The year 2140 was a crucible of wonders and ruins, a world where technology had blurred the lines between flesh and dream, between hope and despair. Amid that chaos, Edenfall stood as a dark beacon among DMMO-RPGs, a game Renn had forged twenty years ago alongside a handful of dreamers. What began as a medical sanctuary—a virtual refuge for the comatose, the paraplegic, and the terminally ill yearning for worlds beyond their broken bodies—had morphed into a global colossus, a universe where millions painted their fates with blood and code. For Renn, a man of elusive gaze and trembling fingers worn by endless nights before screens, Edenfall was more than a game; it was his confessional, his canvas, his secret weapon.
Five years prior, he'd created The Collector, a quest that shattered the game's rules and morality. An eccentric half-elf, also named Renn in a nod to his creator, wielded wit and invisibility magic to abduct Edenfall's seven most beautiful princesses. He didn't kill or enslave them; he raised them as daughters, molding them into the Seven Deities—beings of overwhelming beauty and power—and after three virtual decades, they razed the world in his name, erecting the Eternal Garden of Lysara, a floating paradise of aesthetic perfection. The event was unbeatable, not due to the Collector's strength, but the invincibility of his guardians. Forums blazed with debate: genius or aberration? The controversy lined the company's pockets and etched his name into legend, though he never craved the spotlight. It was a façade for his true purpose: turning Edenfall into a tool of purification.
That night, December 31, 2140, Renn sat alone in his office, a stifling cubicle in a steel-and-glass tower. The hum of servers purred steadily, mingling with the scent of overheated metal and stale coffee that hung in the air. A flickering lamp cast shadows dancing like specters across the walls, and his desk was a mess of scribbled notes, empty mugs, and a monitor projecting lines of code like a silent scream. Slouched in an armchair in a dark corner, Renn cradled a glass of whiskey, the amber liquid trembling faintly in his hand. Ice clinked against the crystal, a sound lost in the background drone. He wasn't there to play; he was there to finish what he'd started, to close a cycle that began a year ago with Elias's death.
His mind drifted back to that night, twelve months earlier, when everything changed. Viktor, his easy-smiling, magnetic colleague, had been the first to sniff out the rot. "Something's wrong with Edenfall, Renn," he'd whispered once, cornering him in a dim hallway alongside Elias, their boss. His breath reeked of cheap whiskey, his eyes glinting with terror. "NeuraVerse… it's not what you said. This isn't just a game, is it? Someone's tampering with minds, planting thoughts. You betrayed us!" Renn had laughed it off, brushing him aside. "Who'd believe that, Vik? You're burned out, that's all. Go home." But Viktor didn't stop. He confided in Elias, shared his suspicions. Days later, a "car accident" silenced him: his vehicle mangled on a lonely road, a severed brake line no one questioned. Renn had arranged it all. Since then, Elias grew wary, digging for answers until they clashed in that fateful office.
Renn closed his eyes, and the memory unfurled like an open wound. The office door had creaked open, a sound that rang like a gunshot in the silence. Elias Korr stepped in—tall, gray hair cropped close, sunken eyes that seemed to pierce the soul. His pristine black suit contrasted with the tension in his movements. Unnoticing Renn in the shadows, he approached the desk and rifled through papers, hands shaking as he flipped through documents: classified reports, blueprints for an advanced immersion helmet, scrawled notes about NeuraVerse. "Mind control… memory access… crime eradication…" he muttered, voice cracking as he read faster. "It can't be. Viktor was right… What have you done, Renn?"
"Looks like you've figured it out," Renn said, his voice cold and sharp as a scalpel, slicing through the silence from the dark corner. He took a sip of whiskey, ice clinking against the glass, and rose slowly, emerging from the shadows with a silenced pistol in hand, its barrel humming with a faint tremor.
Elias whipped his head around so fast his neck cracked, air catching in his throat. "Renn?" he said, legs trembling as he stepped back. "Tell me this isn't true. Tell me you didn't alter Edenfall behind our backs. Tell me you didn't betray everything we swore to protect."
Renn tilted his head, a crooked smile cutting the air like a bloodied blade. He aimed the gun calmly, the silencer glinting under the flickering light. "Betray it?" he repeated, almost spitting the word with contempt. He stepped forward, the stench of stale whiskey and dried blood cloaking him like a shroud. "You think this is about money, Elias? Power? Something as petty as your glass ideals? No, no, no." He closed the distance, the gun's barrel steady. "This is about the damn criminals. The filth infesting this world. The rats that steal the light and leave only shadows."
