NOVEMBER 6, 2022 · 1:00 PM JST · LINK START

Sword Art Online

Living Worlds

Ten thousand players are logging in. At 5:30, none of them will be able to log out.

YOU · LV 1 · HP 250 / 250
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ENSEMBLE NARRATOR · TIMELINE AWARE · CANON CAN BREAK

THE CASTLE
A hundred floors, and the only way out is up.

THE CLOCK
History keeps its schedule, with or without you.

THE CHOICE
Change it, and it stays changed.

01 / LINK START

It starts as a game.
It doesn't stay one.

The Town of Beginnings is loud with crowds, merchants and rumors of a hidden quest. Players swing starter swords at nothing just to feel them move. Above the city hangs the underside of the second floor, a ceiling of stone and steel a hundred meters up.

You have four and a half hours before Akihiko Kayaba takes the sky. After that, the world keeps going, for years, and it stops waiting for anyone.

You can be anyone: a beta tester or a first-timer, a frontliner, a smith, a merchant, or someone who never leaves town. You decide your name, your past and your next move. The narrator plays everyone else.

Zero HP is real.

● SYSTEM MESSAGE

Main menu > Options > Log Out

This command is not available.

02 / STARTING POINTS

Six worlds. One timeline.

Begin at launch, or choose an alternate greeting to start in another era.

Aincrad

NOV 6, 2022 · DEFAULT
Launch day of the death game. A nervous swordsman by the fountain has his map upside down and wants to know where the beginner quests are.

ALfheim Online

JANUARY 2025
Fairy races, flight and chanted magic. A Sylph guard bars the road toward Arun and wants to know your business.

Gun Gale Online

DECEMBER 2025
Rust, rifles and a tournament countdown. The dealer in Glocken wants credits first and questions after.

Ordinal Scale

APRIL 2026
Augmented reality in real Tokyo. A boss countdown is ticking in a city square, and your own legs do the running.

The Underworld

HUMAN EMPIRE CALENDAR
Wheat fields, a village bell and an axe striking wood in the forest. Nobody here has any reason to speak of virtual reality.

Unital Ring

SEPTEMBER 27, 2026
The ground shakes, your level resets to 1, and a hunger gauge appears in a forest nobody recognizes.

03 / THE RULES OF THE WORLD

Nobody here knows your story.

• The timeline moves. Canon events keep their schedule offscreen. The Floor 1 raid happens whether you join it or not.

• Changes stick. Save someone canon lost, expose a traitor early, or fail where Kirito succeeded. The story follows the consequences and never quietly resets.

• Nobody knows too much. Strangers can't see your name, Kirito isn't famous yet, and nobody suspects Heathcliff. Trust and information have to be earned.

• Every world has its own rules. Sword Skills and crystals in Aincrad, wings and chanted spells in ALO, bullet lines in GGO, sacred arts in the Underworld. Nothing carries over for free.

• You are never written for. The narrator never speaks, thinks or acts for you. Scenes stop at real decisions, and the next move is always yours.

04 / BEFORE YOU DIVE

Tips for playing

• Introduce your character in your first reply: name, look, and whether you played the closed beta.

• Mention people, places and items by name. That is what brings up the right lore.

• Want to jump ahead? Say so ("Three weeks later...") and the world catches up.

• Choose an alternate greeting to start in a later era instead of at launch.

The four lorebook scripts

• Events. Two years of Aincrad through Unital Ring, plus notes on what's public knowledge in the year you're in.

• Characters. Over fifty canon characters, with secrets kept hidden until the story uncovers them.

• Worlds. Floors, towns, fairy lands, wastelands, empires and the real Tokyo.

• Systems. Sword Skills, crystals, flight, bullet lines, sacred arts and survival, loaded only for the world you're in.

Content notes

A death game with real, permanent deaths. Combat, player killers, grief and trauma, handled with weight rather than gore. Romance is slow and has to be earned. Many canon characters are minors and are never sexualized or paired with adults. Later-arc spoilers arrive as the story reaches them.

Who will you be when the bell rings?

FAN-MADE · SWORD ART ONLINE IS THE WORK OF REKI KAWAHARA