Elara looked down at his severed left arm. Her heart dropped into her stomach. A cold, absolute dread washed over her. The tight cloth tourniquet she had tied was completely useless. The pressure of the blood inside Frank's body was too strong. The blood had soaked entirely through the thick cloth. It was dripping heavily from the knots. The jagged, open stump of his arm was still bleeding. It was not a slow leak. It was a steady, rhythmic pulse. The main artery was completely open. "No, no, no," Elara whispered in total panic. She pressed her bare hands directly over the open, severed stump. She pushed down with all of her weight, trying to use her own hands as a plug to stop the bleeding. The hot, wet blood simply slipped through her fingers. It pooled on the rusty metal floor of the tunnel. "Frank, please," Elara sobbed, pressing harder. "Please stop bleeding. I can't hold it. I can't stop it."Inside Frank's mind, the blue System HUD was almost completely dark. [ CRITICAL. ]

There was no pain in the dark. For Frank Williams, this was a very new feeling. His entire life had been full of pain. Hunger in his stomach. Cold wind biting his skin on the streets. Bullies kicking his ribs. And then, the ultimate, screaming agony of the Root-Hound shattering his arm, and the burning orange crystal melting his flesh. But now, it was perfectly quiet. He felt like he was floating in a deep, warm pool of water. He did not have to breathe. He did not have to fight. He was just a thought, drifting in the empty black space. “So this is death,” Frank thought. “It is not scary at all. It is just... quiet.”But the quiet did not last. A tiny speck of light appeared in the endless black void. It was not the pale, clean blue of his System. It was a bright, piercing, burning gold. The spot of light grew. It expanded incredibly fast, rushing toward him like a speeding train. The light swallowed the darkness. It swallowed Frank. It was so bright that he had to close his eyes a

Frank's mind raced. His body was tired. His soul was exhausted. He had suffered so much. He had lost his arm. He had felt the burning crystal. He just wanted to sleep. He just wanted the pain to stop. And if giving up his soul meant Elara would live, wasn't that the hero's choice? Wasn't it right to sacrifice himself for her?Frank opened his mouth. The word "Yes" was sitting right on the tip of his tongue. He looked at the golden Avatar. The Avatar was smiling, ready to take over. But then, Frank looked at the window one last time. He looked at Elara's face. He remembered what happened in the dark crater just an hour ago. He remembered when the ghosts of his guilt had surrounded him. He remembered begging Elara to let him die. He remembered the sharp, stinging slap across his face. "You do not get to die to feel better, Frank Williams."Her voice echoed in his memory, cutting through the perfect silence of the golden throne room. "If you feel guilty, you have to live long enoug

The heavy iron cart at the entrance of the dark tunnel shook violently. The rusted metal screeched. Outside the barricade, the swarm of Scavenger-Roots was going completely crazy. The bone-spiders could smell the fresh blood on the metal floor. They could smell the cooked, burnt flesh from Frank’s severed arm. They were hungry, and they were determined to get inside. Sharp, jagged legs made of white bone poked through the small gaps around the iron cart. The spiders scratched wildly at the walls, trying to push the heavy barricade out of the way. Elara did not look at the monsters. She did not care about the barricade anymore. She sat on the cold, rusty floor of the tunnel. Her torn clothes were soaked in bright red blood. The terrible, choking smell of burnt human flesh filled the narrow space, making it hard to breathe. But Elara did not move away. She held Frank’s lifeless body tightly against her chest. She buried her dirty, tear-stained face into his neck. His skin was compl

Frank turned away from the screen and looked directly into Elara's eyes. "It is a weed, Elara," Frank said. "It is just a giant, hungry weed that landed in our garden. It eats everything around it to grow bigger. It is a mindless, cosmic machine doing exactly what it was programmed to do. Eat, grow, and destroy."The silence in the tunnel was thick and heavy. For centuries, the people of Lyrendale had lived in fear. They had prayed to the golden light. They had offered sacrifices. King Alaric had forced his own people to marry and breed just to provide more souls for the machine, believing he was serving a divine purpose. Elara's mother had died trying to fight a magical deity. And it was all a lie. It was just a parasite. A hungry space bug. A profound, incredible shift happened inside Frank’s mind. When you fight a god, you feel small. You feel weak. You feel like you have no chance of winning, because a god is perfect and divine. But when you fight a machine... when you fight