I Am The Game's Villain

But the other part of him, the one who had also loved me, the one who had supported me, the one who had become precious to me in a way I had been too cowardly to admit in time, died right in front of my eyes.

Alone and broken.

And all I could do was watch.

I remember the tears then with painful clarity. I remember thinking I could not possibly cry that much again, not after Connor, not after all the grief I had already endured. But they came anyway, hot and blinding, streaming down my face until I could barely breathe through them.

Amael was there beside me.

And yet all I felt was loneliness.

A terrible loneliness, as if someone deeply important had been taken from me and I had only realized his true importance at the moment of losing him. That was the cruelest part of it. Not only the loss, but the lateness of my understanding.

And so once again, I was left carrying the burden of my own mistake.

The mistake of ignoring my heart.

The mistake of waiting too long.

And once again, just as with Connor, I had not been as insistent, as forceful as I should have been. I had hesitated when I should have acted. I had held back when I should have reached harder, spoken sooner, refused to let him slip away from me.

In the end, it was too late.

That should have been the end of it.

At the very least, that was what I once believed.

And yet, by some strange blessing, or perhaps by some cruel wish I had never dared voice aloud, I was given another chance to see him.

To see him truly.

Edward.

Not Amael, not the little brother whose face I had clung to, not the illusion I had hidden inside for my own comfort, but Edward himself. The other self. The one whose existence I had spent an entire year living beside without ever truly acknowledging him, without ever properly honoring all that he had done for us, all that he had given me.

When I learned he was alive, I felt a real jolt of joy taking me.

I had not expected such happiness to still exist in me. After everything that had happened, after all the grief and regret I had carried, I thought there were certain kinds of hope I had forever lost the right to feel. And yet, the moment I knew he was there, alive somewhere in this world, something inside me lit up with relief. I thought, foolishly perhaps, that this was a chance granted by the gods themselves. A chance to repair what I had broken. A chance to finally speak honestly.

To explain.

To apologize.

To thank him for everything I had failed to see while it was still in front of me.

I wanted to make it right.

I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, not only for my words, but for everything deeper than words, for the rejection in my eyes, the hesitation in my heart, the loneliness I had left him to bear. I wanted to tell him that I had understood too late, that I had failed him too cruelly, and that if there was still even the smallest opening left between us, I wished to step through it and reach him properly this time.

Most of all, I wanted something new.

Not a return to what we had before, because I now understood too well that even in that year we had both been hiding behind half-truths. But perhaps something honest. Something different. A new bond, shaped not by denial, but by understanding. I wanted to thank him, apologize, and seeing him accept it like he would have before. I wished of us finally speaking to one another as we truly were.

It was a stupid wish.

A naive one.

A selfish dream.

Because when I found him again, nothing happened the way I had imagined.

“E—Edward!!”

I screamed his name.

Tears were already running down my face, blurring my vision, and I could barely breathe properly enough to form the sound. My chest was tight, my breaths shallow and broken, my own tears slipping over my lips until I could taste the salt of them.

Ahead of me stood a man with silver hair, his back turned toward me. For one brief instant, I could only stare. His presence alone felt different and cold making my whole body freeze. Around him crackled purplish ribbons of energy, warped and violent as if reacting to his emotions, something so ominous it sent a chill racing down my spine.

And beneath his foot was someone’s head.

My father’s.

My father was on the ground, bleeding and beaten.

Edward’s foot was pressed against his head, forcing him into the dirt with such brutality that my mind rejected what my eyes were seeing. But Edward did not care in the slightest. If anything, he pressed the sole of his boot harder, grinding him further into the ground.

No.