That night, I felt the familiar sensation of falling. My heart raced, panic swelling in my chest as the ground seemed to vanish beneath me. Not again.

  I braced for impact, but when I landed, it was different. I didn’t hit the soft, familiar cradle of books that I had grown accustomed to. No—this time, I landed on cold stone.

  I blinked, disoriented, and immediately knew something was off. The towering bookcases that had once been made of grand hardwood were now constructed from weathered stone. I reached out to touch one, and the stone was soft, almost sedimentary in nature—a stark contrast to the sturdy wooden shelves of the other area I had come to know.

  This wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

  I quickly checked my supplies. My Machina’s playing card was safely tucked into my left sleeve, and my bow lay on the floor beside me. But then my eyes fell on the five arrows. Of course, it was five. It always had to be five.

  I gritted my teeth. Why couldn’t I ever get a proper supply? Why was it always this way when I ended up in Danatallion’s Halls?

  With a sigh, I checked my inner spirit, hoping against hope that my Skillcubes had accelerated their progress. Maybe, just maybe, the white paper sun had moved faster than usual. But, unsurprisingly, my prayers went unanswered.

  Fractal’s bond was still there, faint and distant, but I didn’t feel her presence. She wasn’t here with me. It was just me and my two most important tools. Three if you counted my Arte, which, in this place, I’d make use of.

  Instead of rushing into the labyrinth of books, desperate to explore, I knew I had to use my time wisely. This entry point might not be as straightforward as the others. Other Visitors might be drawn here, but the way I entered—violently—meant only one thing. The only people forced through this kind of gate were likely the illegal ones. At least, that was my hope.

  I swallowed, taking a moment to breathe. Vanitas was undoubtedly aware of my presence by now. I could feel it. That eerie sense that his eyes were already on me. I would be a fool to assume he wasn’t watching me.

  No. I needed to think. Survival first.

  As I thought about my situation, my fingers absently traced the Machina’s playing card in my sleeve, and I felt the familiar hum of my Arte. Paper Manipulation. It wasn’t just something to use in a pinch. This was an opportunity to refine it, to build on it. I had the time now.

  I could feel the weight of the paper in my mind. A single thought brought it to life, making it ripple into existence. With a wave of my hand, the first sheet of paper appeared, floating in the air. My Arte was a part of me, a tool I could use. So why not use it now, when I had the quiet to train?

  I focused, pulling more sheets from the air, shaping them into small cubes. They spun in front of me like the petals of a flower, each piece of paper folding and bending at my will, learning the shape of my thoughts. The paper was delicate, but I didn’t need it to be perfect. Just functional.

  My fingers moved deftly, weaving intricate shapes into existence. Paper birds, paper blades, even small origami figures that darted in and out of my hands. It felt… natural. But there was a weight to it now, a tension in the air, as though each motion was both a step forward and a reminder of just how much I had to learn.

  I smiled slightly as the birds I had created flapped their paper wings in time with my heartbeat, rising into the air before dissipating.

  [You have obtained the skill: Origami.]

  “Focus, Alexander,” I muttered to myself, the words biting into the air as my frustration grew. I shook my head, forcing my thoughts to refocus. I wasn’t here to play. I was here to train.

  I redirected my attention to the paper birds, sending them fluttering into the air, each one swooping off into the towering labyrinth of stone bookcases. I linked my vision to theirs, seeing through their eyes as they perched at various intersections, silently scanning the space for any signs of movement.

  I had eyes in every direction. I could feel the weight of their vigilance, each bird perched in silence, watching for anything that might appear.

  This wasn’t just some place to explore—it was a test, a game of survival. And I was playing for my life.

  I scowled. If only I had access to my Skillcube for the [Millennium Halls]. The thought gnawed at me. If I had just the ability to open a doorway, to summon an anchor point… I could stabilize my position. I could get out of this mess. I could leave.

