Game 2: New World
The first thing a person saw when they opened their eyes was not pain, which was what happened with Kyle. His lungs are never stabbed, he does not feel any weight pulling at each breath, he does not feel his bones aching.
Instead, he felt softness. Velvet-heavy sheets covered his body and ate him inside, in a way that hospital linen could never do. He believed a confused instant that he had fallen into a dream of morphine, that hallucination which cloaks agony in a mist. But this… this was different.
The air was not disinfected. It was hot and heavy on perfume, slightly smelling of wood polish and smoke. The hospitals were never as richly smelling. The sound of machines, of rushing voices, of the metallic sting of bleach fill the hospitals. Here there were only the crackling of fire in the distance and the ticking of a golden clock.
The fingers on the fabric were touching the fabric below him. Velvet. Neither cotton, nor sterile sheeting that scratches his flesh. This was deep and thick and embroidered with gold. The bed was too soft, too comfortable. He lost himself in it as though it desired to retain him.
There was confusion that piqued at the fringe of his mind. His second was more incisive, fear.
Gradually he brought himself to erect position, and girded himself against the old stabbing pain in the chest, the adverse contemplation of his body failure. Never went in one way the pain. His arms and legs were heavier, stronger. All movements were strangely accurate, as though that body he inhabited was not his own. His blood was not flowing in the same way, more rapidly, with a vigour that was not his own.
He stretched out his legs out of bed, bare feet, forcing their way through polished wooden floors which were warmed as though fire were beneath them. Impossible. Squeaky of cold tile, This was something else entirely.
And then he saw the room.
It was enormous, absurdly so. A ceiling arched above him, chandeliers dripping crystal that caught the firelight and scattered it into fractured rainbows. A carpet spread across the floor, deep red stitched with golden threads forming beasts, swords, emblems he couldn't name. Curtains heavy as armor covered windows stretching higher than any he'd ever seen, their edges embroidered with a crest: a black serpent coiled around a broken spear.
Something about it struck him like déjà vu. His heart gave one hard thump. He didn't know the crest, not here, not now, but somewhere in the haze of his memory, he had seen it.
Drawn like a moth, he moved toward a tall mirror framed in obsidian stone. For a heartbeat, he almost refused to look, terrified of what would meet him. But curiosity was stronger. He lifted his eyes.
The reflection staring back wasn't Kyle.
The face was pale, sharp, aristocratic in a way his had never been. Hair, black as ink, spilled in perfect disorder across a smooth forehead. Eyes like storm glass. grey, cold, intelligent, carrying a heaviness no twenty-one-year-old should bear. The bones weren't frail, the skin wasn't hollow. This wasn't the body of a dying man. This was someone new. Someone dangerous.
His breath hitched.
"What… the hell?" The voice slipped out of his mouth, and even that betrayed him. Deeper. Stronger. Steadier. It wasn't his voice at all.
And then he heard it.
Like a whisper carved into the inside of his skull. A name.
DeKalb.
It echoed once. Then again, louder. Until it filled every hollow in his head.
DeKalb von Lythop.
His chest constricted. He stumbled back from the mirror, pulse hammering against ribs that felt suddenly too alive, too powerful. The name wasn't his. It belonged to someone else. Someone he knew.
He knew that name.
Memories crashed through him, dialogue boxes, cutscenes, hours of gameplay. Lore carved into the back of his brain from years of replaying Travellers.
The Lythops. A family whispered about in shadows, their blood tangled with the Syndicate. the most infamous criminal network in the game's world. They weren't assassins-for-hire or simple mercenaries. They were architects of chaos. Every generation gave birth to monsters of blade or spell, and those who lived long enough became legends written in blood.
To cross a Lythop was to sign your own folklore-worthy death.
And DeKalb? He wasn't just one of them. He was the cursed one. The youngest son.
Kyle forced himself to remember. He dragged details from the depths of memory, unwilling but unable to stop. DeKalb was born with nothing. no spark of magic, no instinct with a sword, no divine blessing. In a family where brilliance was the baseline, he was a void. Nothing but a disappointment.
And disappointment curdled into resentment. Into hate. Into a desperation so deep he reached for what was forbidden. He made a pact with something beyond mortal comprehension.
That pact twisted him, turned him into one of the darkest villains in Travellers. His hand lit the match that burned kingdoms. His shadow toppled nations. His curse poisoned bloodlines. And when the climax came, it was Felicia, the game's radiant heroine, who drove a blade through his heart to end it all.
Kyle's stomach dropped like a stone.
Of all the avatars, of all the roles fate could have thrown him into… why this one? Why the cursed youngest child who was doomed from the start?
His hand rose instinctively to his chest. The heartbeat there was steady. Too steady. Too strong. His lungs pulled in air without wheezing, without the iron taste of blood. For the first time in years, he was whole. Alive.
And yet dread coiled around his throat like a noose. Because he remembered the ending. He knew how DeKalb's story went.
This wasn't just playing Travellers. This was becoming its villain. A villain with no escape written into the script.
The fire cracked behind him, but its warmth didn't touch the chill crawling his skin. He stumbled backward toward the bed, tripping over the edge of the carpet, his breaths quick, shallow, panicked.
"This… this can't be real," he whispered. The room gave him no answer. The golden clock ticked on. The serpent crest glared down from the curtains, patient, eternal.
And the name. DeKalb von Lythop. kept pounding through his skull. Not a name. Not anymore. A sentence.
He remembered how the prologue of Travellers had described DeKalb's first step toward darkness:
"It felt like a crash landing into shadow."
And now, staring at his stolen reflection, Kyle finally understood.
No. DeKalb understood.