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The glow of the monitor was the only light in the cramped apartment, casting flickering shadows across empty energy drink cans and half-finished bags of chips. Daniel Carter's fingers trembled over the keyboard, his eyes dry and bloodshot as he guided his Dalish rogue through the final confrontation with Corypheus—**for the seventh time this week.
"Just one more run," he muttered, rubbing his temples as the Archdemon's grotesque form crumbled into the Fade. His head pounded, his vision swimming slightly, but he ignored it. "Then I'll sleep."
He hadn't. Not in days.
The cycle was always the same: finish the game, promise himself he'd rest, then immediately start a new playthrough—different choices, different romances, different builds. The thrill of Thedas was too addictive, the escape too comforting. Real life could wait.
His phone buzzed. A notification lit up the screen:
DRAGON AGE: VEILGUARD – RELEASING AT MIDNIGHT.
Daniel's heart lurched. Finally. After years of waiting, of replaying Inquisition until he could recite every line of dialogue, of dissecting every scrap of lore, the next chapter was here. He glanced at the clock—11:07 PM. Just a little longer. He could make it.
He minimized the game, pulling up the countdown timer for Veilguard. His hands shook as he reached for another energy drink, but his fingers fumbled, knocking it over. The can rolled off the desk, spilling sticky liquid across the floor.
"Ugh… damn it."
He tried to stand, but his legs buckled. A wave of dizziness crashed over him, his vision blurring at the edges. His chest tightened, a sharp, stabbing pain radiating down his left arm.
"No… no, not now—"
He gasped, clutching at his chest. His heartbeat was erratic, pounding like a drum in his ears. The room spun. His lungs refused to fill.
"I just… need to… hold on…"
His fingers twitched toward the keyboard, toward the screen, toward the world he loved so much.
But the darkness swallowed him before he could reach it.
And then—
—nothing.
---
Cold.
That was the first thing he registered. A deep, aching cold that seeped into his bones, worse than any winter night. The second thing was the throbbing pain. nauseating pulse radiating from his left hand.
Wait. Hand?
Daniel's eyes flew open.
Stone floor. Dim torchlight. The metallic bite of blood in the air.
And—oh God—his wrists were shackled.
His breath came in short, panicked gasps as his brain scrambled to make sense of his surroundings. This wasn't a hospital. This wasn't anywhere he recognized. The walls were rough-hewn stone, the ceiling arched like a dungeon or a—
Chantry.
The realization hit him like a second truck.
Before he could process it, the door slammed open. Boots stomped against stone, armor clanking with every step. A shadow fell over him, and Daniel looked up—
—into the furious, unflinching glare of Cassandra Pentaghast.
"Tell me why we shouldn't kill you now."
Her voice was a blade, sharp and unyielding. Behind her stood another woman—red hair, calculating eyes, hands folded with deceptive calm. Leliana.
Daniel's mouth went dry.
This wasn't possible.
This was the opening scene of Dragon Age: Inquisition.
His stomach dropped.
Cassandra stepped closer, her sword glinting in the torchlight. "The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead. Except for you."
Daniel's gaze flicked to his left hand—and there it was. The sickly green glow of the Anchor, pulsing like a second heartbeat.
Oh fuck.
He was in the game.
And if he didn't play this right, he was going to die—for real this time.
Daniel opened his mouth to speak—maybe to plead, maybe to blurt out something stupid like "I'm the Herald of Andraste!"—but before a single word could escape his lips, the world froze.
No, not just the world. Everything.
Cassandra's furious scowl locked in place, mid-breath. Leliana's fingers, which had been idly tracing the edge of her dagger, halted mid-motion. Even the flickering torchlight stood still, flames petrified in an eternal dance.
What the hell?
Then, in front of him, golden letters materialized in the air, shimmering like sunlight on water.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZED.]
[WELCOME, PLAYER.]
Daniel's heart nearly stopped.
No way.
This—this was a system interface. Just like the ones in the transmigration novels he'd devoured over the years. His golden finger. His cheat. His one-way ticket to not dying horribly in a world where demons fell from the sky and ancient magisters played god.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up in his chest. Of course. Of course he'd get a system. What kind of isekai protagonist would he be otherwise?
The text shifted.
[ENTER DESIGNATION.]
A cursor blinked expectantly.
Daniel exhaled. No point in overcomplicating it.
"Daniel."
The letters solidified.
[CONFIRMED: DANIEL.]
[SELECT RACE.]