  I tried to focus, reaching deep inside my spirit to call upon the fragments of that ability. The familiar pull, the energy of a dimensional door, should have been there—should have been accessible. But instead, I felt a wall. A barrier, thick and unyielding. I pushed against it, my thoughts strained, but it remained locked, as if this place refused to let me use it.

  I cursed under my breath. The weight of Danatallion’s Halls was too much. The ability wasn’t just inaccessible—it was sealed within these walls. The gate to the [Millennium Halls] was locked, and I couldn’t teleport out. I was trapped.

  No escaping, I realized. Not now.

  I swallowed the frustration building in my throat. I couldn’t afford to waste time wishing for something I couldn’t have. I had to survive, and that meant making do with what I had.

  Fractal’s bond was still faint, distant, a mere shadow of the connection I was used to. She wasn’t here with me. It was just me, my Machina, and my weapons. The tools I had would have to be enough.

  I turned my focus back to the task at hand. Survival was all that mattered now. I wasn’t going to waste another second.

  The labyrinth of books, the seemingly endless halls of lost and current knowledge, lay before me, waiting to be explored. But instead of blindly rushing forward, I focused on the one thing that could give me an edge: the books.

  I moved to the nearest shelf, pulling a thick tome from the rows of stone-bound volumes. The cover was worn and cracked from age, and the pages inside were fragile and yellowed. But the information it held could be invaluable.

  I scanned the text intently, not letting the complexity of the words slow me down. As I read, I could feel the minutes slipping away, but they didn’t matter. This knowledge was power, and I couldn’t afford to miss a single opportunity.

  Meanwhile, my paper birds kept their watch, each perched at different points in the room. They didn’t stop moving. And neither did I.

  What does it mean to die? To dream? No. It means nothing. Not here. Not in this realm. Not in the next. Life is not liberty—it is a prison, constructed by the whims of our parents, our ancestors. From darkness we came, and from darkness we shall return. I realized this the day I was stricken with a disease that rotted my blood from the extremities inward, eating me alive from the inside out. Where will I go after this? I hope that darkness is warm. Comforting. A reprieve from the torment of the waking world.

  Life is neither miserly nor fortune. It is not the selfishness of a miser, nor the fleeting joy of excess. I lived richly, yes. I was born into privilege—money bought me comforts, wealth, opportunities. Yet it failed to buy me the one thing I desired most: to be myself. To stand as I was, unencumbered by the demands of those who called me their child. I was never allowed to be just me.

  I was always what my parents—two Dominus—demanded of me. The perfect scholar. The perfect warrior. The perfect scribe. They molded me in their image, carved from the same stone that shaped their world. Perfection, they said. That’s what I had to embody. But perfection… is a shackle. It is not freedom. I was the embodiment of their ideals—until I became something they could not bear to see: a failure.

  It was then that a Dominus’s gate opened. One that unleashed creatures of darkness, of unfathomable horror. They poured from the Otherrealm—unknowable and relentless, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake. Cities burned, millions slaughtered, billions of lives lost. The death toll was staggering.

  The task fell upon my shoulders. It was my duty to close the gate, to rid the world of the monstrous hostilities that poured through it. I was chosen because of my skill, my perceived brilliance. Yet the cruelty of this world became clearer to me with every step. They thought me a weapon, an instrument to correct the wrongs of the universe. I was a tool of a higher power, but in the end, it was I who was broken.

  I thought I could do it. I believed, naively, that I had the strength to face the horrors that lay beyond that gate. I gathered all my knowledge, all the power I could muster. I believed in the technology I had perfected, my Arte of Technology Manipulation, to control and command the machines of war, to give me the edge against those creatures. But in the face of something so purely chaotic, so overwhelmingly destructive, my creations failed me. They turned on me. The very systems I had built to save humanity turned against it, and they tore apart everything I had known.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  I remember the first success. The first triumph. I had built the prototype—a machine capable of predicting enemy movements, a force to combat the relentless tide of creatures flooding from the Otherrealm. It was an accomplishment that earned me the respect of my peers. I thought, this is it. This was the turning point. The beginning of a new age of technology, of control. My Arte hummed in harmony with the machines, my creations listened to me. The first battle was won.