"What are you talking about?" Elias demanded, voice quaking but laced with fire. "Explain yourself, damn it! Why destroy everything we built? Edenfall was meant to save lives, not… this." He slammed his palm on the documents, the sharp sound echoing in the cubicle.
Renn stared at him, eyes clouded with raw pain. "My daughter, Elias," he said, voice dropping to a blood-chilling whisper. "My little Lira. Do you know how she died? A shootout. Collateral damage, they called it. Some bastard with a gun and a score to settle, and she got caught in the middle. I watched her bleed out on the street, Elias. Her white dress soaked red, her eyes begging me to save her as life slipped through her fingers. Can you imagine it? Can you feel that void that rips your soul out, leaves you a broken shell?"
Elias swallowed hard, backing into the desk. "I'm sorry, Renn," he murmured, voice breaking. "I truly am. I can't even imagine it. But this… this isn't justice. This is madness consuming you."
"You don't mean that!" Renn roared. He gripped the whiskey glass so hard it shattered in his hand, amber liquid splashing the floor, mingling with blood dripping from his cut palm. Ice clattered with a metallic wail, and he raised the gun, pulling the trigger. A hiss sliced the air, and a bullet tore through Elias's leg. The man screamed, collapsing, blood splattering the concrete as he tried to crawl. "I got justice, you know?" Renn went on, voice trembling with contained fury as he advanced, heavy footsteps thudding like a funeral drum. "My contacts tracked them down. I killed them all, one by one. Tore their throats out with my bare hands, watched the life drain from their eyes like rats fleeing a fire. But it didn't bring her back. Nothing will."
"Then why keep going?" Elias shouted, voice rising as he clutched his leg. "If you already killed them, if you got your revenge, why destroy everything left? This makes no sense, damn it! You're shredding Viktor's dream, mine, all of ours!"
Renn let out a dry, near-hysterical laugh. "Because it's not enough," he said, tone dropping to a chilling whisper. "Because every night I see her in my dreams, Elias. Her voice whispers from the grave, begging me to cleanse this world. 'Daddy,' she says, 'do it for me.' And I swore I would. So I decided on something better. I'll find every criminal in this damn country and make them hang themselves with their own hands. I'll make them kneel and beg for forgiveness I'll never grant. I'll make them slit their veins with a smile, thinking it's their own will. NeuraVerse is my masterpiece. Intrusive thoughts no one can resist. Brilliant, don't you think?"
"It's an abomination!" Elias spat, voice shaking with rage as he tried to stand. "You're not a savior, Renn. You're a monster drowning in your own poison. What would Lira say if she saw you now, turned into this? A butcher playing God?"
Renn froze, hand trembling around the gun. "Lira?" he whispered, as if the name tore him apart from within. Then his face twisted into a snarl of fury. "She'd tell me to finish what I started. That I did what no one else had the guts to do. That I'm her hero, her damn avenging angel. 'Kindness ends where betrayal begins,' Elias, and this world betrayed me first. What do you know of pain? What do you know of losing everything? Nothing! You're a child playing with toys while I bear the weight of hell!"
"I know enough not to turn my pain into a plague!" Elias shot back, voice rising to a shout. "This isn't for Lira, it's for you! Your damn obsession. You're sick, Renn, and you know it. You're staining her memory with blood, and she'd hate you for it!"
"Shut up!" Renn roared, smashing the butt of the gun into Elias's head. The impact thundered, and Elias crumpled, unconscious, a trickle of blood running from his temple. "You've got no right to say her name! No right to judge me! God abandoned this world when He let Lira die, Elias. The heavens went silent as she screamed my name. So I took His place. I'm the judge, the executioner, the messiah this world doesn't deserve but needs. And you…" He paused, a smile creeping back, a blade sharper than any weapon. "You'll be my first miracle."
