"Huh,"
A young man sleeping in bed snapped his eyes open. They instantly went wide because he saw someone leaning over him, raising a knife with a nasty grin, ready to stab. The young man shoved his head aside. "Crep," the knife sank into the pillow right next to his face. "Waaaa," with all his strength, he pushed the person off him. "Bruaak," the surprised attacker fell back and hit the desk next to the bed.
The young man jumped out of bed. He saw the person he'd shoved still on their knees, holding their head. They'd hit the desk corner and were bleeding.
"You bastard!"
The attacker yelled, turning, grabbing the knife, and trying to stand while holding their head. The young man, now alert, caught the person's hand and twisted their arm. "Creep," "Kuh...khaah," the knife in the attacker's hand plunged into their own neck. "Bruk," the body instantly dropped to the floor, dead. "Huf...huf...huf," the young man collapsed by the bed, gasping, his heart hammering.
He didn't know who had tried to kill him because the room was dark. He slowly got up, holding onto the bed, and stumbled toward the light switch by the door.
"Click," he hit the switch. The room lit up, but the young man's face went white with shock.
"Wait… where am I? This isn't my room?" the young man asked.
He looked around. It was a simple dorm room: just a bed, a desk, and a cabinet. A school uniform hung on the cabinet door. The light above wasn't normal; it was a magic bulb. The switch on the wall was clearly a magic device shaped like a button.
"Th-this… this definitely isn't my room. Where the hell am I?" the young man asked, stepping backward.
"Pyek," his foot hit something wet. He looked down, saw his foot in a pool of blood, and fell onto his rear. He saw the body of a man wearing a shirt and black pants styled like old European clothes.
"Huh… r-right, I was just attacked… w-who was trying to kill me?" the young man asked.
He slowly crawled closer to the blood-soaked, face-down body. He grabbed it and flipped it over. When he saw the attacker's face, he scrambled back, hitting the cabinet behind him.
His mouth dropped open, his eyes wide. Sweat poured down his face, and his whole body shook. The dead man was a handsome, blond European youth, clearly someone important. But that wasn't why he was shaking. He knew the face of the dead man.
"H-he… Desmond… Count Desmond… the hidden boss from the game Eclipse Twilight, that failed horror RPG visual novel… made by the company I work for… this… this can't be real," the young man stammered, trembling.
***
Alright, let me step in here. Before the story continues, let me tell you who I am. My name is Raymond West, age 45. I'm a lead game developer supervising three other programmers. The game, Eclipse Twilight, was one of my company's biggest flops. It was a horror RPG visual novel with fight scenes.
It should have been cool because the fights had realistic graphics, even though most of the game was just talking, choices in conversation, and scene transitions without walking a character around.
But we got slammed: people said the game was too slow, even after optimizing it for all smartphone tech, took too long to play, and was super difficult because the plot was confusing with too many characters.
Also, there was no romance—the focus was all adventure, strategy, and mystery around the main character. The game flopped and was abandoned, even with its online battle arena using the characters.
Even though the project was canceled and I didn't create it, I liked it because I love horror games full of mystery like this. Eclipse Twilight is set in a world called Altarica, where supernatural stuff like ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches, and angels are normal.
The story is about a human protagonist who enters a mystical hunter academy in the city of Duncan, which is in the magical Kingdom of Nafarius. His goal is to get revenge for his parents, who were killed by a demon, and become a powerful hunter.
All the students at the academy are human or half-human, half-mystical. Count Desmond is one of the protagonist's friends who eventually travels with the protagonist to defeat the oldest primordial demon that killed the protagonist's parents.
But in one scene, when the protagonist's group is separated and only Count Desmond hasn't returned, if you choose to abandon Count Desmond in the crypt, which puts the protagonist's group under pressure, then at the end of the story, after defeating the final demon king, Count Desmond returns as the vampire elder and becomes the strongest, hardest-to-beat hidden boss.
Now, here's the problem: the person on the floor is Count Desmond. I just accidentally killed him at the start of the story. When I looked in the mirror and saw my face, I immediately realized who I was. My name in this game is supposed to be Axelirius Von Aldrich, the younger brother of Desmond Von Aldrich, who was killed early in the story.
Wait, no—his name was only mentioned once by Desmond when he was telling the protagonist a story while they were camping, and his death is what made Desmond closed-off, cold, and never smile, because Desmond had to kill his own brother at his father's command.
According to Desmond's story to the protagonist, Axelirius, or Axel, was half-vampire because his father had a relationship with a female vampire whom the father also eventually killed. Axel originally had black hair and green eyes just like Desmond, but when he turned 15, Axel's eyes turned red and his hair became silver.
That's why his father ordered 16-year-old Desmond to kill Axel. Of course, I'm totally confused. The character Axel was never actually in the game; he was only mentioned once by Desmond.
On top of that, his character design? No one ever bothered to draw what Axel was actually supposed to look like. And now I'm Axel, a character who is supposed to be dead and not part of the story at all, who just killed Desmond, a very important part of the story.
I tried slapping my cheek, and it stung instantly. This clearly isn't a dream, but how is this possible? Last I remember, I was at the office working. I just leaned back for a second to rest my eyes because I hadn't slept for two days, and when I woke up, I was here. What the hell happened to me?