Damn it. I failed once again to pass the promotion that I truly believed would be different this time.
I said it in a low voice that I could barely hear myself, then cursed my luck again as I stared at the screen in front of me, which showed nothing but yet another proof of my repeated failure.
A small icon appeared in the corner of the game screen, but it was enough to tell me that the attempt had ended before I reached the required point, that time had run out, and that everything I had done over the past hours had been wasted without any reward.
My name is Reis, and the truth I share with no one is that I chose this name myself, in a moment when I wanted to own something that no one could take away from me.
I do not remember when I made that decision, but I am certain that I was looking for a name that did not belong to anyone else and did not carry a history that was not mine.
Where do I begin telling my life story, and where could a story end when I never felt it truly began the right way.
I am twelve years old, and I live with my father in a small house that feels far too small to hold two people.
The house is cold even on days that are supposed to be warm, and silent even when the noise is loud enough to disturb the neighbors.
I spend most of my time reading novels that carry me far away from this place, and playing completion based games with vast worlds that ask permission from no one.
I love places you can enter without questions, and paths where no one stops me to ask why I chose this route and not another.
My room is narrow enough to make breathing feel exhausting at times, and its dark walls absorb the light no matter how wide I open the window.
The air inside the room is heavy, and the floor is cold beneath my body even when I sit on it for long periods without moving.
I was sitting on the floor with my back pressed against the wall, feeling its roughness through a thin shirt that no longer protected me from anything.
Around me were many books, novels scattered without any real order, some open to pages I had stopped at days ago, others closed and waiting their turn.
In front of me was an old television connected to a game console running with a low hum, and beside it were game discs piled on top of one another after years of repeated use.
I placed the headset over my head and connected it to the screen, isolating myself from every other sound that could reach me from outside this world.
The sound flowing through the headset was the only thing that felt like it truly belonged to me in that moment.
I have loved novels for a long time, but there is one novel that settled deep inside me and never left, no matter how hard I tried to distract myself with anything else.
That novel is called Althreis, a name that echoes in my mind even when I am not holding the book.
Althreis is not just a novel to me, but an entire world where characters move, grow, collapse, and return without ever asking for explanation.
What is strange is that the game I am playing now is directly connected to this novel, to the point where understanding one depends entirely on the other.
I was trying to clear a stage known for its difficulty inside the game, a stage that shows no mercy for mistakes no matter how small.
The world is open across five continents discovered so far, and I must collect five consecutive keys without dying a single time during the attempt.
There is a fixed time limit that cannot be exceeded, and any simple mistake means returning to the beginning without exception.
The reward the game promised me was a new continent and another vast expansion of the world, along with another reward in the form of a message sent to my in game mailbox containing five hundred new chapters of the Althris novel.
This deep connection between the novel and the game is the true reason behind their wide popularity among both players and readers.
Whoever succeeds in clearing the game earns the story, and whoever dives into the story understands the secrets of the game more deeply.
But I failed again, and gained nothing but the accumulated exhaustion in my body.
I felt a clear heaviness in my head, and the dark circles under my eyes refused to fade no matter how much I tried to convince myself that I was fine.
My body is weak, and I know that well, and I do not need a mirror to confirm this truth.
I heard my stomach growl clearly, so I slowly lifted my head toward the closed door of the room.
I stared at the door for a long time, and felt a tremor spread through my limbs before deciding to stay where I was and not go out.
I smiled faintly despite the cold of the room, and restarted the game while ignoring the growing sensation of hunger.
Time passed without me noticing, and I raised the volume in the headset to its maximum until everything else around me disappeared.
I was completely immersed, and there were no longer continents or keys or time, only a single screen devouring my attention.
I did not hear the continuous knocking on the door of the room, and no sound reached me to warn me that someone was outside.
Suddenly I felt a harsh hand grabbing the collar of my shirt with violent force, lifting my body off the ground before I could understand what was happening or why everything had turned upside down so terrifyingly fast.
The headset fell from my head and hit the floor near my feet, and the moment I raised my eyes, fear took over my entire body when I realized that the person standing in front of me was none other than my father.
He was holding me with obvious brutality, shaking me so hard that I lost my balance, then throwing me against the wall without hesitation or warning, as if my presence before him required no mercy at all.
He screamed in my face loudly, demanding that I open the door every time he called me, his voice heavy with anger and tension whose source I no longer ignored.
My father is tall and broad shouldered, and a foul smell rises from him even before he speaks, a smell that has become so familiar that I now instinctively associate it with the harm that is about to come.
His eyes were frighteningly red, his face grim and stripped of any human expression, and his hands were hard, knowing neither hesitation nor retreat.
I did not hear him knocking on the door, and I did not realize that he had returned home early that day, a simple mistake for which I paid the full price.
Fear completely paralyzed my tongue, and I could not respond or defend myself no matter how hard I tried to gather what little courage remained inside me.
He struck me brutally and threw me onto the bed, then unfastened his belt without looking at my face or pausing even for a moment to see my trembling body.
He began whipping my back with the belt repeatedly and forcefully, and my broken pleas and loud screams did nothing to stop him or lessen the severity of what he was doing to me.
I pressed my hands over my ears tightly, because I could no longer bear hearing his voice as he screamed in my face and poured every ounce of cruelty he carried inside him onto me.
Pain spread through my body rapidly, and tears slipped from my eyes without any ability to control or hide them.
I kept telling myself that the pain would end at some point, but those words quickly lost their meaning as the beating continued without mercy.
He continued striking and shouting, accusing me of laziness and running away, then mentioned my mother in a way that made my chest tighten more than a child my age could bear.
I did not speak or answer him, because I simply no longer had anything left to say or explain.
I was a happy child in the past, and I am certain of that truth, even though those days now feel very distant.
But ever since my father lost his job and was fired from the company he depended on, everything in our lives changed gradually and cruelly.
He began spending money on gambling, searching for a quick win to restore what he had lost, but he achieved nothing except additional losses that fueled his anger and brokenness.
My mother tried to stop him more than once, endured for a short while as she attempted to save what could be saved, then left the house and never returned.
I was five years old at the time, and I did not truly understand what had happened, and I grew up without retaining any clear memory of her face or her voice.
My father got rid of everything that belonged to her, then gradually turned into a harsh alcoholic who emptied his frustration and rage on me alone.
There were many days when I found nothing to eat, and he would return home without bringing me anything because he had eaten outside.
And if the house was not clean or orderly, he would beat me and remind me that it was my responsibility after my mother ran away.
I studied for five years in primary school, then stopped, because hunger, neglect, and the absence of support were heavier than any lesson or homework.
I became a prisoner of my room, moving between novels and games in front of a small screen that never asked me why I stayed so long in front of it.
After a long time, the beating suddenly stopped. He spat on me in contempt, then left the room without looking back at me one last time.
From that moment on, I no longer saw him as my father, but as a stranger who shared the same house with me without any real bond between us.
I fell from the edge of the bed and trembled beside the window, then slowly lifted my gaze toward the sky outside the room.
There was a large tree in front of the house, its branches stretching high into the horizon and blocking part of the sky.
Sunset had arrived, and the stars began to appear between the leaves, quietly announcing the arrival of night.
I murmured in a faint voice, wondering if there was another life among those distant stars that human hands could never reach.
My eyelids grew heavy without me noticing the blood coming from my mouth or realizing the danger my small body had endured.
Under the stars, in a small cold room, my final breaths and heartbeats ended without me realizing that death had truly arrived.
And I did not know that the one who brought it to me was not a stranger, but the closest person who was supposed to protect me.