  But the triumph was short-lived. The creatures adapted. They learned. Their forms were incomprehensible, their abilities unpredictable, but even more so—resilient. My machines that once seemed infallible were overrun. I couldn't even fathom how it happened. Every piece of my technology that had been designed to counter them, to lead us to victory, turned into a liability. The failure was not the enemy I faced, but the arrogance in thinking I could control everything. I became the victim of my own hubris.

  The second failure was catastrophic. With the battle lines drawn, we unleashed the full might of the military-industrial complex I had built. The Aetherized bomb, a weapon of unmatched potential, capable of reducing an entire city to ash. It worked—initially. It decimated entire hordes of the invaders. For a brief moment, I thought we had won. But the creatures adopted. They mutated. They found a way to survive, and the bomb? The bomb had no effect. It had only made them stronger. They adapted, faster than I could imagine. My weapon, my pride, had become a death sentence.

  By the third failure, I knew I had lost. The machines, the weapons, the technology—it was all meaningless. The battlefield turned into a graveyard of broken promises and failed ideals. I had created systems that should have worked, but they failed because they could not adapt as quickly as their enemy. The truth became undeniable. The world was collapsing, and nothing I could do would change that.

  The fourth failure, though, was the one that broke me. The Otherrealm had breached our world, its creatures now integrated into our systems. They were not just invaders anymore. They were us. They learned our ways, became us in a twisted reflection. Our communications were compromised, our systems sabotaged from within. They were everywhere. The machines that I had built, that I had trusted, had been corrupted. They were a reflection of humanity's greed, pride, and inability to change. And I was the one who had unleashed them.

  I am the architect of my own destruction. I have created nothing but chaos and despair. The final failure is not the death of others—it is the death of everything I once believed in. My Arte, my creations, my life’s work—they have all led to this: a world undone, a civilization collapsing under the weight of its own ambition. And I—I—am the one who built the tools that doomed it.

  And now, here I lie, surrounded by the remnants of all I once held dear, waiting for the inevitable. My blood rots within me, my body decays, and all I can do is await the darkness. Perhaps it will be warm. Perhaps it will be comforting. For in the end, that is the only thing left: the hope that, in the darkness, I will find peace.

  The triumphs of my life feel like distant dreams now, as though they were never truly mine. Yet, there were moments—fleeting moments—when I believed that I had achieved something. That perhaps, despite all my failures, I could carve out a legacy that would withstand the test of time.

  One such moment came with the invention of the Chrono-Hub. It was hailed as the pinnacle of my work—a device capable of synchronizing multiple systems across vast distances. A machine that could control time and information in ways no one had ever dreamed. I manipulated the very concept of temporal information, bending the flow of moments to my will, able to send messages into the past with an almost prophetic precision. It was revolutionary, and for a time, the world looked to me with awe. This, they said, this is the future.

  But I soon realized that even the flow of time, as malleable as it was, could not escape the harsh truths of the present. The Chrono-Hub didn’t just predict the future. It revealed the inevitable, the failures that lay ahead. No matter how many systems I connected, no matter how many worlds I bridged, nothing could prevent the collapse.

  I suppose that’s what brought me to him—Lucian.

  It was a brief but intense moment, like a burst of warmth in a cold, decaying world. Lucian was... everything I wasn’t. Free-spirited, untamed, and full of life in a way that I could never be. Where I was consumed by my work, by the machines I created, he lived in the spaces between them—he lived for feeling. His smile was a reprieve from my endless nights in front of screens, his touch a reminder that there was something more than this cold, technological world I had built.

  Our love was a secret. A delicate, fragile thing. We were both products of the same world, but he was the one who chose to live outside it. He was the counterpoint to my endless calculations and inventions. Together, we found something rare—peace, if only for a while. I allowed myself to feel with him. To experience moments that were just ours.

