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VOLUME 1
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Leo Vance had always believed that if he were going to die, it would be in some appropriately dramatic fashion... perhaps choking on his own cynicism or being crushed under the weight of his unfulfilled literary ambitions. He had not, in his wildest nightmares, imagined that his end would come courtesy of a faulty keyboard and a can of off-brand cola.
It was a Tuesday, which seemed fitting.
Tuesdays were the most mundane of days, the forgotten middle child of the week, that nobody particularly cared about.
Rain drummed against the grimy window of his cramped studio apartment, creating a pathetic fallacy so obvious that Leo would have rejected it in his own writing. The weather seemed to mock his current predicament, as he stared at a computer screen that displayed the harsh reality of his literary career in unforgiving digital clarity.
"The Sundered Crown" had been his magnum opus, his ticket to literary stardom, his escape from the soul-crushing monotony of his day job at a customer service call center.
Eight hundred thousand words of epic fantasy, complete with prophecies, chosen ones, dark lords, and enough magical academies to populate a small continent. He had poured three years of his life into crafting what he was certain would be the next great fantasy epic.
The readership statistics told a different story. Current active readers: forty-seven. Down from last week's fifty-three. The comment section was a wasteland of lukewarm praise and increasingly hostile criticism.
"Another chapter of Kaelen being noble and brooding?" Leo read aloud from the latest comment by 'DragonSlayer69.' "When is something actually going to happen? This is slower than watching paint dry on a turtle."
Leo took a long, contemplative sip of his lukewarm cola, the fizz having died sometime around chapter four hundred and twelve. The carbonation had given up hope before he had, which said something profound about his writing that he wasn't quite ready to examine.
"Something happens," he muttered to the empty room, his voice carrying the weight of three years' worth of defensive explanations. "In chapter four hundred and seventy-three. The Siege of Blackwood Keep. It's a masterpiece of tactical world-building and character development."
The silence that followed was deafening. Even his houseplant, a half-dead fern named Gerald, seemed to judge him with its browning fronds.
Leo scrolled through more comments, each one a small dagger to his already wounded pride. 'FantasyFan2000' had written: "I've been following this story for two years and I still don't understand why the Dark Lord Malakor is evil. He just... cackles a lot? And why does Princess Seraphina need rescuing every other chapter? Doesn't she have guards?"
The criticism stung because it was accurate. Leo had fallen into every fantasy trope imaginable, and he knew it.
Malakor was evil because the plot required a villain. Seraphina needed rescuing because that's what princesses did in fantasy novels. Kaelen was noble and brooding because heroes were supposed to be noble and brooding. It was fantasy by committee, written according to a checklist of genre expectations rather than any genuine creative vision.
He had become everything he had once mocked in other authors' works.
"Fine," Leo said to his reflection in the black computer screen. "You want action? You want something to happen? I'll give you something to happen."
His fingers hovered over the keyboard, trembling slightly from too much caffeine and too little sleep. He would write a scene so gratuitously action-packed, so filled with explosions and gratuitous violence, that even DragonSlayer69 would be satisfied. He would throw every fantasy cliché into a blender and see what came out.
The words began to flow, fueled by a mixture of spite and desperation. Dragons would attack the academy. No, wait, demon dragons. With laser breath. And they would be led by Malakor's secret twin brother, who was also evil but in a different way. Maybe he would have a goatee to distinguish him from the regular Malakor.
Leo was so engrossed in his literary revenge fantasy that he didn't notice the can of cola, precariously balanced on a stack of research books about medieval warfare and dragon anatomy, beginning to wobble.
The stack had been growing for months, a testament to his dedication to authenticity in a story that featured magical talking swords and pixies who ran interdimensional postal services.
The can teetered.
Leo typed faster, his fingers flying across the keys as he described the demon dragon's attack on the academy's dining hall. The students would scatter in terror, except for Kaelen, who would stand bravely against the onslaught while delivering a stirring speech about the power of friendship and believing in yourself.
The cola can reached its tipping point.
A cascade of sugary, caffeinated liquid washed over his keyboard like a brown, sticky tsunami. Leo watched in slow-motion horror as the liquid seeped between the keys, carrying with it the dreams and aspirations of a failed fantasy author. There was a moment of perfect silence, as if the universe was holding its breath.
Then came the fizz.
Not the pleasant fizz of fresh carbonation, but the angry, electric fizz of liquid meeting circuitry. Sparks erupted from the keyboard like tiny fireworks celebrating the death of his literary career. The computer screen flickered, displaying a cascade of error messages that seemed almost poetic in their finality.
Leo's world went white.
His last coherent thought, as electricity coursed through his body and his consciousness began to fade, was a moment of perfect clarity: "Of course. Of course, this is how it ends. Death by keyboard electrocution. The most pathetic possible ending for the most pathetic possible author."
The irony was not lost on him that he was dying in a manner so cliché that he would have rejected it from his own story for being too unrealistic.
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