"I don't want to see your face here again! Get out!" The female figure thundered, glaring at the young man in front of her.
Tristan stiffened, his fingers trembling at his sides as he gulped down nothingness. "But I…" He said, stuttering and not knowing exactly what to say. Can his life get any worse?
"Get out of my cafe!" The female figure roared again, pointing at the door.
"But I didn't do anything. Please, don't fire me." Tristan begged desperately, dropping to his knees without minding the stares of others present in the cafe. "Mrs. Smith, please; I'll fix whatever I did wrong. Just don't fire me."
"You dare speak my name?" Mrs. Smith's voice was a snarl, her face contorted with fury, veins bulging in her neck.
Ignoring Tristan's plea, she raised her hand and struck him across the face.
PAAA!
The sharp crack echoed through the café. The impact of the slap made Tristan's head to snapped to the side, his cheek immediately turning red.
"Do you want me to call security on you before you leave? Fine! Security, get this worthless man out of my café before I lose my temper on him. So disgusting!" she ordered.
Tristan barely registered the stares around him, his breath shallow. His mind reeled, struggling to make sense of why.
"I… I don't understand," he managed, his voice hoarse. "Why are you doing this?"
Mrs. Smith scoffed, her arms crossing. "Oh? Playing innocent now? As if you don't know."
His brows furrowed. "Know what?"
Her lip curled in disgust. "The register was short today. Again." She leaned in, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "And guess whose name keeps coming up?"
Tristan's stomach twisted. "Wait… what?" His voice was barely above a whisper. "You think I—?"
"Spare me the act," she cut him off coldly. "A customer saw you lurking near the counter. And don't think I forgot about last week's missing cash."
His pulse thundered in his ears. Lurking? Missing cash?
"I don't—Mrs. Smith, I didn't take anything," he said, the weight of the accusation crushing down on him.
"Of course you'd say that," she sneered, amusement flickering in her eyes. She had already made up her mind.
She never liked me. How else could I put this? If not, she was waiting for an excuse to get rid of me?
I wondered why she hired me in the first place.
Tristan was tossed out like a sack of garbage without hesitation. For a moment, he looked up at the darkening sky, his eyes drawn to a solitary star twinkling like a cold, distant echo of his own lost soul.
That star must be so lonely. Just like me.
His lips twitched into something that wasn't quite a smile, his breath coming in shaky gasps.
I've done everything I could. I've worked, I've begged, I've tried. But no one cares. No one ever did.
No. He couldn't cry.
There were no tears left to shed.
Why am I trying so hard? He wondered.
They will come for him. He will be their property, their dog to toy with anytime they want, their puppet.
His mind raises as his thoughts drift to the debts left in his name.
"Your dad committed suicide in an attempt to escape his debts. But he forgot one thing…" Lascar, his dad's biggest creditor—the kind who doesn't forgive— trailed, his eyes assessing Tristan's body.
"You."
"I'll be human enough to give you two months."
Two months.
"In those two months, you should be able to cover half of 200 million dollars . If not, consider yourself mine." He'd said.
200 million dollars.
In two months.
When I can barely scrape together a meal a day? When every breath feels like a struggle to stay alive….. Hell, I'm already dying. Slowly.
A bitter laugh rose in his throat. What was the point?
Why doesn't he just end it all? There's no one to call family, nowhere to call home. Why shouldn't he just end it here?
What's his reason to live?
A whisper slithered into his mind, insidious and relentless.
Just die.
End it. No one will miss you.
Just let go.
And so, he did.
** ** ** ** ** **
*
*
*
Darkness. Cold. The suffocating weight of nothingness.
No pain. No sound. No breath.
Just silence.
Then—a voice.
Hollow, mechanical, and ancient, like grinding metal forced into speech.
"Your task is simple," the system creaked, its voice echoing in the void.
A shudder passed through Tristan's weightless form. He tried to move, but his body—did he even have a body?—remained frozen, unresponsive.
Then, the memories came crashing in.
The pills. The numbness. The final breath he thought would free him.
And yet—he was still here.
A slow, terrible realization clawed at his mind. He should be dead.
Yet something had taken him instead.
His pulse—did he even have one?—raced as he forced out a strangled breath. "Where… am I?" His voice cracked, barely above a whisper. "Who are you?"
No answer.
Only the system's voice, cold and unmoved.
"Erebus System initializing."
Pain. White-hot, searing pain.
A thousand needles stabbed into his skull, his mind flooding with information too fast to process. His vision blurred—symbols, numbers, ancient text shifting like living ink.
Then the voice returned.
"Tristan Ainsworth, you have been selected."
A sharp gasp tore from his lips. His thoughts were a chaotic storm. Selected for what?
"This isn't a second chance. This is a command."
A sickening dread curled in his stomach. Second chance? He didn't need one! He wanted to die! He wanted to escape the agony of his existence!
"Your mission: Break Lorenzo Valkyrie's... [ERROR: Data Restricted]. Processing..."_
Silence.
Heavy. Suffocating.
Tristan's chest tightened. His hands curled into fists. "To do what?! Who the hell is he? What kind of sick joke is this?"
But the system had already gone quiet.
Leaving him alone.
Where should he start from? Most importantly, where is he? Isn't he supposed to be dead already?
He has so many questions.
It's so dark.
I couldn't see anything.
A suffocating silence pressed in. No air. No sky. No light. No sound. Nothing.Just a cold, hollow presence curling around him.
Tristan tried to move.
His limbs refused to obey.
No… there were no limbs to move. No body to control. Just a floating consciousness trapped in the void. A sickening dread crawled over him as the realization settled in.
Then, just as the silence threatened to consume him—
zzzzT—KKKCHHH—
A crackling distortion ripped through the void, like a malfunctioning screen flashing between realities.
Then the voice returned.
"System rebooting. Restoring corrupted data…"
The void trembled.
"Mission parameters updated."
A searing pain shot through Tristan's skull, sharper than before. Data. Code. Symbols flashing too fast to comprehend. His thoughts felt hacked, rewritten.
His breath hitched—except...
There was no breath.
Just a cold, hollow presence curling around him.
The space around him glitched violently. Black turned to static, then flickered back again. The void hiccupped, as if the world itself was unstable, teetering on the edge of collapse. A sharp pull yanked at him—like he was being rewritten, unmade, remade all at once.
Tristan squeezed his eyes shut. His pulse hammered in his chest—except, did he even have a heart anymore?
"Your existence is now… [DATA CORRUPTED]."
"Processing... Processing... Host integrity: 57%."
Then...
Silence.
A ringing silence.
The kind that crushed thought itself.
Tristan tried to scream. To run. To wake up.
But the void did not let him go.