Ever since childhood, the idea of being a hero clung to me like a stubborn shadow.
People said it was childish, a phase, something I would grow out of. They were wrong. It grew with me, evolved, sharpened, and rotted from the inside out.Back then, "hero" meant the usual things: defeating villains, saving the world, protecting the weak, all the glossy nonsense posters and TV shows fed into a lonely kid's skull. I remember staring at those caped idiots on screen and thinking, "If I become like that, they'll have to notice me." Not admire, necessarily. Just…notice. A hero can't be ignored. That was the real fantasy. Not justice. Not righteousness. Just existence, acknowledged.It took years for me to realize I never wanted to save people.
I just wanted someone to look at me without disgust.The world, to its credit, was very consistent about making sure that never happened.My mother hated me for being born.
She never said it directly, but she didn't have to. The way her lips tightened every time I entered the room, the way her hand paused on the cupboard handle when she had to set out one more plate, the way she sighed when I coughed too loudly—as if breathing itself was an inconvenience. She had this look, half-exhaustion, half-regret, like she'd just stepped in something foul but couldn't scrape it off.My father was more direct. To him, I was a liability. A mouth that ate his money. A body that took up space. His eyes weighed me every time he saw me and always found me lacking—too weak, too slow, too stupid, too everything. He liked to remind me that if he hadn't been "tricked" into this family, his life might have meant something. In that equation, I was the error term. The miscalculation. The unwanted remainder.Friends?
No, that's too generous. I had classmates. The kind who learned your name only to see how far they could shred it in front of others.Weak.
Pathetic.
Creep.
Burden.
Punching bag.
Human stress ball.They didn't ignore me.
They acknowledged me—as an outlet. A walking target. A convenient place to dump their frustrations and bruised egos. I wasn't invisible. I was worse. I was visible only when someone needed to feel superior.They ridiculed me.
Humiliated me.
Beat me.
And slowly, methodically, they chipped away at whatever fragile scaffolding my mind was held together with.But the child version of me, that stupid, stubborn thing, still whispered, "One day, they'll see. One day, you'll become a hero and they'll regret everything. They'll love you then."That day never came.
Something else did.It happened quietly at first, like a thought you are sure you shouldn't be having.I remember the night my mother died.The official story is that it was an accident.
Technically, that isn't a lie.The house was small enough that voices didn't need walls—anger seeped through everything. That day, my father had come home furious: work trouble, money trouble, some trouble that needed a scapegoat. My mother, in return, needed hers. They had an arrangement. He shouted at her. She absorbed it, then redirected it at me."That's what you were born for," my father liked to say. "To take hits instead of me."Their fight started in the kitchen, as usual.
Plates clattered, curses flew, and my name came up like a swear word. I stayed in my room, staring at the thin door, listening to their favorite opera of blame. My existence was the background music.At some point, my mother stormed into my room.
She wanted to shout, to vent, to make me feel how miserable she was. It was routine. But something inside me that day felt…off. Like a string pulled too tight for too long finally twitching.She grabbed my arm. Harder than usual. Her nails bit into my skin."All because of you," she hissed. "You ruined everything."Something snapped.It wasn't dramatic. There were no flickering lights, no ominous music, no supernatural awakening. Just a tired boy's hand closing around his mother's throat.At first, I think even I believed it was just to push her away. To stop the yelling. To stop the pain. But my fingers did not let go.Her eyes widened. Hands clawed at my arms. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish dragged onto land. I watched her struggle, and for the first time, she was looking directly at me. Not through me. Not past me. At me.Me.Her son.In that moment, I realized something horrible:
I liked that look.When she stopped moving, my heart was racing so fast I thought it would explode. My hands trembled. I waited for guilt, for horror, for the crushing weight of what I'd done.It didn't come.I waited for tears.
They didn't come either.Instead, something else bloomed: a strange, light warmth. Not happiness. Not exactly. More like…relief.Then my father walked in.He saw her collapsed on the floor, her neck at a wrong angle, her eyes open but emptied. He stared at her. Then at me. The emotions on his face flickered from confusion to realization to rage."You—"He didn't finish.Later, when the police asked, I told them I didn't remember much. That things were a blur. Shock, trauma, all that. Convenient, isn't it? Reality, however, is much clearer.He lunged.I moved first.That second kill was not an accident.
