At 3:47 AM UTC on a Tuesday, my gaming buddy finally met his demise.
I have the exact time written down because I was staring at the clock when my vision suddenly went white. Not from my victory screen but from a rupture that had occurred in or behind my left eye, likely from a ruptured blood vessel; possibly something worse. For nearly 12 hours, my body had been giving me warning signs about this, all of which I ignored, like I've ignored everything in my life the past 2 years.
The final boss, the Abyssal Sovereign (the ultimate in nightmare hell) had finally been defeated. The monster, which had killed me a total of 431 times in three different runs, had finally been defeated and turned into a towering pillar of black fire on my monitor. I experienced a moment of relief in my heart when I looked at the health bar remaining on that boss after 72 hours playing the game. I know by heart how many times I've lost to the same monster.
Yet, I did not celebrate my victory; I did not scream triumphantly or yell out with glee. I simply sat there in silence with my hands tightly gripping my mouse and watched with awe while the victory message loaded on my screen.
You have defeated the Abyssal Sovereign; Route 7: The Throne – Complete.
I was shaking so badly that I could hardly type. It wasn't due to excitement; even before I started playing approximately 40 hours in, I'd been shaking uncontrollably and couldn't stop even though I gripped my desk tightly with both hands. I had consumed three energy drinks; the fourth one was empty and sitting next to my computer. The pizza box from two days prior was still closed, with all of the leftovers still sitting in it untouched and the cheese on it congealed into what looked like candle wax.
My apartment was pitch dark except for the light emanating from my monitor; there were no lights turned on. I didn't know why I would want to turn them on anyway, as there was no one else in my apartment to enjoy the light.Route 7 represents the conclusion of the game and is the only path where we see all heroines come together as one, joining with the protagonists to fight against the Abyss.
I was able to finish this route after finishing all the previous routes, including Light's Path, The Scarlet Blade, The Dragon's Gambit, Frozen Throne, The Shadow Game, and Infernal Crown. I also completed the two secret routes. I've located every hidden quest, discovered every buried lore entry, and found all developer room Easter eggs.
The total time played according to Steam is as follows:
4127 hours in a game that most people abandon after completing the tutorial because the difficulty caused them to cry. I had beaten this game enough times to memorize every boss attack pattern. I could create maps of all the dungeons in my head. I knew exactly what frame timing was necessary to successfully parry the Crimson Maw's third phase lunge.
But not a single hour, victory or accomplishment has or will ever bring her back.
I shut my eyes.
Hana.
Her face is fading away from my memory. I do not want that to happen to me. I want to remember everything about her, and yet there are so many different pieces of information (like the drop rate of the Sovereign's legendary sword: 0.7%) that I can recall, while her smile and appearance are becoming vague and blurry in my mind. I remember, as a child, she had a gap between her front teeth. Does she still have that gap?
She passed away when she was only sixteen years old. On a Tuesday, just like today.Because I received $2 more per hour than the convenience store next to the hospital, I took a night shift at a gas station 40 minutes away from where I lived. Those extra two dollars meant more to me than being there when she needed me.
The specialist I consulted cost $800. I had $600, which I chose to pay for rent instead of seeing the specialist, because if I were to be evicted, my girl, who had congenital heart disease, would have nowhere to go but the street. If I paid rent, I told myself I would have the other $200 by Friday.
She passed away the following Wednesday.
That Friday never happened.
It's been two years since her death, but it doesn't feel like two years; it feels more like yesterday and at the same time slower than I've ever experienced. I dropped out of school, lost the apartment, moved to a studio smaller than my car's parking space, and played a video game called Throne of Ruin until my eyes bled, wrists screamed in agony, and my heart felt like it was in a vice-grip with no hope of release.
Video games are the only outlet where death does not have the finality associated with death in the real world. In a video game, I could always click back into it to restart, redo, and make the right choice, as opposed to letting everything I care about die with no chance of saving them. In Throne of Ruin, you could always hit the reset button.
There is no save game in the real world.
With my eyes wide open, the victory screen was glowing softly and calmly on my computer monitor as I still gazed at it.
Something was different, though.
There was an additional line of text below the standard completion message. It was small; almost unnoticeable.There was some type of font I couldn't recall seeing before: thinner, sharper, as though someone had scratched it on the display with a needle.
