The Game Of Fate

There was no sound.

No wind. No breath. No heartbeat.

Only awareness.

Ariana opened her eyes into absolute black.

Not the kind of darkness created by absence of light. This was deeper. Structural. Like space before stars existed.

She did not panic.

She tested first.

She tried to inhale.

Air entered her lungs.

Interesting.

She lifted her hand.

She could feel the motion — though she could not see it.

“I drowned,” she said quietly.

The statement did not echo.

Memory replayed with precision:

The wall of water.

The impact.

The pressure.

The moment oxygen ran out.

She remembered death clearly.

Which meant this was not hallucination during it.

Two lights ignited in front of her.

Red.

Blue.

They did not brighten the void. They simply existed within it.

Equidistant. Equal size. Floating at eye level.

Ariana went still.

“I know this,” she whispered.

Not from experience.

From fiction.

Her favorite game.

The opening sequence no one unlocked without triggering a hidden catastrophic route. Two choices in a black void. A moral alignment split disguised as aesthetic preference.

Most players picked red.

Red was dramatic. Emotional. Powerful.

And in the original game—

The red route ended in a tragic death.

Not immediate.

Not obvious.

But inevitable.

The protagonist gained explosive strength, unstable abilities, aggressive political leverage.

And then died alone at the final arc.

A scripted downfall disguised as glory.

Her pulse remained steady.

“So this is that,” she murmured.

The red light flickered slightly brighter, as if reacting to recognition.

The blue did not flicker.

In the game’s lore, blue was the “unremarkable” path. Slower growth. Strategic alliances. Political navigation.

Harder.

Less flashy.

But survivable.

She stepped closer.

The red glow pulsed irregularly. Warm. Tempting.

The blue remained cool. Even. Controlled.

“If this world follows similar mechanics,” she reasoned softly, “then red is accelerated power with structural instability.”

And instability always collapses.

She did not need power.

She needed information.

She needed time.

She reached toward the blue.

For a fraction of a second, the red flared violently — as if in protest.

Then her fingers touched blue.

Cold.

Not painful.

Precise.

The light didn’t explode outward.

It folded inward — pulling her through it like slipping between layers of reality.

The darkness shattered into white.

109Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWBbMsHyV8k

Darkness pressed in from every side.

No sound. No floor. No air. Just that strange weightless suspension like the universe had paused mid-thought.

In front of Felix, two lights hovered.

Red.

Blue.

They didn’t flicker. They waited.

He exhaled slowly. “So this is how we’re doing this.”

No dramatic speech. No overthinking.

Blue looked calm. Predictable. Safe.

Red looked alive. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat under skin.

Felix tilted his head, studying it. “You look like trouble.”

The red glow seemed to throb a little brighter.

He smirked.

“Yeah. Definitely trouble.”

He didn’t know why his chest felt tight looking at it. Didn’t know why the air—if there even was air—felt warmer on that side.

He reached out.

For a split second, his hand hovered between both lights.

Then he moved decisively.

Red.

His fingers closed around it.

The moment he touched it, heat surged up his arm—not burning, but intense, like grabbing a live wire of pure energy. The darkness cracked with a sharp, glass-like sound.

Light exploded outward.

Not gentle.

Not welcoming.

Violent.

The void fractured into shards of red brilliance, and Felix felt himself falling—not down, but through.

Through heat.

Through sound.

Through something that felt like a memory trying to surface.

As the world around him began to form—

Stone walls.

Smoke.

A banner whipping in harsh wind—

A thought struck him.

That interface.

Those two choices.

The color contrast.

The pulse of the red light.

His eyes widened.

“No way…”

A distant echo in his mind. A menu screen. Countless replays. Heated forum arguments at 2 a.m. about which ending was canon.

His favorite game.

The one with the infamous branching choice at the beginning.

Red route.

Blue route.

He landed hard on stone, breath knocked from his lungs.

He rolled onto his back, staring up at a ceiling of dark beams and drifting ash.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he whispered.

Somewhere in his memory, a scene replayed—

The red path wasn’t the easy one.

It wasn’t the stable one.

It was the one that spiraled fast. Power gained quickly. Consequences even quicker.

The tragic ending route.

He slowly sat up.

A torn crimson-and-black banner hung across the hall. A wolf insignia burned into the fabric.

Northern Kingdom.

His pulse quickened.

He let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh.

“…Oh.”

He looked down at his hands. Steady. Stronger than before.

He remembered now.

He always chose red on replays.

Because it was chaotic.

Because it was intense.

Because it hurt in the most dramatic way possible.

And because he loved that ending.

Felix pushed himself to his feet, dust falling from his shoulders.

“Well,” he murmured, staring toward the open doorway where distant shouting echoed through the corridor.

“If we’re doing this…”

A slow grin spread across his face.

“Let’s see how bad it gets.”

ns216.73.217.54da2

Reading Theme:

Font Size:

Line Spacing:

Paragraph Spacing:

Load the next issue automatically