My hands knew what to do. My body remembered the rhythm. My father was stronger, but he was also drunk, reckless, and unprepared for the idea that the "weak" son he'd been hitting for years could hit back with intent to end him.The struggle was messy. Loud. Clumsy. But in the end, he lay there the same way my mother did—silent, still, eyes open in a stare that finally, finally, was fixed on me.I stood over them, breathing hard. My chest hurt from exertion. My throat felt dry. Adrenaline buzzed in my veins like electricity.Then it hit me.Joy.Not little joy. Not the cheap happiness of finding a dropped coin or passing an exam by pure luck. No. It was deeper, darker, more saturated. A joy so thick it felt like I could drown in it.Do you know why?Because for the first time since I was born, both of my parents were looking at me and only me. Yes, their eyes were dead. Yes, their bodies were broken. But that didn't matter.They were mine in that moment.
My mother.
My father.Acknowledging me.I knelt down beside them, gently moved their limbs, arranged them almost tenderly. I hugged them both—a clumsy, awkward embrace of cooling flesh and stiffening limbs—and rested my head on my mother's shoulder.It was the most peaceful sleep I'd ever had.When I woke up, they were still dead.
Ironically, that was the first stable thing in my life.Practical concerns came next. I wasn't stupid. I knew what murder meant. Prison. Death sentence. Or, if people were feeling creative, a lifetime of being displayed as a monster in news headlines.I didn't want that.I wanted freedom.
I wanted to live.So I dragged their bodies out, sweating, panting, muscles screaming, and somehow managed to dump them into a lake far from home. The place was quiet, isolated, the water dark enough to swallow secrets. Watching them sink felt…strange.Sad? Maybe a little. Nostalgic? Perhaps. But mostly, it felt necessary."Rest well," I remember whispering. "You finally did something useful for me."Three days later, the bodies were found.The police came. Knocked on the door. Asked questions.Where were you that night?
How was your relationship with your parents?
Did you notice anything strange recently?I had already rehearsed my answers for this imaginary conversation long before they actually arrived. It's funny how often you imagine being confronted for your existence when everyone treats you like a mistake. The script was ready, polished by years of paranoia.I talked about my parents like a dutiful son.
I trembled in the right places, let my voice crack at the right words, even forced a dry sob or two. They saw a fragile, weak-hearted boy, broken by tragedy, far too timid and small to do something as horrifying as murder.They left.
They thought I was innocent.That was their first mistake.
Their second was letting me walk away completely free.Because that day, after the door closed and their footsteps faded, I understood something crucial.I would never be a hero in my own story.
Not in anyone else's either.I was a villain.
And being a villain was…fine. More than fine. It was liberating.Heroes save people for applause. Villains break things to feel alive. Heroes carry expectations. Villains carry nothing but their own desires.And since the world had never once hesitated to hurt me, I felt no need to hesitate before hurting it back.My killing spree did not start grand. There were no elaborate schemes, no dramatic monologues atop skyscrapers. It began with something simple.A classmate.One of the usual ones. A boy who loved pushing me around, loved the way the classroom laughed when I fell. Loved the way teachers looked away because acknowledging it would mean doing something about it.He walked home alone.
I followed.It wasn't even difficult. People rarely notice someone like me trailing behind. Being invisible had its perks after all. The city noises swallowed our footsteps. Streetlights flickered above like indifferent eyes.The first stab was clumsy.
The second was better.
By the third, I understood where to aim.No witnesses.
Just quiet, then silence, then a crimson pattern on the ground that would make tomorrow's headlines.With each kill after that, I refined my technique.I improved my weapon choices.
I studied routines, patterns, blind spots in CCTV coverage.
I learned how to change my appearance just enough—different clothes, posture, sometimes a mask, sometimes a simple hood.I also improved my lies. Polished my expressions. Practiced appearing harmless, pitiful, forgettable. People see what they expect. They expected a monster to look like a monster. I looked like a background character.I wasn't killing at random. Each target had a reason: a bully, an abuser, a parasite, someone whose existence seemed to echo the same cruelty the world had shown me. But over time, the reasons blurred. At some point, the "why" stopped mattering as much as the act itself.Eight years passed like that.Classmates.
Teachers who looked away when they shouldn't have.
Neighbors who liked shouting at their families.
Strangers whose eyes carried the same contempt my parents had.With every life I took, I evolved. My methods became cleaner. My trail, fainter. The police, bless their underfunded hearts, tried their best. They really did. But they were always one step behind and several IQ points short.Eventually, the country knew my existence.News anchors spoke of the mysterious serial killer with hushed urgency. Online forums exploded with theories. People whispered at bus stops and locked their doors earlier at night.They called me "The Faceless Killer."It was ironic, really.
