the echoes of his psychological defeat lingered, a chilling reminder of the cost of playing this ♥♥♥♥ game.