A series of images appeared—a human knight in gleaming armor, an elven rogue with a bow, a dwarven warrior with a massive axe, a hulking Qunari mage.
Daniel's pulse quickened.
This was exactly like the character creation screen in the game. Which meant…
He grinned.
"Elf."
[RACE SELECTED: ELF.]
[CUSTOMIZE APPEARANCE?]
Oh hell yes.
Daniel had spent hours tweaking his characters in the game. He wasn't about to half-ass it now.
The interface shifted, displaying a spectral version of himself—pale, scrawny, still wearing the same ratty t-shirt he'd died in.
"Alright, let's fix that."
He tapped at the air, adjusting sliders with practiced ease. His frame filled out—broad shoulders, lean muscle, the kind of build that looked like it could handle a staff or a sword. His face sharpened, high cheekbones, a strong jaw, just enough elven delicacy to be striking without looking fragile. He added a little height—1.85 meters, tall enough to command respect but not so towering he'd bang his head on doorframes.
[APPEARANCE LOCKED.]
[SELECT CLASS.
Another set of images—warrior, rogue, mage.
Daniel didn't hesitate.
"Mage."
[CLASS SELECTED: MAGE.]
[INITIALIZATION COMPLETE.]
The golden text faded.
And then—
—time lurched back into motion.
Cassandra's sword was still at his throat. Leliana's eyes still bored into him.
"You think I'm responsible?" Daniel's voice came out steadier than he expected, though the undercurrent of disbelief was impossible to miss.
Cassandra's eyes burned with accusation. Without a word, she wrenched his hand upward, forcing the glowing mark into the dim torchlight. "Explain this," she demanded, her voice a low, dangerous growl.
The Anchor throbbed, sending a sharp jolt of pain up his arm. Daniel gritted his teeth. "I can't."
"What do you mean, you can't?"
Cassandra's grip tightened further, her nails nearly breaking skin.
Leliana, who had been silent until now, began to circle him like a predator assessing wounded prey. Her steps were deliberate, while her gaze were calculating. Daniel could almost see what inside her mind—weighing his words, his reactions, trying to piece together whether he was a fool, a liar, or something worse.
"I don't know what that is," Daniel repeated, forcing himself to meet Cassandra's furious stare. "Or how it got in my hand."
A muscle in Cassandra's jaw twitched. "You're lying," she hissed.
Before he could respond, she seized him by the front of his tunic and shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth. The world blurred for a second, the torchlight streaking across his vision. His back hit the stone wall behind him, the impact knocking the breath from his lungs.
"We need him, Cassandra."
Leliana's voice cut through the tension like a blade. Her hand closed around Cassandra's wrist, not forcefully, but with enough pressure to make the Seeker pause. For a heartbeat, the two women locked eyes—Cassandra's fury warring with Leliana's icy pragmatism.
Then, with a frustrated snarl, Cassandra released him.
Daniel sucked in a ragged breath, his chest aching. His mind raced. This was happening. This was really happening. The Conclave was gone. The Divine was dead. And somehow, impossibly, he was standing in the middle of the very disaster that had kicked off Inquisition.
"I can't believe it," he muttered, more to himself than to them. "All those people at the Conclave… dead?"
The weight of it settled over him like a shroud. He'd played this moment a dozen times, had watched the cutscene where the Breach first tore open the sky. But knowing it was fiction was one thing. Living it—knowing those were real lives lost—was something else entirely.
Leliana's gaze sharpened. "Do you know how this happened?" she asked, her voice deceptively calm. "How it began?"
Daniel hesitated.
This was the moment. The turning point. In the game, the Herald had been just as clueless as he was pretending to be now. But he wasn't the Herald. He knew things—things he shouldn't, things that could change everything.
But revealing too much too soon could be just as dangerous as saying nothing at all.
Think. Fast.
"I remember… running," he said slowly, choosing his words with care. "Something was chasing me. Someone. A woman—her voice, it was…" He let his voice trail off, feigning confusion.
Leliana's eyes narrowed slightly. "A woman?"
"She was in the Fade," Daniel continued, watching their reactions closely. "But not like a spirit. She was real. And then…" He lifted his marked hand, letting the green light flicker ominously. "Then there was pain. And after that—nothing. Until I woke up here."
Cassandra and Leliana exchanged glances.
"The Divine," Leliana murmured, almost too quiet to hear.
Cassandra's expression darkened. "You expect us to believe the Divine gave you that mark?"