All my life, I had begged to be seen, yet the identity that finally made me known was defined by the absence of a face. But I liked it. Being feared felt…right. It was recognition without the burden of expectation. People finally adjusted their behavior because of me. They were cautious, anxious, alive in their fear.And yet, even that eventually grew stale.I stopped killing when I was twenty-six. Not because of an epiphany or moral enlightenment, but because I found something new.A hobby.Reading webnovels.
Playing games.The irony isn't lost. A villain drowning in fictional worlds about heroes, villains, protagonists, and chosen ones. Tales where pain had meaning and arcs had closure. Where suffering was a narrative device, not just random background noise.Then I discovered it.
A game.An RPG, academy-themed fantasy game called "ECLIPSED FATES."I still don't know who thought up that name, but credit where it's due—it fits.It was, without exaggeration, the best game I had ever played. The graphics were sharp, almost lovingly detailed. The game mechanics were deep and punishing, rewarding patience, strategy, and obsession. The story was rich, full of branching choices, complex characters, and secrets hidden in item descriptions and obscure dialogue.I spent six months on it.I quit my part-time job.
Cut down on going outside unless absolutely necessary.
Days blurred into nights. Nights blurred into a haze of glowing screens and keyboard clicks. Killing in the real world had made me feel alive. Killing in the game reflected something else back at me: control. Clean control. No mess, no bodies, no cops.For a while, I thought, "If I had found this earlier, maybe I wouldn't have killed so many people."Then again, knowing myself, I probably would've done both.Everything was perfect—until it wasn't.The ending came.Not the triumphant, world-saving, hero-standing-on-a-mountaintop ending.
Not the bittersweet, "we tried our best but lost something important" ending.
No.After all my choices, all my grinding, all my near-perfect decisions, the game delivered this:The world got destroyed.Just…gone. Everything and everyone turned to dust. The heroes failed. The villains laughed. Or maybe they died too. Hard to tell when everything exploded into glowing cinematic doom.I stared at the screen, jaw slightly slack."…What the fuck is this ending?"Six months.
Six obsessive, sleepless, reality-avoiding months.
And the reward for my dedication was a beautifully animated apocalypse."The bastards who made this… what were they thinking?" I muttered, leaning back in my chair. "Did they wake up one morning and say, 'Let's waste everyone's time in HD'?"I wanted to punch the monitor and then myself for caring so much.Then the screen flickered.A new window popped up. Different from the standard UI, the font sharper, the background darker.[CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE REACHED THE BAD ENDING.]
[YOU HAVE BEEN QUALIFIED FOR THE HIDDEN ROUTE.]
[YOU HAVE BEEN GRANTED FIVE WISHES.]
[YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN AS THE 13TH HERO.]
[YOU WILL ONLY BE ALLOWED TO USE THE WISHES IF YOU PLAY THE HIDDEN ROUTE.]
[DO YOU WANT TO PLAY?]
{YES} / {NO}I stared.Then I laughed."Ha…ha…ha ha ha ha…"Of course. Of course. It was so cliché it looped back around to being interesting again."I fucking knew it," I said, wiping the corners of my eyes. "It's always like this in transmigration stories. Hidden route, wishes, hero count. I've read enough webnovels to see this coming from orbit."Five wishes.
Thirteenth hero.
Hidden route.Someone out there was either a genius or a thief with good taste.I looked at the glowing {YES} and {NO} options.Hero, huh?In another life, that word might have hurt. Now, it just felt like a costume. One more role to try on."Why not?" I muttered. "If this is real, great. If it's a prank, at least it's a creative one.""Yes," I said out loud, for no reason other than dramatics.I moved the cursor and clicked {YES}.The instant my finger pressed down, a sharp pain clawed through my chest.It was sudden, vicious, like an invisible hand reaching into my ribcage and squeezing my heart with malicious glee. My breath hitched. The room spun. The monitor's glow stretched into streaks of light.My hand slipped off the mouse.
I clutched my chest, stumbling out of the chair, knocking it over. The floor rushed up to meet me.So this is a heart attack, I thought, as my vision narrowed into a tunnel.
How anticlimactic.Years of killing others, and in the end, I died alone in front of a game screen.My last sight in that world was the monitor, where the message still glowed:[WELCOME TO THE HIDDEN ROUTE, HERO.]The darkness closed in, and for the first time in a long, long while, I felt something almost like anticipation.