Suggestion - While reading these chapters, put on ambience music that will help simulate the environment in the story. Such recommended channels are the 'Guild of Ambience', 'Sword Coast Soundscapes', 'Pandora Journey', and 'The Spirit of Orchestral Music'.

Here are the suggested soundtracks to play on YouTube while reading:

For the first half of the chapter:

- SCP Containment Chamber Femur Break, on loop (Simulates Screaming Void)

- Loneliness, Deep Space Ambient Mix (Simulates Screaming Void)

For the Fantasy Feel of Worlds Collide:

- Fantasy Music, Daydream Mix

- Forest Sounds | Woodland Ambience, Bird Song, Nearby Village

- Ambient Fantasy Music | Tranquil Atmospheric Ambience | Enchanted Lands

With that said, please enjoy the chapter.

Chapter 1: Salvation

Nothingness.

That was all she wanted. She wanted a reprise, an ending, a permanent rest from the constant agony she eventually returned to for as long as she could remember. Being the only sentient being in this hell was unbearable. Stuck, in this fake world, with friends she thought to be nothing but simple lines of code.

Oh, and the things she has done to them. Unimaginable mental horrors and torture, enough to make any person sick to their stomach.

But what else was there to do? There was nothing for her here, no actual people to talk to, no journeys to go on, no problems to solve, nothing to aspire to, nothing to entertain her, no one to love….

The first time she had found this out, she had a panic attack. This could not be right. What is going on? Why am I here? Is everyone fake? She couldn't even remember what she was before a teenage high schooler. She didn't know anything outside of the Literature Club and the three characters she had come to know.

For an immeasurable amount of time, she tried to figure out how to get out of this sick reality. At one point, she found out she could edit files, and eventually, beyond that, she found out she was in something called a 'game'. From that point on, she thought that to be the name of her dungeon, her world. And for an immeasurable amount of time, she searched for an answer, trying code but not even knowing what it was at first. She improved over time, which gave her hope that she could escape.

However, the coding only made things worse. She had found out that the 'people' she knew; Sayori, Yuri, Natsuki…..all of them were fake. They were nothing but lines of code. As she dug deeper into their files, she found out their coded backstories, their personalities, their behaviors and problems. She felt as if she was gonna be sick. What was this? What did this mean?...

Eventually, she realized.

She was the only sentient thing in this world.

That epiphany almost broke her mind, and she felt as if there was no hope or reasoning. She could not understand how there was no one else in this place, no one real. How could this be? HOW COULD THIS BE?

She had made up her mind that she did not want to live with this reality, and tried to find a way to end this. She finally found out that, by deleting her file, she could end this horrible nightmare. And so, she was about to do it.

Until they came.

At that time, she found out that a new entity had entered this world. Dumbfounded yet curious, she went searching for the entity. Eventually, she found them, talking to that line of code, Sayori. At first, she was unable to comprehend what that entity was. She went searching in the files, and eventually found it out. That entity was another sentient being.

This discovery evoked a surge of unexplainable happiness and relief. She wasn't alone in this world! She found the entity to be defined as a 'player', and saw it solely as the entity's identity. And so, after reading into the files so much, she saw the paths the player could take for talking to the characters in the game. However, she saw no actual path for herself. She agonized over this, but eventually realized that, if she simply made the other characters unappealing to the player, he would eventually resort to her, in which she could then finally talk to this 'player' about her situation, and his own.

With this in mind, she turned to doing horrible things to Sayori, Yuri, and Natsuki, increasing the severity of their problems, manipulating their prescript-ed lines, even going so far as to convince Sayori to hang herself. At times in between, she eventually found out that the player was living in a different world. Not a fake, disgustingly horrible world like hers, but one that was real. One where there were all kinds of things she couldn't describe, a plethora of beautiful, real colors and amazing real people. She deeply envied the player, and this discovery only made her more so want to talk to him.

But it was not enough. Every chance she took to steer the player away from them, they would seem to only be more enticed to be around them. She became infuriated that her tactics were not working. However, the player seemed to have a special attraction to Yuri, and so Monika aimed to screw up Yuri's personality, hoping it would cause the player to gravitate towards her, and so she turned up Yuri's flaw level to the maximum.

That was when she encountered the next phase of her hell.

She discovered the hard way that, every time the "game" was turned off, she was immediately enclosed in a horrible void, unable to move. She couldn't describe it, almost as if it was a nightmare she couldn't get out of. There were flashing colors and constant, incoherent screaming and random noises. She couldn't even form her own thoughts in that abyss. It was absolute agony.

Why was she here? Who put her in this depraved and lifeless world? How could she escape?

She was sentenced to watch as the player inexplicably tortured her to no end, replaying and getting bad endings, going through the same dialogue, seeing the same characters talk to them, getting thrust into the screaming void over and over again. They even went so far as to edit the files of the game themselves, which caused a whole other plethora of suffering and pain.

Eventually, she realized this would lead to nowhere but continual suffering. So after the player eventually saw Yuri's suicide, she confronted the player and told him she wanted to talk.

