With just one blow from the golem, my body flew like a rag doll in the midst of a storm. I crashed onto the sand at a far distance, rolling over the burning surface before I finally fixed my place.
Fortunately, I had taken cover with the dagger, I raised it instinctively at the moment of the strike... without it, I would now be a lifeless corpse with its bones scattered over the desert.
But my survival was not without a price.
I felt the pain ravage every nerve of my nerves.
I turned my face to the side and spat blood. It was heavy, with the taste of iron, as if I were emptying my lungs of the shards of a battle that had not yet ended.
I raised my gaze.
The golem was still there, a merciless beast, stepping toward me, weighed down by the same intention: slaughter.
I wiped the blood from my mouth with the back of my hand.
I stood up slowly, leaning on the dagger, carrying my wounds, and my eyes narrowing in grim resolve.
There is no room for escape this time.
Either I fight... or I am erased from this world forever.
I ran toward him.
I did not know what to do, I was not thinking.
All that was screaming inside me was one, single, wild desire: survival.
To get out. To return to my warm, messy room, to my simple bed, to a life I thought boring before I fell into this recurring hell.
The pain was tearing me with every step, my body screaming, but it did not have the word now.
Only my soul screamed louder than it.
I tightened my grip on the dagger, raised it in front of me, a cold, dull edge, but it was my last hope, the last spear of hope in this endless night.
I ran.
I saw the golem wave its arm, I saw the end approaching like a black shadow, but I did not stop.
I directed the dagger toward its stone heart, I did not know if it even had a heart...
But I was going to try.
I was going to fight... even if it was my last moment here.
The place exploded with a dazzling light.
A pure white light that overwhelmed everything, swallowed the golem, swallowed the desert, and even swallowed my own body.
I saw nothing after that.
No sand, no sky, no shadow.
Just absolute whiteness, silent, suffocating.
Despite the momentary blindness, a heavy feeling began to gnaw at me from the inside.
A feeling that the matter… was not over.
That what happened was neither a victory nor a complete defeat, but merely another chapter in this violent whirlpool.
One thought was spinning in my head, repeating like a broken bell:
Did I win... or lose again?
Will I open my eyes to find myself in my room, safe, far from this madness?
Or will I wake up again... here, in the same barren desert, doomed to repeat the same struggle, the same pain, the same battle, over and over?
A whirlpool...
A dream...
A curse...
All seemed like empty words, in front of one truth that began to become clear to me:
I will not survive except with one thing... victory.
And if I do not win?
Then there is no escape... except returning to point zero.
Always, and forever.
But... what if?
What if this time is different?
What if there is forgiveness from this punishment?
What if... the system forgave me this time?
In the blind whiteness, in the void where no sound existed except the beats of my heart, came the sound of
Footsteps… light but confident steps, approaching steadily, cutting through the stillness like a knife through a film of water.
Then came a voice.
The voice of a man, calm, steady, filled with something strange… as if he did not belong to this broken world.
He said calmly:
"You… open your eyes."
His words were like a thin thread pulling me from drowning, like a fragile bridge between nothingness and life.
My eyelids fluttered slowly, searching for the source, for the man, for the miracle that maybe… just maybe… would be my way out of this hell.
But inside me, despite everything, did not calm down.
Because I had learned that in this world, nothing comes without a price.
I opened my eyes slowly in the midst of this vast white void...
There was nothing... no clear ground, no sky, just white mist stretching to infinity.
I was alone... or so I thought, until I saw him.
A man standing there, a few steps away, silent like a shadow.
He wore a long dark coat, and his face was covered with a strange mask, with no features, as if it were a smooth stone mask with no life in it.
My body stiffened in astonishment, and my breath trembled in my chest.
I took a step forward unconsciously, examining him with eyes soaked in amazement and suspicion.
In a hesitant, stammering voice, the question came from my lips:
"Who are you?"
My voice echoed in the void, as if the void itself devoured it and returned it to me empty.
The man remained standing, motionless, without an answer…
As if he were waiting for something.
Something from me.
"Who are you? And how did you come to this place? And how did I come?"
I asked him again, this time with a more determined tone, and my feet stepped toward him slowly despite the shiver of fear that ran through my body.
For a moment, I thought he would remain in his terrifying silence as before...
But he moved his head slightly, then answered, in a low, simple voice, as if he were saying something trivial that did not deserve all this worry:
"I just wanted to tell you..."
He stopped, as if the words weighed on him, then continued:
"... that you must wake up, if you want to see your mother."
My soul shuddered entirely upon hearing the sentence.
A vague feeling of shock and awe rushed to my chest, igniting a small fire of memories and longing… and hope.
A fragile, dark hope, but it was enough to pierce the fog of doubt that surrounded me.
My mother...
Her name alone was enough to make my heart beat violently as it had not since this whirlpool began.
I opened my mouth to respond, to ask, but the words got stuck in my throat.
The masked man remained standing there, silent, as if he had said all he wanted...
In a moment he approached me slowly… his steps made no sound over this strange void.
Until he became close enough, he extended his gloved hand and touched my chest gently, a cold touch, but it did not hurt me.
And he muttered words I barely heard, but they pierced my depths:
"Reset."
Then he added in a clearer voice, as if blessing a long-awaited salvation:
"Now you can return to your home."
I could not believe what happened.
My body began to fade gradually, as if I were just an illusion returning to its source.
I looked at him, looked at the masked man, and his long black cloak was fluttering behind him like night shadows in the wind of an unseen force.