THE STORY IS NOT FINISHED—THE VILLAIN IS STILL IMPORTANT IN THE STORYLINE.
I stared at it.
Never once had I encountered this message in two years (4,127 hours). It is not documented in any of the guides, nor does it appear on any wikis (and doesn't exist within any data-mined files). I read all of the extracted dialogue. I have written nearly half of the fan wiki, but this message does not exist.
I started reaching for the screenshot button.
But it didn't get pressed.
At that moment, I felt a heavy weight strike the center of my chest. It was like an anvil had been placed over my heart and was slowly being added to. The first part of my body to become numb was my left arm. Then it was my jaw followed by the edges of my eyesight turning static.
Yeah.
This is what a heart attack feels like; I recognized the signs from a medical brochure I received at the hospital where Hana was staying. Myocardial infarction. Cardiac Arrest. Heart Attack. They all refer to the same thing.
Game Over.
No checkpoints.
No respawn.
My body was slumping sideways against the chair, my mouse had fallen to the ground, and the energy drink I had knocked over was spilling onto the desk where it was making its way toward the keyboard. I could see all of this and felt as if I was outside of my body watching myself die.
How ironic; I have seen numerous video-game characters die on that screen.I have killed the villain of the game Cedric Valdrake, the arrogant young master who dies on every route of the game, four times. By stabbing, burning, outsmarting him, and watching him make his last stand against impossible odds. Each time I killed him I felt nothing. He was a barrier to completing the game. He was a well-designed NPC with excellent voice acting who had an irritating face.
Now I am the one who is dying, and there is no protagonist to come and kill me. I was in an empty apartment, with a cold pizza, and a victory screen that no one would ever see.
Hana, I'm sorry.
I couldn't save you.
I couldn't even save myself.
The light of the monitor was the last thing to fade away. The victory screen went fuzzy, turned into a smear, and finally faded to total darkness. There was no tube of light. There was nothing to flash before my eyes. Only an incredible vacuum pressing in from all sides.
And then there was…
A voice.
Not a human voice. A much deeper, older, and colder voice. Like the voice of some glacier that might speak. The voice was not resonating in my ears, but resonating in my bones, in the spaces between my thoughts, and in the portions of me that were already dissolving.
"Candidate identified."
I could not respond. I could not move. I did not even know if I still had a body with which to move.
"Narrative Vessel: Cedric Valdrake Arkhen. Status: Free. Reason: Schedule Termination, Route 7, Phase 3. Percentage of Soul Compatibility: 97.3%. Percentage of Deviation Potential: Extreme."
The blackness began to shift. It did not get lighter; it became thicker.I felt as though everything around me was compressing me into an unfamiliar shape, condensing and squeezing me.
"Integrating."
As I was being integrated, something inside me cracked; not my bones, but instead something much deeper. It was as if I had a mirror shattered from the inside, with each piece of glass also showing a different visage made from a different person I've never met before. Each visage had black hair, violet eyes, a jawline that was sharp enough to cut glass, and a mouth that appeared never to have smiled.
Cedric Valdrake.
The villain.
I wanted to yell, but instead the sound of my voice was replaced with the sensation of total darkness flooding in. I felt as if I were being compressed down to a tiny size, squeezed through a very small opening, like an eye of a needle, or like going through a tiny crack on a broken screen, or a tiny crease between a single heartbeat and the next single heartbeat.
And then...
There was a bright light. It was not the cold LED light from computer screens, or the harsh fluorescent white light from the hospital hallway; instead it was a very warm, bright, golden light that came through the windows that were so tall, I could have walked through them, and was filtered by curtains that appeared to be worth more than my entire apartment.
I was lying flat on my back. I could feel the cold, silk sheets on my skin, and the mattress was so soft that it felt like I was drowning in the opposite direction. The ceiling above me had a vaulted shape with pictures painted on it, which included stars, swords, and a figure that was shrouded in shadow. The moment I saw the figure, I immediately realized that I had seen this same image from a loading screen on the video game I had been playing a thousand times.
This was the Valdrake family crest.
When I took my first breath, it filled my lungs with air (actual air), which was cold and very sharp, with a hint of something floral. The moment I took a deep breath and began to sit up, the entire room was spinning around me.
