1 | How did it come to this?
The blades at my throat glinted in the neon fog. Heroes of every rank and race closed in, eyes blazing. My HP bar pulsed crimson, a countdown to oblivion, as they roared and hurtled toward me like meteors.
How did it come to this?
People say you can fight the fate forced upon you. That a villain doesn’t have to live like one.
If only my case were that simple.
___
A lifetime earlier...
“Mark.” My name cracked from Tom’s mouth like a whip. His office reeked of stale coffee and looming quotas.
“Another final boss was flattened in under ten minutes.” He shoved the production stats on his phone screen into my face, word by word. “Ten. Minutes.”
I stared at the carpet, jaw tight.
“You have one job. Make final bosses players cry over, not slop they laugh at.” His sigh was worse than any shout. “If you can’t do that...”
“Give me one month.” The words spilled out of me, raw. “Please.”
Tom’s glance cut clean through me. “One week.”
I scrambled out without wasting another second. That wasn’t a deadline. That was a countdown to the end of my job.
“Not off the clock yet?”
A hand landed on my shoulder sometime later, while I was fixed on another playtest — I’d lost count of how many. I looked up. Louis, one of our hero designers. Where I’d slowly turned into a sorry shadow of the monsters I built, he still looked like the heroes he made.
“Uh... you go on ahead.” I caught my reflection in the dark monitor. Pale. Bloodless. Eyes too wide, sunken and hollow. I’d been so locked into the game I hadn’t noticed: I’d faded further into the background than the NPCs.
“Take it easy, M.” Louis withdrew his hand from my shoulder, a little stiff. “Guess it can’t be helped. Heroes are plenty. But there’s only one final boss.”
He turned to me, a faint smile on his face. “I mean, your work matters most to us. So hang in there, yeah?”
My lips parted. Stayed parted, as he walked off through the deserted office. Every other desk had already gone dark. Under the buzz of the last bulb still lit, the banner caught my eye: World’s End — The number one MMO of the new era. The character lineup gleamed, flawless, unreal.
No villain among them.
Heroes were the company’s gold mine. Events. Merchandise. Books and movies. The spotlight was all on them. Nobody remembered, nobody even liked, the evil they’d beaten.
What had Louis meant, that my work mattered?
I shook the thought loose. Whatever. I only had to build the toughest final boss I could. Tough enough to keep players hooked. Tough enough to keep my seat in an industry that ran like a battlefield.
Just a little more.
I stretched until my neck cracked and went back to another sleepless night.
___
“Hey, My Lord!”
Tom’s laugh boomed through the banquet hall as he came at me, one arm slung over Louis’s shoulders. I slapped on a professional smile. It went wry when I saw Louis’s face. He looked like he’d gone numb under the weight of our director’s arm.
“Good job. Lasting this long.” Tom swayed like he might switch shoulders any second, from Louis to me. “You have no idea. Your new boss actually gave people a reason to keep going...” He leaned in and burped straight into my face, thick with alcohol.
“It’s my job, sir.” I slipped out from under his arm before anything worse could follow that burp. “It’s my passion.” I shook his hand fast and stepped back as he doubled over and threw up all over the floor.
That was Tom. He’d praise you to the sky on good days and tear you apart on bad ones. I’d weathered his worst.
Tonight, apparently, I’d been upgraded from “loser” to “My Lord.”
I took a sip of champagne. It was supposed to taste sweet.
It didn’t.
“Congratulations, Mark.”
“Congrats!”
My colleagues drifted past, glasses raised, all smiles. I should have felt warm.
I didn’t.
A stronger monster meant their heroes took the blame for every loss. Meant the pressure had shifted onto them instead of me.
Outside, the wind cut cold. My breath hung visible under the streetlights. Since when had it turned winter?
I pulled out my phone, playing the part of someone just stepping out for air. I opened my team’s group chat.
“The Flimsy King must’ve been fired. Their new boss is actually holding up.”
“He’s still there. Account’s still active.”
“What do you think he’s like, to make things that creepy?”
“They say you are your creations.”
“Shh. He might ban us. Or his company could.”
“They don’t care. Players curse him nonstop. Could be an engagement stat to them or something.”
“Just wait till Eden’s back. She’ll crush him.”
My team was fun and honest. They had no idea “the Flimsy King” was sitting right there among them, behind an alt account.
My phone screen changed. A call. From Mom.
Had she heard about the event? She barely followed my work. Maybe Jamie had seen an article and mentioned it.
I cleared my throat and picked up.
“So who’s our rising star, huh?” Mom’s voice reached me like it came from some other world. “When are you coming home?”
“Home soon.” I fought back a smirk. “No need to make a fuss...”
