At 3:47 AM on a Tuesday, I killed the final boss.
I know this because I looked at the time on the clock right before my vision went white, not because of victory screen but rather because of something bursting behind my left eye. A blood vessel, most likely. Perhaps something even worse. For twelve hours straight my body has been telling me that I needed to stop playing (and like everything else in my life over the last two years, I ignored every warning sign).
The Abyssal Sovereign—the final raid boss of Throne of Ruin and the reason why I've died 431 times over the course of three separate routes—exploded into a column of black fire on my monitor. And after seventy-two hours of being haunted by a health bar that would never drop below one, it finally dropped to zero.
I didn't celebrate.
I just sat there with my hands still on the mouse and watched the victory screen load.
"CONGRATULATIONS!
YOU WON!
YOUR ROUTE 7 (THRONE) HAS BEEN COMPLETED."
My hands shook, but not from excitement. They had been shaking uncontrollably since about hour forty and despite how tightly I gripped the edges of my desk, those tremors were not less severe. I had three empty cans of energy drink sitting next to my keyboard and one half-opened, warm can. I could see the pizza box from yesterday (or was it the day before?) standing up on the floor with the crusts left untouched and the cheese congealed like melted candle wax.
The apartment was dark except for the light coming off the monitor. No lights on. No reason to turn them on; nobody is here to see them.Route 7 — The Final Pathway: The Harem Relationship Where Everyone Comes Together Against The Abyss With One Protagonist Fighting Alongside and, Together, All Heroines/Worlds Mostly Against The One True Emperor/Abyssal King (TBA). After Having Completed All Other Routes (e.g; Light Path, The Scarlet Blade, Dragon's Bargain, Frozen Throne, Shadows Unleashed, Doomblade), As Well As Two Secret Routes, All Hidden Quests (including some that weren't hidden), All Buried Lore Entries, And Every Easter Egg Found.
Total Time Played — 4127 Hours.
That Is What Steam States. 4127 Of Game Time I Played In A Game Where Most People Quit After Completing The Tutorial Because The Game Is Hard Enough To Make You Cry. I Beat The Game So Many Times, That I Can Recite Every Boss's Attack Pattern From Memory While Sleeping. I Can Memorize Every Dungeon. I Could Tell You The Exact Frame Window Required To Parry The Crimson Maw During Phase Three.
And None Of These 4127 Hours And All Of My Victories Have Returned Her To My Life.
I Closed My Eyes.
Hana.
Her Face Begins To Blur Already. I Hate This. I Hate This Because I Still Can Recall The Exact Drop Rate At Which The Sovereign's Legendary Sword Drops (0.7%) But I Am Forgetting What Her Smile Looks Like. When She Was Little, She Had A Gap Between Her Front Teeth — I Wonder If She Still Does —
When She Died.
She Was Sixteen — Blessed Soul — Heart Gave Out On The 1st Tuesday Of The Month (Like Today).I took a night shift for $ 2 more / hour than a convenience store beside the hospital - 40 minutes away. I decided to work for the extra $ 2 instead of being there for her when she needed me; portanto (so).
$ 800 for the specialist consultation. $ 600 in my pocket. Rent - as I couldn't let her be out on the street if we got evicted; no one out on the street who has congenital heart disease (CHD) will live to be older than 2. Rent - I'd have the other $200 by Friday.
She died on Wednesday.
Died before I could pay the additional $200 by Friday.
That was two years ago. It feels like yesterday, and at the same time, it feels like a million years. I dropped out of school. Lost the apartment, again, and am now in a studio smaller than a parking spot. I play Throne of Ruin until my eyes are bleeding, my wrists hurt, and my heart feels like it's been squeezed by an unrelenting fist.
The game is the only place that has fictional deaths; you can reload; try again; make the right choice; go back in time, and the real world doesn't have that capability.
I opened my eyes, looking at the victory screen that has remained on my screen since I won.
But there was a difference.
The completion screen had added an entry that wasn't there before. It was small, and almost hidden from view.I noticed a font that was unfamiliar to me - one that was very thin with sharp features; what I assume was done by someone scratching with a needle on a screen. it was very plain and hard to read, almost Travbo-like. The characters and overall spacing were much closer together than what you are used to seeing.
