They say hope dies last.
They lied — it dies first.
I came to that conclusion the moment I stood face to face with the gods themselves.
"This game," Dash muttered under his breath, eyes glued to the glowing screen. "Why would they create something this damn hard in the *first* stage?"
He had spent his entire summer break playing a viral game called Fighting the Gods. But its popularity didn't come from fancy graphics or storylines — it came from the impossible challenge. No one had ever passed the first trial. Not one.
The rules were simple enough: choose a god, defeat it, and claim its power. Then fight the others.
Simple to read. Impossible to win
But Dash wasn't most players. He was stubborn, obsessive, intense — the kind of gamer who didn't quit even when the odds beat him bloody. There was no game he hadn't finished, and he wasn't about to let this one break that streak.
Now, after another string of defeats, he sat slumped in his gaming chair. His messy black hair hung over crimson-tinted eyes that burned with frustration. He dragged his fingers down his face and whispered, "Lost again…"
The screen's dim light flickered across his face as he scrolled through the remaining opponents. Every god he'd fought had crushed him — Zeus, Poseidon, Athena, even minor deities he'd never heard of. All of them unstoppable.
Until he found it.
HADES
Info: Hades (Aides, Aidoneus, Haidês), eldest son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea; brother—
Dash stopped reading. His gaze drifted to the glowing Start button. With a determined breath, he clicked it.
But nothing happened.
He stared at the frozen screen for almost a full minute, confusion mixing with irritation. He clicked again — still nothing.
"Oh, come on. Don't freeze on me now." He slammed the desk, glaring at the unmoving screen.
Then the game shuddered — the image distorting, color bleeding from the edges. The sound glitched, filling the room with a low mechanical hum. Panic rippled through Dash's chest.
"Shit. Don't crash, don't crash—"
He reached for the power button, but the monitor suddenly went white, flooding the room in blinding light. Strange symbols crawled across the screen, ancient yet sharp, shimmering like molten silver.
He couldn't read them, but somehow — he *understood* them.
YOU HAVE CHALLENGED A GOD.
Before Dash could react, the air turned thick and electric. His body trembled. His fingers dissolved into dark particles, scattering like ash, drawn straight into the monitor.
"What the fu—"
He never finished the sentence. The room went still. The chair creaked. The monitor hummed with residual static. Only the monitor remained, faintly glowing with a single line of, bold text:
BEGIN ASCENSION.