Bzzzt. Bzzzt.
I groaned and reached for my phone, half-expecting the shrill tone of my school alarm. Instead, a glowing notification blinked up at me.
> "Hello Thomas Dieheart, Happy Birthday! Sending you warm wishes on this special day. — Goldrain Bank."
A birthday text. From my bank.
I let the phone drop onto my chest and stared at the ceiling. Saturday morning. No school. No one waiting downstairs with cake or candles. Sixteen today—sweet sixteen, they call it. But what's sweet about a birthday when there's no one left to celebrate it with.
My name is Thomas Dieheart. Sixteen years old. No parents. No sister. A pile of inheritance papers I don't touch, and a heart that doesn't trust. People smile at me, but I never know if it's for me… or for the money.
Life hadn't always been like this. Until I was ten, my world was warm and simple: Mom's laughter, Dad's advice, my little sister's hugs. Then came the diagnosis—leukemia. Cold hospital sheets, endless chemo, the sharp sting of needles became normal.
In that darkness I found a light: Terra's Champion. A web novel about a boy named Rowan who lost his mother but swore he'd live with hope no matter what. He was everything I wasn't—kind, brave, smiling even as the world tried to break him. His story reminded me that even fragile lives could burn bright.
That story… and my family's love… gave me the strength to fight. After years of treatment and a marrow transplant from Dad, I survived. I was finally going home.
But they never came.
On the day I was supposed to leave the hospital, my parents and sister were killed in a car crash. I waited by the sliding glass doors, backpack clutched to my chest, refusing to believe the doctors. I waited until my uncle arrived alone, his face carved with grief. That's when hope died in me.
I inherited everything. My father's company. The properties. The wealth. My uncle managed it… until he didn't. One day he was gone too, taking the fortune with him.
What he couldn't take were the pieces of my past—the old house, a few untouched accounts, and the trust that covered school. I clung to those scraps like lifelines, working part-time jobs to cover the rest.
Somehow, I kept surviving.
When the nights grew heavy, I went back to Terra's Champion. I reread it from the start, clinging to Rowan's smile until the story cut off unfinished—Rowan on his deathbed, the world teetering on the brink of ruin. The author vanished, just like my family, leaving me staring at blank updates.
But fate hadn't finished with me yet.
Last month, a new game was announced—Legacy of the Scindari. A fully immersive VR world built from the bones of the unfinished novel that had once saved me. And somehow, as if the universe pitied me, I was chosen as one of its beta testers.
For the first time in years, something stirred inside me.
Maybe… just maybe… this time I'd see the ending.
Six months passed since my birthday.
On the surface, nothing much changed. I still clocked into my part-time job after school. I still dragged myself home to an empty house, one of the last properties my parents left behind. Every morning I woke with the same hollow question: what would life be like if they were still here?
But something had changed.
Every evening, after I hung up my apron and left the chatter of customers behind, there was a small spring in my step. Not because I enjoyed the work. Because of one thing that made the rest bearable: Legacy of the Scindari.
It was more than a game. It was a second home—a fully immersive world built from the story I loved. Except… this wasn't the same Terra's Champion I'd grown up with.
The developers had altered it.
A new figure had been woven into the lore: Daelan Wardell, the Visionary of the Isles. An irregularity. A face that had never existed in the original timeline. Fans on the forums raged. Boycotts were threatened. Reviews exploded. I stayed anyway. Curious.
Before I realized it, I was hooked.
Rowan Tempest—still the heart of the story—remained. But the world around him had shifted into something alive. Instead of beginning in Virelious, as the novel had, the game opened in Nova Nexus.
Nova Nexus was a city like no other. Not built on land but on an engineered island—stone, steel, magitech. Terraces spiraled upward until the Academy crowned the top like a blazing beacon. By day, wards and conduits hummed under its skin; by night, lanterns painted the sea with scattered fire.
And from the eastern skybridge, if you dared to look outward, you could see it: the Black Rupture. A wound in reality, hovering on the horizon like a malignant star. Violet miasma pulsed along its edges like a heartbeat, staining clouds and turning the sea below a perpetual gray.
The people of Nova Nexus lived in its shadow, a constant reminder that the world's end was never far. And yet the city endured—because of Daelan Wardell.
In the game's retelling, history had diverged the day he appeared. The Black Rupture should have consumed Fauntrael; in the novel, it did. But here Wardell stood against it. He contained the wound, unified Awakeners, and for two decades led the culling in the Graveyard. He built Nova Nexus as sanctuary and symbol, daring humanity to live within sight of annihilation and still thrive.
But in the twenty-first year, everything unraveled. The Graveyard swelled. Defenses faltered. And when the line broke, Daelan Wardell gave his life to hold it.
Betrayal. Incompetence. A hero undone not by his enemies but by the allies who failed him.
The Academy he had been building was completed in the wake of his sacrifice to honor him, a memorial to his sacrifice and a beacon for the future—founded with the hope that it would one day raise heroes like him. And when its gates finally reopened, Rowan Tempest—and others destined for legend—would step inside.
That rewrite should have been everything fans dreamed of. It was tragic. Bold. Alive.
But I was in the minority.
Reviews were harsh. The community fractured. And tonight, when I got home, a final message waited.
> Dear Tester,
We regret to inform you that Legacy of the Scindari will officially shut down at 11:59 PM tonight.
Thank you for being part of our journey.
I sat there, staring at the screen. Part of me had known. The forums were quiet. Patches rare. The spark was gone. But knowing and seeing are different things. The words hit like a hammer.
So I did the only thing I could.
I logged in. One last time.
I wandered Nova Nexus—lanterns flickering in artificial dusk. I passed the statue of Daelan Wardell at the harbor, his stone eyes fixed for all time on the Rupture. I fought beside Rowan a few more times. When the clock struck midnight I whispered my goodbyes as the world dissolved into static.
Back in my room, I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. My voice cracked as I said to no one:
"All good things must come to an end, huh?"
But I couldn't have been more wrong.
I woke the next morning to a truth that stole the breath from my lungs.
This wasn't the book.
This wasn't even reality.
I was on Astra, in the world of Legacy of the Scindari.
Not when Rowan's story ended, not even where it began.
But a year before his journey would ever start.
The thought clawed at my mind, absurd, impossible… yet undeniable.
I needed proof. Something I could see, something I could use to confirm.
My lips parted, the words trembling out in a whisper:
"Status Window."