“Huh? Mark?” She sounded startled. “I meant to call Jamie. Must’ve hit the wrong number.”
My mind went blank.
“Saving you both as ‘my boy’ gets confusing. I’ll fix that.” Her voice slid into its polite register, the one I’d almost forgotten was reserved just for me. “Sorry to bother you.”
“Uhm... You must be busy,” she added, hesitant, when I still hadn’t answered. “Come home whenever you’re done, okay?”
“...Okay.”
She hung up. Only then did the corners of my mouth drop. At some point, without my noticing, they had lifted.
So that was what my mother’s voice sounded like when it wasn’t meant for me. I must have been buried in the game so long that my real life no longer felt like mine.
Heading back inside, I got caught in a surge of fans. Someone knocked into me before I could dodge. My glasses hit the floor.
I crouched, patting blind across the tile, until a hand reached into my field of vision and pressed the glasses into my palm.
“Sorry. Here.”
I stayed on my knees a beat longer than I needed to. Even just for a brief moment, the touch lingered on my skin, soft and warm.
I put my glasses on and looked around for whoever it was. Too many people. No luck.
Nearby, a crowd bounced and swelled around someone at its center.
“Eden, you’re back!”
“Our last hope!”
I couldn’t see her through the wall of fans. So they’d invited her tonight.
Eden. Top-ranked player, game reviewer, full-blown phenomenon. She’d been the first to shred every boss I’d built. Her face stayed a mystery. Some claimed she looked like a goddess. Others whispered it was too scarred to show. Seeing her surrounded like that, I guessed it wasn’t the second one.
Not that it was any concern of mine.
I turned and wandered the hallways until, almost without meaning to, I ended up back at the office. Dark and empty now, but familiar. Comfortable. A hideout dressed up as an excuse.
I dropped into my chair and lit up the monitors. No time to relax. With Eden back, more top-tier players rallying behind her, and the hero design team pushing harder than ever, I needed to find every crack in my new boss before someone else did.
___
“HP: ten thousand.”
A voice murmured in my ears, riding under a swell of theme music. Distant, then closer. Strangely familiar.
“Class: Final Boss.”
I opened my eyes, groggy, blinking. Had I fallen asleep at my desk?
“Name: Dreadlord Markanth.”
Something hovered at the edge of my vision. It sharpened. A status window. I reached to adjust my glasses.
I wasn’t wearing them.
My head jerked up. The window stayed where it was. Clear. Real. Impossible.
I looked around. The air was ice cold. Cyan flame flickered from torches mounted on stone walls. Dark banners hung from the rafters. A jagged, thorny stone throne loomed above me. I knew all of it, and none of it. I’d only ever seen this place through a screen.
I was sprawled face-down on the floor, something pinning my back like a slab of rock. The instant I pushed myself up, the weight vanished, as if it had never existed.
A black cloak. Nothing ornate, the kind built to hide the surprises players wouldn’t want to see coming. Something I’d coded.
Never something I’d worn. Until now.
I sank onto the throne and pressed my palms to my temples. A dream. A hallucination. My mind finally short-circuiting from the overtime. Whichever it was, I just had to wait for someone, anyone, to pull me out of it.
I opened my eyes again. I was alone in the office, late at night.
Someone would come looking for me. Right?
I swallowed and stared past the translucent status window into the dark. Just stared.
Time seemed to lose its way out there. My nerves should have dulled with the stillness.
They didn’t.
A creak. A vertical seam of light. I was on my feet before it finished widening.
A figure stepped through the gap. I squinted against the sudden glare. Whoever it was, whatever it was, I was ready to end this.
“Help me!” The words were already in my throat. She’d just said them first. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
A woman. She staggered toward me. Red drops trailed behind her... Blood? What was left of her armor hung broken and torn. Her head hung low, hair loose and tangled, half-fallen from her bun.
Her head snapped up, her eyes wild. “I’m human!” The force of it sent me stumbling back. “I’m not a character!” Her voice cracked. “I don’t want to...”
A dry, sharp sound cut her off. She went rigid. The tip of an arrow broke through the front of her chest.
“...die.” The word slipped out as she collapsed against my shoulder. Heavy. Warm.
No. This was just my mind, convincing me I belonged here. Until I woke up.
But for a hallucination, this felt like a little too much.
More figures stepped out of the dark, arriving like some cheap punchline I’d usually scoff at.
My colleagues. Wearing the heroes they’d built. Full skin, head to toe.
“Sorry, boy.” Tom’s voice, his face, and that same cutting edge were unmistakable. “You’re next.”
Behind him, the others’ eyes gleamed at me. Somehow, they looked more honest than I remembered them ever being.
