Aiden's heart pounded like a jackhammer in the dark, the screech of tires echoing in his skull. His consciousness catapulted him back in time—he was 16 again, standing in the gaming hall, the weight of his ignored phone like a stone in his pocket as "Victory!" blazed across the screen in triumphant golden letters.
Bzzt. Bzzt.
The crowd's cheers morphed into a hospital monitor's monotonous beep—sharp, relentless, accusing. His parents' car flipped through the darkness of his mind—metal crumpling like tissue paper, glass shattering like cruel stars, his mother's voice calling his name in that final moment.
Aiden... Aiden...
He should've been there. He should've picked them up.
With a strangled gasp, he bolted upright, his thin T-shirt clinging to his sweat-drenched body. His mattress creaked in protest—a sound that seemed impossibly loud in the dim apartment. The digital clock cast an accusatory red glow: 3:17 AM. His breath came in ragged gasps, the nightmare's claws still hooked deep into his consciousness.
"Seven years," he whispered to the darkness. Seven years, and the guilt still hunted him like a starving predator—because he'd chosen pixels over people, a tournament over their safety. Because he'd failed Lily when she needed him most.
He swung his legs over the bed, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes until stars burst behind his eyelids. The mirror across the room caught his reflection—dark circles like bruises beneath his eyes, hair sticking up in all directions. He looked like one of the zombies from Kingdom Destroyer, minus the rotting flesh.
The silence pressed in from all sides, broken only by Lily's soft breathing from the next room. The sound anchored him to reality, a gentle reminder of why he fought so hard every single day.
Aiden stood, bare feet silent on the worn carpet as he paced to shake the ghosts, but they clung tight—barnacles on the hull of his consciousness.
...
Seven years ago
The university gaming hall thrummed with electric energy—screens flashing like lightning, keyboards clacking like summer rain on a tin roof. Aiden's blood sang with laser-focused concentration. At nineteen, he was a promising engineering student, his mind a complex lattice of equations and strategies.
The championship tournament was his stage, every move a precise brick in a perfect structure. His battlemage wove through enemies with balletic precision, arcane traps snapping shut like living blueprints.
"Close it out, Aiden!" his teammate shouted, voice nearly lost in the crowd's roar.
One calculated burst of energy—blue-white and perfect—and the enemy crumpled to the virtual ground. "Victory!" lit the screen in glorious technicolor. Aiden stood, a rare, genuine grin breaking through his usually stoic expression as the crowd's cheers washed over him like a tidal wave.
His phone buzzed in his pocket once, twice. He ignored it, riding high on the win, until the third vibration pulled him reluctantly aside. The hospital's number glared back at him like an accusation.
"Aiden Kim?" The nurse's voice was clipped, urgent, a dagger through his victory haze. "There's been an accident. Your parents... you need to come now."
The world tilted on its axis. He ran, the taxi ride a blur of neon city lights and suffocating dread, his mind replaying the plan on a cruel loop: he was supposed to pick them up, but the tournament ran long, and he'd texted them to drive instead.
His fault. His fault. His fault.
The hospital reeked of antiseptic and despair, cold and unyielding as a prison. In the sterile waiting room, nine-year-old Lily sat alone, a tiny island of grief clutching their mother's purse like a life preserver. Her face was pale as moonlight under the harsh fluorescent lights. She looked up, eyes brimming with unshed tears that reflected the overhead lights like broken glass.
"Aiden," she choked, standing on unsteady legs.
He crossed to her in three desperate strides, pulling her into a fierce hug, her small frame shaking against him like a leaf in a storm. "I'm here, Lily," he whispered, voice cracking down the middle. "I'm so sorry."
Sorry for choosing the game. Sorry for leaving them. Sorry for breaking their family.
The doctor's words—father gone, mother critical—hammered the guilt deeper into his soul, a weight he knew he'd carry into eternity.
...
Present Day
Lily walked the school hallway with her chin held high, her secondhand backpack heavy with a dog-eared chemistry book that was falling apart at the spine. Her worn sneakers squeaked traitorously on the linoleum, drawing sneers from Mia's clique, their brand-name gear and perfect hair a silent but deafening taunt.
"Look, it's Thrift Shop Lily," Mia said, her laugh slicing through the air like a polished knife. "Got any new holes in that sweater? Maybe we should start a charity."
Lily's grip tightened on her backpack strap, her cheeks warming to the color of sunrise, but she didn't flinch. Aiden's voice echoed from countless nights spent strategizing over cheap noodles: "Identify structural weaknesses. Find the pattern, then break it." He'd meant game opponents, but it fit here too.
She scanned Mia like a battlefield—her practiced smugness, her pathological need for an audience, the way her eyes constantly darted for validation.
Then Lily saw it: Mia's phone, screen cracked in a spiderweb pattern, a notification flashing about a missed STEM club meeting. Vulnerability, exposed.
