Elias reached for the power button, but his hand stopped. He couldn't move. His muscles were locked, his joints stiffening as if turning to stone—or perhaps, to ash.
In the reflection, Elias didn't see his digital avatar. He saw himself, sitting in his darkened room, the glow of the monitor illuminating the sweat on his forehead. Behind him, in the reflection, a figure was standing. It was the Oscar of Astora, the knight who gives the player their Estus Flask, but his armor was rusted through, and his visor was a dark, empty hole. Elias spun around. His room was empty.
Elias was gone. He had finally prepared to die, and in the world of the "free," the price had been exactly what he had. If you’d like more stories like this, tell me: Should the next one be more or action-heavy ?
When he launched the game, there was no intro cinematic. No talk of Ancient Dragons or the First Flame. He was simply there . He stood in the Undead Asylum, but it wasn't the game he had seen in trailers. The walls weren't stone; they were composed of flickering, distorted lines of code. The sky wasn't overcast; it was a void of static.
For Elias, a student with a laptop that wheezed when opening a browser tab and a wallet that hadn't seen a twenty-dollar bill in months, it was the ultimate siren song. He knew the risks. He’d heard the stories of "free" games that came bundled with digital parasites, but the desire to experience the legendary, unforgiving world of Lordran outweighed his caution. He clicked.
His laptop began to heat up. The fan screamed, a high-pitched mechanical wail that sounded like a dying animal. The screen bled red, the "YOU DIED" message appearing over and over, stacking until the words were illegible.
The site, Hienzo, was a labyrinth of pop-ups and fake "Download" buttons. Finally, he found the real one. The file was surprisingly small—only a few hundred megabytes. Compressed well, he thought, ignoring the cold knot of dread in his stomach.
The screen went black. The laptop died with a final, pathetic spark.