Panic swept over me for a moment, so I screamed, wanting to hear an answer, to hold onto certainty:
"You're not joking with me… are you?!"
But he did not answer.
He disappeared as he came, crumbling like dust under the light of the void, as if his existence was nothing but a dream within a dream.
And I...
I also faded with him, disappeared from there,
Taking with me a shiver of fear... and a final glimmer of hope.
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
I woke up suddenly, as if something had pulled me from the depths of a mysterious dream.
I lifted the upper part of my body quickly, and my heart was pounding with a violence I did not understand.
I felt confusion and tension seep into my depths, and I muttered unconsciously, in a low voice as if I feared someone might hear me:
"Did... I win?"
I began looking around me, a desperate attempt to understand what was happening.
But the room I found myself in was not familiar at all.
It was spacious, with long windows and silky curtains, and elegant furniture that had nothing to do with the simple room I entered the last time before entering that desert.
My eyes widened in astonishment.
There, beside me, sat a woman on a low chair next to the bed.
Her head tilted on its edge, and her features were covered with a soft tranquility as she slept deeply.
Who is she? And why does she seem like she was waiting for me for a long time?
Everything around me was strange... disturbingly familiar, and worryingly strange.
Something was out of place.
"This woman..."
I muttered, my eyes wide open, trying to understand what I was seeing.
This room...
This place...
And this woman sitting beside the bed...
This is not my home.
And this is not my mother but the mother of someone else, the owner of this damned body.
The words shrank inside me as if they were a dagger plunged into the chest.
My pulse quickened, my breath choked, and something dark began to crawl in my chest, like betrayal, like treachery.
He deceived me.
That masked man...
He deceived me when he whispered with confidence: you can return to your home
He deceived me when he said: you can see your mother
I screamed inwardly, but the sound reached no one.
As if I had fallen into a dream within a dream...
As if I had escaped a hell to enter a quieter lie, but deeper.
I looked at the woman again, and something in her face was not familiar, but it was not completely strange either.
As if the system was still ongoing…
But with another trick.
Another chain…
Disguised as hope.
The woman began to move slowly, like one emerging from a heavy dream.
Then she opened her eyes… and looked at me.
And in the moment our eyes met, her eyes widened in overwhelming astonishment, as if she had seen a ghost returned from death.
She placed her hand over her mouth, trembling, and muttered in a voice choked with emotion:
"Did… you wake up?"
Her words were not just a question, but a prayer spoken at last, after a long wait, and silent pain.
Tears stood at the edges of her eyes, clinging to the eyelids, hesitant between falling or breaking.
As if she did not believe, did not dare to believe… but she hoped.
I was staring at her, finding no voice or explanation.
Between doubt and truth, between anger and fear, I was suspended in the same void again…
But this time, with tearful eyes, it was she who called me to reality.
I clenched my fists tightly, until I felt the bones of my fingers scream under the weight of my anger.
I was trembling, not from fear, but from betrayal.
That masked man…
Why did I believe him?
Why did I trust his words, I who trust no one?
Why did his words pierce my fortresses, and seep into the weakest spot within me?
"Now you can return to your home..."
"If you want to see your mother..."
His sentence was echoing in my head like the buzz of an endless curse.
His voice still stuck in my ear, as if every letter he uttered was designed to deceive me with precision.
He betrayed me.
Led me blindly to a beautiful illusion, only to throw me into a reality that is not mine.
Into a body I do not know, and into a life that is not mine.
I wanted to scream.
Break something.
Erase every trace of that momentary trust that made me place my fate in the hands of a mask.
But I was trapped now...
In a new reality, and in front of teary eyes...
Pleading with me to stay.
I spoke with heavy words, that came from my depths, burdened with all the doubt, anger, and betrayal:
"How did I come here?"
My question was not directed at anyone in particular, but at everything...
At the void, at the system, at the masked man, at fate itself.
My eyes were dark, as if something inside me had extinguished.
The astonishment withered, and the fear turned into a cold silence.
I was no longer looking for an answer to convince me… but for a truth to justify this madness.
How did I enter this world?
How was I robbed of myself and planted in the body of a boy I do not know?
Was I dead? Or just another player in a game greater than my understanding?
The Astorite family specifically in the empire of Orival…
The palace I am in now, and the walls that witness years of sadness and silence, and that woman.
Who bore alone the loss of her only son, Kyle.
In the game, she was just a side character,
A woman who lives on the edges of the story, does not fight, does not appear much,
But everyone knows her... as a broken mother, waiting for a promise not fulfilled.
It was always said… she would find him.
That Kyle would return, that the game hides for him a special fate, an ending not yet written.
But the real question was not whether he would return?
But: would they allow him to return?
The Lords' leaders…
Those who rule the worlds behind the curtain,
Did they want the return of the heir of Astorite?
The son of the man who was once the lord of the great war?
The man who almost brought down the system alone, with his sword and his blood?
No one speaks of that war openly.
Even the old texts in the game, those encrypted with magical language,
Hide the details, and tell only the surface.
But that does not mean I will sit idly,
Waiting for someone to take pity on me and read me those texts as if I were just a lost child in a story that is not his.
No.
I will search for it myself,
Even if the path is lonely,
Even if the truth is buried under heaps of lies and magic and forgetfulness.
Though it will be exhausting,
Though I do not know whether I am looking for an end... or a new beginning,
I have decided:
To be the hero if that is what the damned system wants.
And that I… will find a way to return to my home no matter what…