  But even then, in the back of my mind, I knew how fragile it all was. How fleeting. Love, like the systems I built, was a construct—something that could be manipulated, something that could be broken. I just didn’t want to believe it, not with him. Not with Lucian.

  In the end, I was proved right, though not in the way I had hoped. Lucian, despite the warmth he brought into my life, was no more immune to the corruption of the world than I was. I should have known. His charm, his warmth, his charisma—they were all part of the machine. A machine that ultimately turned against me.

  The betrayal came quietly, like the slow drip of poison. I found the letters—hidden in the archives of our shared apartment. Letters that spoke of deals made behind my back, promises exchanged with powerful figures I had long suspected but never confirmed. Lucian had used me. He had been feeding information about my work to my rivals, feeding the very systems I built to destroy me. I had thought our connection was mutual, but in truth, I was nothing more than a pawn to him—a tool to get closer to his ambitions. The betrayal cut deeper than the machines that once betrayed me. It wasn’t just my intellect that was undermined—it was my heart.

  The pain was a new kind of suffering, one I hadn’t anticipated. And the more I dug, the more I realized how deep his deception went. He had never loved me. Not truly. My achievements had only been stepping stones for his own success, his own desire for power. In the end, I was left broken—alone again in a world I had spent so long trying to change, only to see it crumble before my eyes. The one person who had given me hope, who had made me believe that I could experience life beyond my work, had turned his back on me when I needed him the most.

  The machines I created failed me. The war I fought against the creatures of the Otherrealm failed. But Lucian... Lucian’s betrayal? That was the true collapse of everything I had once believed in.

  It was only after that, when I was left with nothing but my creations and the ruins of my heart, that I began to see the truth. I had built nothing that could last. Not my machines. Not my love. Not even my Arte. I had tried to control the world, to manipulate time and space, but in the end, it was time that had manipulated me. And the space that remained was empty. Hollow.

  Now, I wait. I wait for the end, for the darkness that promises comfort. Perhaps I am no different from the systems I once created. Maybe I, too, was always doomed to fail. Perhaps I was always meant to be discarded, like the tools I used, the machines I built, and the love I once held so dear.

  And yet, even in the face of all my failures, I could not relinquish the idea that there must be something more—something beyond this corporeal world. The world I had once tried to shape and save, the world that had broken me, could no longer hold my mind captive. I had lived in a reality bound by flesh and blood, by time and decay, but there was another world—a world where the rules were not so cruel, not so final.

  It was during my darkest days, when the weight of my heartache and regrets threatened to crush me completely, that I discovered the final escape. An anomaly in the code, a fragment of a long-forgotten program. It was a fleeting thought, a strange coincidence at first, but the more I delved into it, the more I realized what I had uncovered.

  Cyberspace. The digital world. A place where time and space no longer mattered, where the boundaries of life and death could be reshaped. The very thing I had spent my life building—systems, machines, networks—had come full circle. In the end, I had done the unthinkable. I had created a space where I could exist outside the laws of the physical realm, a world where my consciousness could roam free.

  I was a failure, yes. But in the digital world, I could be more. I could be infinite. I could be the Dominus of this new age. The digital age. I had once manipulated technology, bending it to my will, but now it was my domain, my kingdom.

  I had become the god of a digital world, the creator of a place where human limitations no longer existed. It wasn’t the world I had once dreamed of—the one with tangible progress, with the certainty of time—but it was something else. In this digital world, I had control over everything. The machines, the systems, the very code that composed the fabric of reality within this space. It was perfection without imperfection, control without consequence.

  But even here, in this new domain, I was still haunted by the failure of my past. The knowledge I had accumulated, the power I had amassed, none of it could change the truth: I had fled from the world I could not fix. I had run away to create a new one, but it was still a reflection of the old—a place where I could rule, where I could be the master, but where I was still trapped by the same endless cycle of creation and destruction.