Renn dragged Elias's limp body to a chair in the room's center, securing him with leather straps that bit into his skin, blood dripping to the floor. "Too late for pleas," he said, voice low and lethal as he grabbed the advanced immersion helmet. Its edges glowed with cold blue, and he caressed it with trembling fingers, whispering to it like an old friend: "You get it, don't you? You've seen the abyss too." He turned it reverently before fitting it over Elias's head, tightening it until internal needles pierced his scalp with a wet, dull snap. "God doesn't exist where pain rules," he said, tone flat but heavy with hate. "The sky went blind when Lira died, Elias. Now I make the rules. 'Justice is a luxury the weak can't afford,' and I paid with my soul. You, Elias, will be my living proof. If it works on you, it'll work on everyone. Imagine a clean world, Elias. A world without them. A world where no one else has to watch their daughter bleed out on the street while the sky's silence laughs in your face."
Minutes later, Elias awoke, eyes glassy under the helmet's hum. He didn't scream, didn't fight. His hands shook, cutting the straps with a shard of glass from the floor. "I did it for you," he whispered, voice broken as he raised the glass to his throat and, with an empty smile, slit it. Blood gushed like a dark river, soaking his suit, and his body slumped, a dull echo ringing in the void.
Renn watched him fall, a lone tear streaking down his cheek. "Goodbye, Elias," he whispered, taking a final sip of whiskey. "See you in hell. Tell Lira I'm sorry… and that I did it for her. 'Forgiveness is a luxury of the living,' and I died with her that night."
The memory faded, and Renn snapped back to the present, December 31, 2140. Twelve months had passed since that day—a year of blood and shadows as NeuraVerse spread like a silent plague, fulfilling his oath to Lira. Criminals fell one by one, their deaths masked as suicides, accidents, sudden madness. The world was cleaner, or so he told himself. But that night, the weight was unbearable. Humming a broken lullaby—the one he'd sung to Lira in happier days—he rose from the armchair and walked to the window. Icy wind slipped through a crack, rustling the scribbled notes on his desk. He pulled a locket from his pocket, a faded photo of Lira smiling under a sun that no longer shone for him. He kissed it reverently, lips trembling against the cold metal, and let it fall into the void, a silver glint lost in the dark.
"I did it for you, little one," he murmured, voice breaking into an echo the wind carried away. Then, with a sharp laugh that tore through the night, he leapt after the locket, his form vanishing into the abyss like a fallen angel who'd written his gospel in shadows and blood.
The icy wind of the fall still howled in my ears, a sharp echo mingling with the locket's clatter as it vanished into the night. My last breath had been a broken scream, a farewell to Lira the abyss devoured without mercy. Everything went black, a cold void wrapping me like a frosted shroud, shredding my thoughts into fragments of rage, betrayal, and guilt. Dead, I thought, as silence swallowed me. This is what I deserve. A mute hell for what I did to Elias, to Viktor, to her. My gospel of shadows was done, and the price was this: absolute nothingness, a punishment needing no fire to consume.
But then, a soft warmth brushed me, a stolen dawn I had no right to touch. A melody rose, beautiful and pure, weaving around me like threads of light in the blackness. It was a wordless song, a liquid whisper soothing the chaos in my chest, a beacon dragging me toward something I couldn't name. What is this? I wondered, as the cold receded and my senses clung to that voice like a damned man to his last hope. It wasn't mine to claim, but I held on anyway.
A gasp tore from my throat, as if I'd been submerged in an icy lake too long. I coughed, lungs burning as air rushed in, and my hands—those hands—gripped something cold and solid. I opened my eyes, expecting shattered pavement or eternal dark, but I sat on a throne of jade and gold, fingers sinking into carved vines that seemed to pulse beneath my skin. The floor was white marble veined with turquoise, cool against my boots, and the air carried scents of jasmine, damp earth, and ozone, as if a storm had just faded. Around me, floating islands hung amid swirling clouds, linked by crystal bridges gleaming like prisms under impossible light.
"What…?" My voice came out deep, resonating with an authority I didn't recognize. I looked at my hands: pale skin, sharp fingers, nails with a spectral sheen that wasn't human. My brown hair fell messily over my shoulders, and touching my face, I felt the angular features of a half-elf. It was him. The Collector. My avatar, but more real than any code. The gray robe weighed on my shoulders, and the breeze lifted strands of my hair with a softness that couldn't be simulated. No interface, no hologram, no escape. Just this: a living world pulsing around me.
I stood, unsteady, my footsteps echoing like a drum in the vast space. "Where am I?" I whispered, mind spinning between panic and a calm I didn't want to accept. "What did I do? I jumped… felt the wind, the end. Is this NeuraVerse? Another trick of my own damn creation?" I tested the Veil of Nothing by instinct, and my body vanished for a moment, only to reappear with a dizziness that made me brace a hand on the throne. "Not Edenfall," I muttered, eyeing the crystal bridges and distant waterfalls. "This is… what? Punishment? Delusion? What am I now, Lira?"