"I don't know what to believe," Daniel said truthfully. "But I know I didn't do this. And if that thing in my hand is connected to whatever happened at the Conclave, then we're all in danger."
The words hung in the air, heavy with implication.
For the first time since he'd woken up here, Daniel saw something flicker in Cassandra's eyes—not just anger, but doubt.
Leliana, however, looked almost… intrigued.
"If what he says is true,"she said slowly, "then the mark may be the only way to close the Breach."
"You cannot be serious," Cassandra snapped. "He could be a maleficar, a spy, an assassin—"
"Or he could be the only one who can fix this," Leliana countered.
Silence fell.
Cassandra let out a sharp, frustrated exhale through her nose, her fingers flexing at her sides as if she were physically restraining herself from throttling him. "Leliana," she said, her voice tight with barely leashed impatience, "go to the forward camp. I will take him to the rift."
Leliana gave a single, curt nod, her eyes lingering on Daniel for a heartbeat longer—assessing, weighing, calculating —before she turned on her heel and strode out of the dungeon without another word. The heavy door groaned shut behind her, leaving Daniel alone with the Seeker.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then Cassandra stepped forward, her movements brisk and efficient as she unlocked the manacles around his wrists. The metal clanked as it fell away, and Daniel rubbed at his raw skin, wincing at the sting.
"What did happen?" he asked, keeping his voice deliberately smooth, though his pulse was hammering in his throat. He already knew the answer—of course he did—but he needed to play the part. Needed to act like a man who had just woken up in chains with no memory of how he got there.
Cassandra didn't answer right away. Instead, she gripped his forearm and hauled him to his feet with surprising strength. "It will be easier to show you," she said grimly.
Then she was pulling him toward the door, her stride purposeful. Daniel had no choice but to follow.
The moment they stepped outside, the cold hit him like a slap. The air was sharp with the bite of winter, the scent of smoke and damp stone thick in his nostrils. But all of that faded into the background as his gaze was drawn upward—to the sky.
The Breach.
It was massive. Far larger tham the one he see in the game, a swirling, sickly green maw that pulsed like a living wound in the sky of the world. Tendrils of energy lashed out from it, flickering like lightning, and even from this distance, Daniel could feel it—a wrongness that made his skin crawl.
His breath caught.
It was one thing to see it on a screen. Another entirely to stand beneath it, to feel the unnatural chill radiating from it, to know that beyond that tear, the Fade was bleeding into reality.
Cassandra didn't give him time to gawk. She jerked her chin toward the sky, her voice hard. "We call it the Breach. A massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour."
Daniel swallowed. "Demons?"
Her jaw tightened. "It is not the only such rift. Only the largest. All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave."
"An explosion can do that?" he asked, feigning disbelief.
Her eyes flicked to him, dark and unreadable. "This one did." She turned back to the Breach, her expression grim. "Unless we act, the Breach may grow until it swallows the world."
The words hung between them, heavy with doom.
Then—
The Breach pulsed.
A violent, searing flare of green light erupted from its center, and Daniel's left hand burned. The pain was instant, white-hot, lancing up his arm like a blade dipped in poison. He gasped, doubling over as his knees hit the frozen ground, his fingers clawing at the dirt as if he could somehow rip the mark out of his skin.
Cassandra was at his side in an instant, her hand gripping his shoulder—not in comfort, but in restraint. "Each time the Breach expands," she said, her voice low and urgent, "so does the mark. And it is killing you."
Daniel gritted his teeth, his vision swimming with tears of pain. He could feel it—the Anchor's corruption spreading, tendrils of magic burrowing deeper into his flesh with every pulse of the Breach.
Cassandra's grip tightened. "The mark may be the key to stopping this," she said. "But we do not have much time."
She hauled him back to his feet, her expression unyielding. "Can you stand?"
Daniel forced himself to nod, though his legs trembled beneath him. The pain was receding, but the echo of it lingered, a constant, throbbing reminder of what was at stake.
Cassandra didn't wait for further confirmation. She turned toward the path leading out of Haven, her stride purposeful. "Then we go. Now."
Daniel exhaled sharply, forcing himself to move, each step a battle against the lingering pain on his hand. The wind howled through the mountains, carrying the scent of fire and fear. He clenched his marked hand, swallowing his dread. Whatever lay ahead, there was no turning back.
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Name : Daniel Carter
Race: Elf
Professions: Mage
Skills: None
Inventory: None