Here are the messages displayed on the screen:
"The END has not yet arrived."
"The VILLAIN has a role to Play/ Part to Play still."
I just stared at it.
After spending two years and 4,127 hours playing what I thought was an all-inclusive experience without any bugs or glitches there were no references for the additional text. It was neither in any written guides nor on any wikis. In total, I have read every line of extracted dialogue for the game and I personally provided half the content (in conjunction with the creator) found on the game's fan Wiki and never had I seen this specific reference to either of those references (I obtained them directly from the game through what are known as data extraction files) at his time.
With my hand I made an attempt to press the screen capture key.
My hand never reached it.
The pain was onslaught, like a hammer to the middle of my chest. Not a sharp pain, but heavy, as if there was an anvil sitting on my chest with either tremendous weight or continuous weight being added to it over time. The numbness moved down my left arm to my jaw before finally reaching the edges of my normal field of vision, with that field beginning to fade away into static.
Oh.
Deep down I was aware of what this was; I had seen symptoms of Having cardiac-related issues on a medical flyer at Hana's hospital. The words "Myocardial Infarctions", "Cardiac Arrest" or "Heart Attacks" were used but meant the same thing in the end - That was the "End of Your Game too."
- No Saved Files
- No "Continue Game"
My body slid sideways from the chair and the mouse hit the ground hard. My energy drink knocked over and spilled all over the desk with the liquid moving toward my keyboard. I sat at the desk to watch this event occur from a distance like I was watching my death occur in third person perspective.
It was an odd feeling when you see other players lose their lives in front of you in a game like this.Cedric Valdrake — The antagonist in the game, this arrogant young master/player character never survived any of the paths of the story, including my own. I personally executed him in four different games: stabbing, burning, outsmarting, and watching him make his last stand against insurmountable forces. Each time, I felt nothing; he was simply an impediment. A well-designed NPC with good voice acting and a visage deserving to be punched.
Now I was dying, and I was without a primary protagonist to execute the finishing move on me. All I had left was an empty apartment, a cold pizza, and a victory screen that would never be seen by anyone.
Hana, I'm sorry.
I couldn't save you.
I couldn't save me either.
The last physical manifestation of life I experienced was the light of the computer screen that displayed the victory screen, as it began to blur, and smudge, and then finally morphed into a darkness so encompassing that I felt like I was drowning. There was no tunnel of light. There was no representation of my life flashing before my eyes. Just silence with weight and volume pushing toward me from every conceivable physical direction.
And then -
A voice.
It was not a human voice. It was an older, deeper, colder voice, like a glacier talking; a voice that reverberated not in my ears but through the marrow of my bones and through the space between all of my thoughts; through everything within me that was starting to evaporate.
"Candidate identified."
I could not respond, could not move, and was not even 100% sure there was still a physical me to move.
"Narrative vessel: Cedric Valdrake Arkhen. Status: Unoccupied. Cause: Scheduled nullification, Route 7, Phase 3. Soul compatibility: 97.3%. Deviation probability: Extreme."
The darkness began to move around me. Yet, it did not lighten; rather it appeared to be becoming thicker.As though the energy around me was tightening and forcing me into an unfamiliar form.
'Integration.'
There was a rupture, not my bones but something deeper. Like being trapped inside of a mirror and all of the shards show different variations of a face I have never recognized. Long black hair, eyes shimmering with shades of violet, jaw that could cut glass, a mouth that hadn't smiled in my entire existence.
Cedric Valdrake.
The enemy.
I tried to scream but it was like darkness flooded in where the noise should have exited. I felt compressed, crushed, threaded through a tiny passageway — the eye of a needle, the void of a broken screen, the distance of a heart beat.
Then —
Light.
Not harsh LED light from a monitor. Not the harsh white light of a hospital corridor. Warm, golden and alive, shining through grand windows that you could walk through filtered through curtains that were likely more expensive than my entire apartment!