I had hands.I examined the long fingers and pale skin of the person who was supposed to be me; I didn't have calluses from working at a keyboard and I didn't have ink stains from running a gas station register. I was sure these hands had never experienced a hard day in their life.
I knew these were not my hands.
I threw the bedclothes away from me and got up to walk across the room to find a mirror to see what I looked like. The mirror was tall, made of black iron and silver filigree, and stood on the floor of a bedroom larger than my previous apartment and my current apartment, and probably all three apartments combined.
I looked in the mirror and saw a woman who looked like me, but she was not me.
She had midnight black hair and a forehead that reminded me of a statue made of marble. She had violet colored eyes, not the result of contacts or a filter, but the result of having crushed amethyst put into her eyeballs to create a true "violet" color, not a reflection. Her expression of absolute shock is not a normal expression for someone with features designed for disdain and disgust.
I recognized that face as well.
I had killed the woman with that face four times.
"I did not kill her," I murmured softly.
The reflection in the mirror continued to simulate my own image, although I was looking at my reflection in the mirror. The reflection's voice was deeper than mine and the tone was so smooth that when the reflection spoke, it sounded like poetry rather than a threat.
"I will not kill her again. I will not kill her again."
Suddenly, a sound filled the room, like a wind chime made of broken glass, soft, melodic, mechanical.As I looked around me, I seemed to see a HUD display superimposed on my surroundings, like a glitching display that had not properly cleared out after used.
The HUD was dark with many individual glitches that were flashing. The words would flash back and forth from being readable to corrupted, as if the HUD was barely functioning.
---
THE VILLAIN'S LEDGER - NOW ACTIVE
Welcome; Cedric Valdrake Arkhen.
Role: Protagonist
Status: Alive and Active
Death Flags: 47
Current Survival Probability: 2.3%
Note that this system exists as a means of ensuring
the Villain Character meets its Narrative Function.
Deviation from narrative will be monitored. Compliance
with narrative is encouraged. Resistance to narrative
will be noted.
Recommendation: Accept Your Role.
Secondary Recommendation: Accept Your Death.
---
I stared at the HUD, just as it stared back at me.
In some location beyond my window, in a world
from which I could not exist, a bell was tolling.
Birds sang songs I could not name. The scent of rain
and petrichor permeated the air. Something electric
and dark pricked the skin all over my body; I could
almost feel it.
Aether. That was what Aether felt like. I was
feeling Aether. Actual Aether, now touching a
form that belonged to a dead character from a video
game in which I had spent over 4000 hours playing
without even thinking about the characters being
real.
Knocking at the door. Three firm knocks,
equidistant in distance between each knock.
"Young Master." A woman's practiced, formal voice.
"Your Father requests your presence at dinner;
he asks you not to keep him waiting."
My father.
Duke Varen Valdrake. Monarch-level ranking. One
of the five most powerful humans on Earth. Depending
on the route you played in the video game, would be
the same person who had planned his son's death
for political gain, or just didn't care enough
to prevent it.
This powerful man wished to have dinner with me.
I looked at the mirror. I could see Cedric
Valdrake's face looking back at me. The Villain's
Face. The Dead Man's Face.
Today, it was My Face.
I clicked [Dismiss] on the Ledger. The HUD disappeared.
However, the information in my mind was burned in,
like a brand on my brain.
47 Death Flags
2.3% Survival Probability
And a system which just informed me, in a friendly
manner, that I would be dying.
I stood straight, with Cedric's - my - shoulders back.
Ran my hand through hair that just happened to
fall into place perfectly. Watched as the violet
colored eyes in the reflection changed from a
state of panic to a cold, hard, distant state
of mind. The mask of a man who never had a mask
was slipping into place over my face.
If the world required a villain, then I would
be a villain.
But I wouldn't die according to "their" schedule.
"Tell my father," I said. The voice that came out
of my mouth was the same smooth, velvet-like
voice that formed around a sharp blade,
"that I will be there in ten minutes."
The maid's footsteps faded away from me.
I looked at the mirror, one more time.
Cedric Valdrake was looking back at me,
cold, composed, and unattainable.
Behind his violet colored eyes, a 22-year-old dead
man is already devising a plan.
47 Death Flags.
Let's start checking them off one at a time.