A liquid whisper cut the air, so close I felt warm breath graze my cheek. "You're not dead, Father." I turned, heart racing until it hurt, and there she was: Seraphine. Her face was an impossible vision—pearlescent skin glowing like the inside of a shell, turquoise eyes deep as ocean trenches, long hair flowing like living water. Her translucent dress clung to her, revealing curves sculpted by a fevered dream, and she glided toward me with a grace that made the marble tremble beneath her bare feet. She was so close the scent of salt and exotic flowers enveloped me, and her lips—red, parted—curved into a smile promising more than I could bear.
"What—" My voice broke, and before I could step back, she raised a hand, fingers brushing my face with a softness that burned. She leaned closer, her warm breath against my lips, so near I could almost taste the sea on her skin. For a moment, I thought she'd kiss me, and my body tensed, caught between rejection and an attraction I didn't want to name. But she stopped, a breath away, her eyes trapping me like a current that wouldn't let go.
"You're alive," she whispered, her voice a song tangling in my soul, soft yet charged with an intensity that made me tremble. "The Eternal Garden is real, Father. I am real. And you are our home." Her fingers slid down my cheek, leaving a trail of warmth I didn't deserve, and her gaze softened, almost pleading. "Don't you feel it? Your heart beats with this place. You brought us here."
"Alive?" I echoed, voice rising with a dry laugh that rang in the open space. I stepped back, breaking contact, breath ragged as I raised my hands between us, as if those pale claws could shield me from her. "What kind of trick is this? I killed myself, Seraphine. I jumped out that window because the weight of what I did—to Elias, to Viktor, to Lira—was too much. I felt the wind, the void. This can't be real. What are you? An echo of my code? Another punishment?"
A soft light sliced the air, and another voice rose, serene yet firm as a dawn I couldn't ignore. "You are the Collector, our king." Elysia emerged from the garden's shadows, radiant wings casting a warm glow that clashed with the darkness in my mind. Her white hair flowed like a halo, and her golden eyes pinned me, offering a peace I didn't want to take. She advanced with silent steps, her semi-sheer robe floating around her like a veil of light, and stopped beside Seraphine, her presence a counterpoint to the siren's liquid intensity.
"The world of men tore your life away," Elysia continued, her tone steady though a faint crease in her brow betrayed a shadow of doubt. "But my light brought you here, to the Eternal Garden. We are your guardians, and this is your rebirth. There's no going back, Father." Her gaze locked onto mine, and for a moment, I saw something human in her: a spark of compassion I hadn't expected.
I looked from one to the other, mind reeling like broken code I couldn't decipher. Seraphine, so close I still felt the echo of her breath, her lips a whisper from mine, her devotion a weight I didn't grasp. Elysia, serene and distant, her light a beacon blinding me with a truth I didn't want to face. "Rebirth?" I whispered, hands falling to my sides, fingers brushing the throne's cold jade. "I didn't ask for this. I don't deserve it. I killed, manipulated, destroyed… all for her, and still I betrayed her. What kind of king am I if my crown's forged in blood?"
Seraphine tilted her head, her smile softening into something more intimate, more dangerous. "A king who knows the shadows," she said, stepping closer until her dress's hem grazed my boots. Her hand returned to my face, hovering just over my mouth, fingers trembling as if aching to close the gap I'd forced. "We don't judge your past, Father. What you were out there doesn't matter here. This is your gospel now, and we are yours." Her voice dropped, a whisper vibrating against my skin, and for a second, her lips drew so near I felt their heat, a touch that never came.
"Stop," I said, voice low but sharp, stepping back until the throne hit my legs. "Don't do that. I can't… I don't deserve this." My heart pounded, caught between her closeness and the weight of my guilt.
Elysia stepped forward, her light washing over me like a dawn I couldn't refuse. "Then forge a kingdom where you can redeem yourself," she said, her tone gentle yet unrelenting. "This is your canvas, Father. Paint it as you will. We'll follow, whether you want us to or not."
The murmur of waterfalls filled the silence, and for the first time, I felt this place's pulse echoing mine. It wasn't an answer, wasn't absolution. But it was a beginning—one I couldn't escape.