Boy, i hope i really exist and that this isn't an illusion

So what if it wasn't Minecraft but a planet? Avery, a solo explorer and scavenger, finds a planet like any other, bare and devoid of life, and decides to salvage what nobody else would use. Metal, scraps of anybody unfortunate enough to land there... But as he explores, he finds a temporary, abandoned base. And inside it he finds a log. Most of the data is wiped except for one page. At the core, don't turn left. It's repeated several times, and mentions some kind of entity, listening, following. Avery is unsettled, but finds nothing. At least not until he manages to salvage a single folder from the log.

Someone had been here before, a group of researchers, having been alerted of a strange electromagnetic signal this planet has been emitting. One of them remains behind for one last check. Under the alias Lord, this lone, brave soul, wanders into a cave system where the signals had been strongest. The recording shows the unknown researcher wandering through buildings that shouldn't be this deep underneath the surface of the planet. Eventually, Lord reaches what Avery can only presume is "the core", a fork in the road. The left leads to something mysterious... And I'm sure you know the rest.

Avery can't stop now. He's grabbed all the junk he could, but now there's something more at play. Who exactly is Lord? What did he find? What was behind those gates? Avery grabs as much as he can, food, hydration, tools, everything he gets his hands on, and ventures after him. The path there isn't too hard, and the area behind the gate is empty. And then it isn't. A hallway of doors. Avery slowly ventures through unfamiliar lands, most of which seem impossible. Why is there a blue sky in the underground of a planet that doesn't even have a thick enough atmosphere?

Most events play out as they do in canon, him and Lord, aka Derek, meeting, them being separated, blah blah. The issue is this time around that Derek can't physically leave, it'd kill him. Because the planet isn't JUST a planet. It is THE King In Yellow, both the entity, the truth, the land of Carcossa (and it orbits a binary star system, so twin suns is accurate too), it is everything. The ending happens the same as it does in canon. It's an au in terms of where it takes place, not how the plot goes. Lol. The planet ends up being destroyed as Derek merges with it....or does it.

Avery is, as I mentioned, a lone ranger who lives on his own. He has a spacecraft that he partially maintains on his own. He was an outsider in his birth colony and was rather happy to leave and live life his own way. There's still something equivalent to skywars he gets up to on his spare time. He's rather physically fit for his species, even if he doesn't look like it. 4 eyes, 4 arms, 2 legs. The "dangly" things on the side of his head are prehensile and work as spare limbs sometimes. His upper hands also have a sort of dewclaw thumb thing going on. His tail works mostly for stability and defence. He's poisonous too, so don't take a bite!

Derek (used to be) a junior researches for a interplanetary company. This was his first major mission, and he was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of the planet dubbed "Carcossa", or better known as C-4055-A. He, too, was an outsider where he came from, though as his species was extremely social it was far more harmful to him. He has six eyes, but five of them do not work due to a birth defect. 2 arms, 4 legs, and a very insectiod build. He doesn't have any other funky biology stuff going on but can bite with the mandibles. His beetle like horn isn't that harmful and is mostly for show.

The two species they come from aren't in contact, but are vaguely aware of one another. While Avery is very far from any place he knows (and depends on translation devices since he doesn't know any other languages, at least not fluently), Derek is actually not far from his birthplace. Derek was knowledgeable on a multitude of other languages even before being given his knowledge, but Avery's was not one of them. He wrote the book intentionally with words Avery did understand, however. His goodbye note was sent via a signal, not to the whole world, but to Avery's occasional residence a few planets over. When Avery arrived about 4 months later he discovered the goodbye Derek sent him.