I realized I was flat on my back. The sheets were silk and the mattress was soft beyond compare. I was looking up at a vaulted ceiling painted in a celestial vision of stars and swords, and an image of a person consumed in darkness, that I recognized immediately, as the image from a loading screen in a game I had played for years.
The Valdrake Family crest!
I filled my lungs with air, real cold air with floral undertones; and the moment I sat up my head started spinning.
Hands. I had hands!I stared in disbelief at the long, slender fingers of my hands and the white, unblemished skin with no calluses from using a computer keyboard and no ink stains from using a gas station's cash register; these hands had never worked before.
These hands could not possibly have been mine.
I threw the covers off and staggered to the first reflective surface— a mirror framed in black iron and silver filigree that stood taller than I was against the wall of a much larger bedroom; a room larger than my previous apartment, my current apartment, and probably larger than all three of my apartments put together.
The face staring back at me was not my face.
The midnight-black hair that fell over a forehead that belonged to a marble statue, the violet eyes (not contact lenses or filters but genuinely violet— they appeared like crushed amethyst had been poured into the irises) stared back at me with an expression of extreme shock that looked completely out of place on a face that was created for disdain.
I had seen this face before; I had killed the person who wore this face (four times).
"No," I said to myself, almost inaudibly.
The lips in the mirror moved as my lips moved; the voice that came from my mouth was deeper than my normal speaking voice. Softer. The type of voice that could make a threat seem like poetry.
"No, no, no, no—"
A sound interrupted my thoughts; it was soft and musical and mechanical, somewhat like a wind chime made from broken pieces of glass.A shadowy glitchy screen of a HUD loaded itself onto my sight.
A very dark and glitch-ridden screen with the text flickering in and out of view as if it were having trouble keeping together.
[ THE VILLAIN'S LEDGER — ACTIVATED ]
Welcome, Cedric Valdrake Arkhen.
Role: Primary Antagonist
Status: Active
Death Flags: 47
Current Survival Probability: 2.3%
Note: This system exists to ensure that the Villain plays their Role in Narrative.
Any deviations from Required Role will be monitored. Compliance to Role is encouraged, Resistance will be recorded.
Recommendation: Accept your Role.
Secondary Recommendation: Accept Death.
I stared back at screen.
Screen stared back at me.
Outside the window in a world that shouldn't exist, a bell rang out. Birds I couldn't name are singing songs I have only ever heard through speakers. I could smell the air like rain on old stones with something very dark and electric against my skin in the way static does.
Aether. That was the way Aether felt. I was feeling Aether. Actual Aether for an entire fictitious world was against the skin of a dead man from a game I had played for four thousand hours without ever considering that the characters were real.
Knocking on the door 3 times in rapid succession.
"Master Young." The voice was a woman's voice, formal and practiced. "Your father requests you for Dinner and he does not want you to keep him waiting."
My father.
Duke Varen Valdrake. Ruler Rank. Among the 5 most powerful people on this planet. The man who in my playthrough of the game either orchestrated the death of his own son for political gain or did not care enough to prevent it.
That man wants to have Dinner with me.
I looked to the mirror and saw Cedric Valdrake looking back at me. The face of a Villain. The face of a dead man.
My face.
I pressed the [ Dismiss ] button on the Ledger, and while the screen disappeared, the number remained in my head as if it were branded.
47 Death Flags.
2.3% probability of Survival.
And a system just politely suggested I die.
I straightened my shoulders. I ran my fingers through the hair that fell perfectly into place, and I watched the violet eyes that looked back at me turn from a sea of panic to something cold, sharp, and ancient as a mask joined Cedric's face that has never worn one.
The world wanted a Villain. Fine.
I will give them what they want.
But I will not die on their schedule.
"Tell My Father I will be there in 10 minutes." My voice was as smooth as silk wrapped around a blade.
The footsteps of my Maid moved from the door.
One final glance in the mirror reveals I've seen Cedric Valdrake staring back at me as a cold, calm, and unapproachable person.
Within those violet eyes was the mind of a 22 year-old dead man already plotting.
47 Death Flags.
Let's cross them off.