"I'd rather have holes than a broken brain," Lily said, voice even as still water. "Missed another STEM club, Mia? Bet Professor Abernathy loved that. Wasn't your presentation due today?"
Mia's perfectly glossed smirk faltered, her friends' giggles shifting targets like weathervanes in changing wind. "Whatever, Lily," she snapped, but her step quickened, prey sensing danger.
Lily pressed forward, calm like Aiden before a clutch play. "I could help you prep for the next one. Chemistry's not that hard if you actually focus instead of posting selfies."
Mia's posse hesitated, exchanging glances loaded with uncertainty. Mia herself stormed off, momentum thoroughly lost. Lily exhaled slowly, a complex mixture of triumph and bone-deep ache swirling in her chest. She wished Aiden could've seen her—his strategies, her victory. It wasn't a game with gold rewards, but it felt like one she'd just won.
As she walked to class, Lily's mind wandered to the morning's hospital visit. Room 412. The monitor's steady beeping. Her mother's hand, cool and unresponsive in hers. Dr. Patel's gentle voice explaining the experimental treatment that insurance wouldn't cover—$30,000 might as well be $30 million.
"We'll find a way," she'd promised her mother's silent form, the same way Aiden always promised her when bills piled up like snow. Family words. Kim words. A pledge written in their DNA.
...
That night, Aiden and Marcus hunched over a corner table at the Golden Mouse, tablets glowing with ethereal blue light as League of the Ancient maps sprawled before them like digital constellations. They were deep in tournament prep, voices low and focused. The café was quieter than usual, most players gone, leaving only the comforting hum of PCs and their own murmured strategy session.
Aiden's eyes stung like they'd been rubbed with sandpaper—the price of a long morning stocking shelves at SuprMart. $58.50 earned, most of it already mentally allocated to keep Lily's school fees and modest allowance paid. But the strategy planning kept his mind razor-sharp, pushing away the fatigue.
"If we bait their mage here," Marcus said, his thick finger tracing a choke point on the map, "you can drop your arcane net. They'll panic-teleport right into Liam's trap zone."
Aiden nodded, his mind splitting focus—half on the tactical plan, half replaying the hospital visit earlier. Sarah's stillness, her rare eyelid flutter that gave him cruel hope, had torn at him like physical pain. Lily's animated chatter about school had been a healing balm, but guilt still gnawed at his insides like a hungry rat. His fault she grew up too fast. His fault she had to be so strong so young.
"Yeah," he agreed, refocusing with effort. "Control the flow, then hit hard. Elena can pick off stragglers from this ridge."
They worked for another hour, fine-tuning contingencies and timing, until Marcus leaned back with a groan, stretching his massive arms overhead. His chair creaked ominously beneath his bulk.
"Ever think about what you'd do if this wasn't all... survival?" Marcus asked suddenly, voice tinged with something softer than his usual gruff confidence.
Aiden blinked, caught off guard by the philosophical turn. "What?"
Marcus's voice softened to a near-whisper, a rare vulnerability showing through his imposing exterior. "I've been saving bits here and there. I want a café someday. Not like this—" he gestured around at the worn carpet, the outdated machines, the flickering lights "—a real place, where people come to build stuff, not just grind for pennies. Somewhere that lasts."
The words hit Aiden like a sudden jolt of electricity, stirring a dream he'd buried so deep he'd almost forgotten it existed. "I get that," he said quietly, feeling something crack open inside him. "I wanted to build too—bridges, systems, real things that helped people. Engineering was supposed to be my way there."
"Still could be," Marcus said, his grin warm and genuine in the blue light. "You're already architecting wins like nobody's business. Engineering's just another battlefield."
Aiden's throat tightened unexpectedly, a faint, dangerous hope flickering through the familiar weight of responsibility. "Maybe. You too, man. A café sounds right for you. You'd be good at it."
Marcus chuckled, the sound rumbling deep in his chest, but his eyes held steady. "That's what we are under all this grinding—builders. Making something that sticks."
As they packed up their tablets, Aiden's gaze fell to his worn wallet, the faded photo tucked inside—his parents, Lily, a younger version of himself, all whole and smiling on a long-ago summer day. The guilt was there, a permanent scar across his soul, but tonight it didn't crush him completely beneath its weight.
Lily's surprising strength, Marcus's quiet dream—they were reminders that he could still create, not just for survival, but for something more. The past was carved in stone, but the future was his to architect, one calculated move at a time.
Walking home under the neon-stained night sky, Aiden's mind drifted to Eternal Realms. Not just an escape, but maybe a bridge—to a better life, to healing, to dreams long deferred. Two weeks until the tournament. Two weeks to prepare. Two weeks to transform from survivor to victor.
For the first time in years, the smile that touched his lips wasn't forced.