Chapter 1 – Before the Game Ended
There's a certain kind of silence that only exists at three in the morning. It's not peaceful. It's hollow. A hum of fluorescent lights. The click of a keyboard. The dry air of a room that hasn't been aired out in days.
That was my world.
Stacks of empty cans, instant noodles, and sticky notes surrounded me like the walls of a personal fortress. The glow of three monitors was the only thing illuminating the tiny apartment I hadn't left in... I didn't know how long.
My fingers danced over the keyboard, precise and tireless. I didn't need rest. Not yet. The event server was opening in forty minutes, and I had one last raid to clear before maintenance.
I wasn't anyone in real life. Just another shut-in gamer, living on caffeine and coping mechanisms. No friends. No family I talked to. I dropped out of school years ago.
But in the world of "Celestial Dominion: Blood Oath," I was something else.
Top-ranked player. Strategic genius. First to clear the Abyss Trials. Owner of the [Celestial Dragon Core] and slayer of the Unbound Saint. My name—[Veyr]—was known on every server. Guides were written from my runs. Entire guilds reshaped their paths based on my discoveries.
I wasn't just playing a game. I was mastering fate.
Until the game itself decided to kill me.
It happened after the final cutscene of a hidden route—one I had spent weeks unlocking. Something the devs hadn't even patched yet. A sealed memory hidden within the code of an NPC no one cared about: a nameless monk in the Burning Valley.
He spoke a single phrase: "The one fated to fall shall rise where none stand."
And then, my screen flickered.
For a second, I thought it was just a bug. The screen pixelated, stretched unnaturally, and then... black.
I didn't wake up from the chair.
I woke up in someone else's body.
But that comes later.
Before all of that—before fate tore me from one world and threw me into another—I was just a man with a dying dream and a rented coffin of a home.
And a game I couldn't stop playing.
Sleep was optional. Hunger came and went like a system notification—annoying, easy to dismiss. What mattered was timing.
I had memorized every frame of the final animation: the monk's ragged robes, the flickering flame behind him, the exact second the message triggered.
Thirty-two minutes until the event server opened. I cracked another energy drink, the carbonation stinging my throat. My fingers didn't stop moving. I was routing through my inventory, prepping buffs, checking cooldowns, calculating.
Every click was a ritual. Every decision mattered.
People didn't get it. To most, games were escape. For me, they were clarity.
In a world that never made sense, where my life was just a series of blank days and headaches, the game had rules. Logic. Balance. If you failed, it was because you made a mistake. If you succeeded, it was because you earned it.
There was no randomness in pain. No heartbreak in stats.
Only numbers. Only patterns. Only control.
I'd always been drawn to the lore of "Celestial Dominion." It was more than just a power fantasy—it was a tragedy dressed in martial epics and spirit swords. Every major character was marked by some kind of loss: a brother, a clan, a homeland, a lover.
And then there was him.
Zerel Kai. The Butcher Prince.
A villain not because he was evil... but because the world decided he was.
The devs never confirmed it, but data miners found unused dialogue buried deep in the files. Fragments of a path that showed Zerel Kai had once been a loyal son, a prodigy, a protector.
Then his spirit weapon awakened.
And everything changed.
He didn't break. He was broken. By fear, by betrayal, by prophecy.
And now, as I stood on the edge of unlocking that same path, I couldn't help but wonder: what was the point of creating such a tragic character only to give him no chance to rise?
Was he just a stepping stone for the heroes? A reminder that power could corrupt?
Or was there something hidden? Something the devs left behind for people like me—people obsessed enough to dig into the cracks?
Fifteen minutes left.
My fingers hovered over the command to trigger the quest line. If this worked, I'd be the first to ever unlock it. A global announcement would appear. The forums would explode. My name would live on long after the servers shut down.
I leaned back. Closed my eyes.
Just for a second.
They say you don't feel death. That it's like falling asleep.
But when the world around you vanishes in a blink, when your breath stops in the middle of an inhale and your chest doesn't rise again...
You notice.
There's no pain. Just absence.
One moment, I was in my chair. The next, I was somewhere else.
Not a loading screen. Not a dream.
A voice in my head whispering in a language I didn't recognize, and the sound of blood rushing through veins that weren't mine.
The weight of a body that felt heavier.
The chill of metal on my chest.
Something was hanging around my neck. I opened my eyes and saw chains.
And that's when I knew...
The game didn't just kill me.
It brought me in.
The chains rattled with every breath I took.
They were thick, forged of black iron, looped around my chest and wrists. My shoulders ached, and my knees pressed against stone—cold, wet, unmoving. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear dripping water and the distant hum of chanting.
I wasn't in a hospital. Not a dream, not VR.
I knew this place.
The Black Spire Dungeon. Level 3-7 in "Celestial Dominion." An infamous cutscene zone, where Zerel Kai—the Butcher Prince—was imprisoned before his fall.
I looked down at my hands. Not mine. Larger. Callused. Pale skin, faint traces of old burns. A faint red mark encircling the wrist—where the chains had bitten in too deep, too often.
My pulse quickened.
This wasn't a dream.
A thin shard of metal hung around my neck on a cracked leather cord. It wasn't just a prop. It was real. I could feel its weight. The symbol engraved on it was unmistakable: the cursed crest of House Kai.
"No..."
I remembered the timeline.
This was the moment just before Zerel Kai's first execution. A scripted event. In every route, the guards came in. They dragged him out. Publicly humiliated him. Cut him down in front of the Sect Elders.
It was supposed to happen right now.
Except I was him.
And if the game's logic held... then I had maybe five minutes.
I forced my body to move. Pain flared along my spine, but I gritted my teeth and scanned the room. Every inch of this cell had been rendered in-game. I remembered the details. The shattered bowl in the corner. The cracked wall tile behind the torch mount.
There.
I shoved my shoulder against the wall. The torch didn't budge, but I reached behind the loose tile. My fingers brushed cold iron.
The Rusted Pinion.
An item the devs hid in the dungeon's debug version. Useless in-game. Just flavor text: "A broken piece of machinery from a forgotten era."
But now it felt like hope.
I jammed it into the manacle on my left wrist and twisted. The pin groaned, resisted—and then clicked.
The shackle popped open.
I exhaled a shaky breath. My hands trembled as I worked the other lock. Every second felt like lightning crawling over my skin. I wasn't ready. I didn't even know how this body worked. My stamina, my aura, my cultivation level—all of it was blank.
But I had something the original Zerel never did.
Knowledge.
The dungeon door screeched open.
Two guards stepped in. Sect loyalists. NPCs in the game—now flesh and blood.
I ducked low, heart pounding.
"On your knees, filth," one barked. "Time to face the elders."
I stepped out from the shadows, chains still dangling from one arm.
"No," I said quietly.
And then I moved.
I didn't know martial arts. But I remembered boss animations. I remembered cooldown windows. I remembered patterns.
The first guard lunged. I sidestepped, wrapped the chain around his arm, and pulled. Bone cracked. He screamed. The second raised his weapon—too slow. I spun, let momentum guide me, and smashed the shackle into his temple.
He collapsed.
Silence.
Then breathing.
Mine.
Heavy. Ragged. Alive.
I looked at their bodies. Not dead—barely. My stomach churned. But I didn't have time to process guilt.
Zerel Kai's story always ended here.
But now I was rewriting it.
One breath at a time.