"Haah… haaa… haa…" Azalea panted, eyes flickering open to the suffocating darkness.
"Fuck… haha… fuck," he laughed bitterly, the sound hollow, fraying at the edges. As always, the first thing to greet him upon returning to consciousness was pain—mind-shattering, soul-devouring pain.
No.
This was worse than before.
His face.
Agony rippled across it, sharp and unrelenting. Something was terribly wrong.
"Ahhh!" he cried out, the scream torn from his throat as the torment worsened. And then—understanding dawned.
His face was burned. Charred beyond recognition.
He couldn't see it. But he could feel it in every twitch, every small motion of the muscles beneath his scorched skin. His face had been cooked. Literally.
"Again… yet again," he sighed and closed his eyes.
But something else gnawed at him.
Wait… why can't I move? he thought, suddenly alert.
This wasn't like the immobility he'd experienced when waking up outside the school, back when his injuries were physical—bone-deep and cruel, yet still within reason. No, this was different.
"My legs…" His eyes flew open.
And realization struck him.
He wasn't lying down like before.
No.
He was… standing? No—suspended.
Mid-air.
"No…" he whispered, head tilting painstakingly to the right. Chains. Thick, rusted, wrapped tightly around his wrist.
His vision cleared in a burst of adrenaline. He turned to the other side.
The same thing.
A room. Dim, oppressive.
He was chained. Bound from end to end. Suspended in the air like some kind of offering.
He looked down—
—and his brain stalled.
It refused to process what he was seeing.
This… this isn't real.
It couldn't be.
It was illogical.
It was impossible.
Not only was he chained up… but his legs—
His legs were gone.
Chopped off.
"HeheheheheHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" He laughed. Laughed so hard it shook the chains, so violently it felt like madness was blooming inside him.
Wow.
Just… wow.
So even now, there was no mercy.
No reprieve.
He was still going to die a stupid, pathetic death.
Haah…
How hilarious.
How fucking hilarious.
He laughed.
And laughed.
He kept laughing.
But then—
Sobs.
Even as laughter echoed from his throat, the tears came.
Inevitable.
Hot.
Stinging.
His legs were fucking chopped off. No amount of laughter could bury that truth.
The pain… it all made sense now. Why his body had been screaming from the moment he woke up.
But then…
How was he still alive after all this?
Maybe some kind of potion was keeping him from bleeding out. Some cursed elixir meant not to heal, but to prolong the suffering.
Whoever did this—whoever orchestrated this—wanted to break him.
To shatter him so completely that he wouldn't even remember who he was.
Sobs.
Weak.
God, he hated the tears.
Hated this feeling of helplessness.
Hated being this pathetic.
But that weakness… it had always been a part of him.
Ever since then.
Ever since the trauma from his past life.
And in that moment, his thoughts drifted—backwards.
To his stepmother.
To his siblings.
To the blatant favoritism, the everyday inequality shoved in his face like a knife.
The frustration.
The loneliness.
He remembered the day he left—quietly, unnoticed.
Just like he expected.
No one cared.
No one came looking.
The loneliness only grew heavier, colder.
He juggled three part-time jobs in college, scraping through each day. He eventually saved enough for a decent apartment—far better than the cramped one-room cell he'd lived in after selling nearly everything he owned.
He bought a second-hand TV. A console. A few small comforts.
And it was then—then—that things had finally started to look up.
That's when he got the Game.
Arcane Resonance.
Seven parts.
And a sequel.
The game was massive. Immersive. A world so rich it made him forget the crushing silence of his real one.
A world of magic.
Of infinite possibilities.
It started simple—just humans.
But with each installment, the narrative expanded. More races. More lore. And with it came the harsh truth: humans were the weakest race of all.
A fact driven home in the third game—Arcane Legacy.
But the memory of the Game wasn't all that surfaced.
No.
There was something else.
The true reason he died.
His first and greatest mistake.
Meeting her.