The man in the apartment was Anthony Parker.
Just your average twenty two years old shut-in .
An unremarkable introvert trying his best to navigate through life.
But he was not always like that.
Anthony Parker had once been a good man. Not extraordinary. Not heroic. Just decent.
He lived alone in a narrow apartment that smelled faintly of instant noodles and aging paperbacks. Clothes were folded badly over a chair rather than left on the floor. The room was cluttered, but not enough to call it dirty.
Anthony noticed everything.
He simply lacked the will to correct it.
He had been adopted at four. Too young to remember abandonment, old enough to understand kindness. The Parker family never treated him differently. They were patient, ordinary, sincere in the ways that mattered.
They encouraged him.They supported him.
They trusted him.
For years, that was enough.
Anthony loved novels long before he understood why.
Stories felt… familiar.
Certain scenes struck him harder than they should have. Certain lines lingered longer than they ought to. Sometimes, as a child, he would dream of cities burning beneath twin crimson moons of horns, of betrayal, of something vast and broken.
He never told his parents.
Children who speak of burning skies are taken to doctors.
So he read quietly. Imagined quietly. Dreamed quietly.
At fifteen, he began writing.
By seventeen, he was good.
By twenty-two, he was tired.
Not of writing, but of life.
His parents had died five years earlier in an accident.
A phone call and a white hospital corridor that smelled of antiseptic and finality.
However, Anthony did not collapse because of this.
Neither did he cry for his dead foster parents nor fly into a rage over his fate.
He simply gave up.
College became optional. Ambition became negotiable. He retreated politely from the world one missed opportunity at a time.
And in that quiet retreat, Ashes of Divinity was born.
His first and only novel. Written from fragments of recurring dreams. A quiet attempt to make sense of images that refused to leave him.
The novel featured an advanced world named Abysscyra.
It was a cruel world capable of swallowing everything.
Even its saviors.
In it, sacrifice mattered more than anything.
Even the main characters had no plot armor.
Death remained permanent. Victory was costly.
Even at the end, the hero won.
But not without paying the price with his own life.
Not without losing something irreplaceable.
Readers called it too dark and heavy even for adults.
The novel failed not because it lacked quality.
It simply failed to find the audience it deserved.
Years later, a gaming company acquired the rights for a high-budget adaptation.
They saw the potential in the novel. They poured enormous resources into the development of the game.
The project was heavily marketed globally.
Anthony was also allowed to join the project not out of pride, but necessity.
And because something about that world still pulled at him, he joined the game's team.
He was named the symbolic head of a creative department formed solely for the game.
The title meant nothing. He was not truly in control of the project.
Instead of making it a single-player role-playing game, the developers decided to turn it into an open-world game with various endings, despite Anthony's opposition.
The various game routes were, of course, planned and designed by Anthony because the developers did not want to change the source material too much.
Soon the game was released across the world.
The starting sales were astonishing, almost breaking major records.
Logically, this should have been a life-changing moment for Anthony.
However, contrary to everyone's expectations and despite the record-breaking early sales,the game still flopped.
Players complained about the gameplay being too rigid.
They said the themes were too dark.
However, the most prominent complaint was about its ending.
Even after completing all the missions and side quests, players were unable to defeat the final boss. No matter what method they tried, everything failed in the end.
After waves of complaints, the project was abandoned.
The company almost went bankrupt because of the game.
Just this morning, Anthony had received his termination letter.
It now lay crumpled somewhere in the apartment, half-forgotten among empty cups and loose papers.
To distract himself, he booted the game one more time.
He failed again.
Frustrated, Anthony opened the developer chat window. The glow of the screen reflected in his tired eyes.
He typed.
Anthony:
I wrote the ending in the novel.
It was tragic, but it existed.
The game doesn't have one.
No one has cleared it.
Not a single player. Even I can't meet its requirements after all this time.
A slight delay.
Then,
Developer:
An ending exists.
Anthony leaned forward.
Anthony:
Then why can't anyone reach it?
We've tested every path.
Even I couldn't trigger it, and I know every route.
A longer pause.
Developer:
Because some endings are not designed to be won.
Only to be understood.
Anthony's jaw tightened.
Anthony:
What kind of nonsense is that?
That's not how games work.
What's the point of playing something you can't finish?
Silence.
His breathing grew heavier.
Anthony:
I built this world.
I should know its limits.
The reply came instantly.
Developer:
You built a door.
You did not build what stands behind it.
Anthony's fingers struck the keyboard harder.
Anthony:
Stop talking in riddles.
If there's a "true ending," tell me the condition.
I just want to end it. Once and for all.
The response appeared slowly, line by line.
Developer:
The ending is not triggered.
It is earned.
And not by players.
Anthony froze.
Anthony:
Then by who?
Seconds stretched.
Finally,
Developer:
Why don't you find out yourself?
The chat disconnected.
Anthony stared at the dark screen.
"…What kind of answer is that?"
He ran a hand through his hair.
He had poured years into Ashes of Divinity.
Every war. Every betrayal. Every fall.
He had carefully planned everything.
And now even he couldn't finish it.
His chest tightened slightly and his vision blurred.
His heart stumbled.
He tried to stand up but could not muster the strength.
The room tilted slightly in his view, causing him to sink back into his chair.
His breathing grew shallow. His vision blurred further.
Memories surfaced of his whole life not violently, but gently.
His parents laughing over dinner.
His father adjusting his tie before a school event.
His mother reading beside him.
The smile of the girl he once loved the most.
His unfinished life passed before his eyes like a never-ending television series.
He realized he was about to die.
Only then did he realize how he had wasted his life.
Seeing everything again made him feel sad about the pathetic way he had lived.
Tears began to flow from his eyes.
However, for some reason, they were slightly blue in color.
If I get another chance, he thought faintly,
I won't make the same mistakes again.
Darkness closed in.
Anthony Parker died at twenty-two.
However, in that very moment, the whole world came to a halt.
Outside the apartment, cars stopped mid-motion. Wind froze between buildings. A distant siren cut off in the middle of its cry.
Space split open above his lifeless body.
A hooded figure stepped through the crack.
It looked down at Anthony.
"…So here you are," the figure murmured.
There was something dangerously close to relief in its tone.
Then, softer. Mocking.
"My Lord."
A translucent card formed beside it. Runes shifted slowly, patiently—like something long overdue.
The figure exhaled.
"You always had a habit of leaving early… and leaving the hard work to others."
Anthony's body dissolved.
Not burned. Not consumed.
It simply erased.
As if the world reclaimed misplaced data.
The figure glanced around the apartment.
The entire place reeked faintly of loneliness.
"It's good to see you again… my friend."
The fracture sealed.
Time resumed.
Cars began moving again.
Birds resumed flying.
The world continued normally.
Anthony Parker's apartment faded from existence along with every record of a novel called Ashes of Divinity.
And somewhere beyond mortal sight,
A clock began to tick.