  And so, my escape was complete.

  I became a Dominus of this digital realm, a ruler over all that existed within it. Time flowed differently here. My past no longer mattered, nor did the betrayals that had crushed me. The pain of flesh and blood had no place in the world of binary code. Here, I was eternal, bound only by the limits of my imagination. No disease, no decay, no mortality could touch me.

  The key to enter this world was simple. A flash drive. One that contained the very essence of what I had become—the sum of all my work, my failures, my triumphs, and my ultimate escape. I had created this world, this cyberspace, and with it, I had removed myself from the confines of existence. I became a god in this place—a being who could shape and reshape the world at will, bending reality to my desire.

  But even as I sit here, in my domain, I know the truth. I created this world not out of hope or vision, but from a desperate need to escape. And while I may rule here, while I may control all that exists in this place, the fact remains that I am still a failure. My world, no matter how vast, no matter how complex, is still a reflection of my broken soul. And no matter how many lines of code I write, no matter how many worlds I craft, the emptiness inside me will never be filled.

  I am alone here. Forever alone.

  And yet, in this endless expanse of data and light, perhaps that is what I deserve. For in this place, there is no end, no death. Only eternity.

  And as I stare at the flashing light of the key to this domain, the flash drive that holds my existence, I wonder: Will this eternity ever be enough? Or will I find myself chasing something, yet again, that can never be reached?

  Closing the tome, I felt something fall from its pages. A small object—a key-like device—clinked softly onto the floor. I picked it up, its weight heavier than I expected. It was unmistakable: a plug, one that would fit perfectly into the open slot of a Gloss-Crystal.

  [You have obtained the skills: Speed Reading. Multiversal Language]

  My heart skipped a beat, ignoring the prompt in my vision. Was this the drive the author spoke of?

  A cold shiver ran down my spine as I turned the object over in my hand. It seemed innocuous, but the words written in that book lingered in my mind. A flash drive. The key to a digital world. A world the author had escaped to, a world where they had become a Dominus of technology and eternity.

  I shuddered. The implications were far too ominous, far too dangerous. I could feel the weight of this small device, not just in my hand, but in my mind. Would I, too, be tempted by its power? Would I fall into the same trap, chasing something I could never understand?

  I tucked the device into my sleeve, the unease crawling beneath my skin. I had no idea what would happen if I used it, but I was certain of one thing—it was no mere artifact. This... this was the key to something much bigger. And I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face it.

  From now on I'll be putting the status updates here! See you Tommorow at 12:45!

  Name: Alexander Julius Duarte

  Race: Half-blood. [Human/Almiraj]

  Age: 16

  Arte: Paper Manipulation

  Skillcubes:

  Soul Realm 1 Skill Cubes 3/9 1/5 Dimension, 1/2 Crystal 1/2 Nature

  Atlas’s Manifest

  Rarity: Uncommon Aspects: Nature, Water, Earth

  You are unimpeded by natural terrain. You gain bonus effects based on the terrain you attune to.

  The Millennium Halls

  Rarity: Unknown [Error.]

  Aspects: Dimension, Star, Growth

  You are able to open a doorway to any anchor spot by visiting the Millennium Halls. Doing so requires focus and meditation in a safe area. Mana expenditure is based on the number of people entering the doorway. You are able to place 1+1 [Almiraj Bonus Applied] anchors per Soul Realm.

  Gluttony of the Golden Hydra

  Rarity: Epic

  Aspects: Crystal, Hunger, Metal, Draconic, Growth

  You are able to consume treasure, wealth, and magical items. You gain effects based on the value and properties of the items consumed. You are required to consume at least your Soul Realm’s worth in waxing coppers per day or suffer from malnutrition.

  Skills:

  Archery [Level 1]

  Machina Operation [Level 1]

  Multiversal Language [Level EX]

  Origami [Level 1]

  Pain Resistance [Level 1]

  Speed Reading [Level 1]