The man in the apartment was Anthony Parker.
Just a normal twenty-two-year-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 dirty—fatigue, not collapse.
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 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.
Of life.
His parents had died five years earlier in an accident. Sudden. Clinical. Irreversible. A phone call and a white hospital corridor that smelled of antiseptic and finality.
He did not collapse.
He did not rage.
He simply stopped advancing.
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 Divinitywas 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.
Cruel. Structured. Unforgiving.
In it, sacrifice mattered. Death remained permanent. Victory was costly.
Even at the end, the hero won.
But not cleanly.
Not happily.
Not without losing something irreplaceable.
Readers called it too dark. Too heavy. Too unfair.
It 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.
Global marketing.
Massive investment.
Anthony joined the project—not out of pride, but necessity.
And because something about that world still pulled at him.
He was named the symbolic head of a creative department formed solely for the game.
The title meant little.
Control meant less.
The game released.
And failed.
Too rigid gameplay. No "perfect route." No secret salvation.
After waves of complaints, the project was abandoned.
This morning, Anthony has received his termination letter.
It now lay crumpled somewhere in the apartment, half-forgotten among empty cups and loose paper.
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.
And now even he couldn't finish it.
His chest tightened.
Not violently.
Just enough.
His heart stumbled. Corrected. Then faltered again.
He tried to stand.
The room tilted.
He sank back into his chair.
Breath shallow.
Vision blurring.
Memories surfaced—not violently, but gently.
His parents laughing over dinner.
His father adjusting his tie before a school event.
His mother reading beside him.
His unfinished manuscript.
His unfinished life.
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.
Time did not continue.
It paused.
Outside the apartment, cars halted mid-motion. Wind froze between buildings. A distant siren cut off mid-note.
Space split open above his lifeless body.
Clean.
Deliberate.
A hooded figure stepped through the crack.
It looked down at Anthony.
Still.
Then—
Recognition.
"…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—simply erased. As if the world reclaimed misplaced data.
The figure glanced around the apartment.
Lonely.
Human.
Temporary.
"It's good to see you again… my friend."
The fracture sealed.
Time resumed.
Cars moved.
Wind breathed.
The world forgot.
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.