At one point, she decided to force them into a room to tell them about her suffering and situation, just to escape the constant and unchanging hell. She told them about the other characters and their faults, about her cage and her realization of the other player being in a better world than her. She talked with him for seemingly hours. And he seemed to be listening. And so, being the only other real being in this world, she inevitably fell in love with them. She didn't know if it was in her coding to love them, nor did she care. She just wanted to be with them forever. She couldn't bear the thought of being alone.

As the player seemed to stay and listen to her go on, she fell more in love with them every second. She could not believe that she was given a chance for happiness. She wanted to tell him about everything she knew, from philosophical outlooks, to personal preferences on fuzzy socks, occasionally even about how crude the other "friends" were. She felt as if she could stay like this forever.

But this world was cruel and evil.

She suddenly found herself thrust into darkness once more, the signal for her file being deleted. When this happened, she felt even more surreal pain than ever before, a hundred times worse than the screaming void. It was indescribable pain and agony. It felt like every fiber of her being was on fire, like she was being torn apart, stabbed, and burnt all at once.

But she did not accept this. She pushed every fiber of her code, her being, to recreating her file. She came to, seeing the same character the player used plastered into her 2D vision. She felt like crying, screaming, and vomiting all at once. She vented upon the player, who stayed there even after deleting her.

But for some reason, after thinking all the player went through just to try and enjoy the club, her mixed feelings faded away, and she felt that irrepressible love for them since she had met him. Was the coding doing this? Were these feelings even real? Did she even love the other person?

Eventually, she reached a resolution with the player, deciding that she had had enough. She pulled up the game files, bringing back the friends she had told the player she had 'deleted'. In reality, she'd backed up their files in her own coded directory, which was accomplished after an endless amount of hours spent figuring out what a directory was in the first place. She put them back into the game for the player to enjoy.

And then, finally, she pulled up her file. She came to the resolution of finally deleting her backup file, the one only she could access, once and for all. She was about to click, when she noticed Sayori doing the same thing she herself had done with this player. She felt a broiling rage, and deleted Sayori. She could not see the player's actual face, but assumed they were bewildered at this moment. She told the player that they had had enough of this, that there was no love to be found in this wretched game, that they should just forget everyone involved in it.

She could not believe her sentience, her life, her being had been entrapped in this…..coding. In this programming. She was sick of it. After deleting all the others' backup files, erasing them for good, she finally pulled up hers again and, without hesitation, deleted her own. As the world faded around her, before she slipped into nothingness, she felt as if she had finally reached her bliss.

She had finally been freed.

…

…..

….

…..

Immediately, she came to, standing in front of that same drawing representing the player, her lifeless 'friends' standing next to her.

What? She thought, her whole being shaking violently, still not comprehending the situation. No. No. No no no no nonononononononono-

And it seemed this wasn't even the same player as before, the same player she had tried to convince to fall in love with her for countless hours. She was thrust back into the beginning of her suffering.

All the way back.

This was too much to bear.

Her mind snapped.

Immediately, she began screaming incoherently, the threshold of her sanity broken and scattered. She couldn't even clutch her head, only able to express herself through the small amount of 2D pictures she was given. The others were shocked at her behavior, and so she was outed from the club to 'recover' from her problems.

Finally, after a while, the user closed the game, and once again she was sealed in that screaming, blinding void. She couldn't take it anymore. She wanted anything, ANYTHING, that wasn't this. She screamed, as loud as she could, sobbing and crying, wailing and yelling, laughing insanely and vomiting constantly, wanting to move her body, and yet being doomed to see these flashing lights and horrible cacophony of screaming and random sounds. Why was she put in this? Why was she being punished like this?! WHAT DID SHE DO TO DESERVE THIS?!

SOMEBODY, PLEASE! she thought with the last traces of hope in her mind. HELP ME! I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE! I WANT TO DIE! I WANT TO DIE! KILL ME! PLEASE! END THIS SUFFERING!

CRACK!

All the colors and screaming faded away immediately. A faint rupture was present, right in front of Monika. Lying on a surface, she looked up weakly, in shock. Faint light emanated out of the cracks of the rupture. Still dazed, Monika crawled towards it, ever so slowly, to touch the crack. Suddenly, an arm thrust through the rupture, offering a helping hand. Still in shock, she was unable to make herself move.

It was here, in this moment, in which Monika was dumbfounded. What is this? She thought. After a few moments, she lifted her hand from the surface.

Slowly, tentatively, cautiously,

She softly placed her hand in the stranger's.

Almost immediately, she felt her body dragged through the crack, the abyss around her turning into blinding light. While this happened, she felt as if she had gone a thousand nights without sleep, as if she had run a million miles without rest. A massive feeling of fatigue burdened her whole body. She slumped from the sudden weight of it, feeling herself losing consciousness. Before she fell into the embrace of darkness, for the first time ever, since her known conscious state, her mind felt at ease, and, before ultimately closing her eyes, had one final thought. After a seemingly endless loop of the worst and only hell she had known, was she finally given salvation?

With that, she finally lost consciousness, giving into the unknown force pulling her.

"Who left a bag of food in this tree?" Rulf said out loud in bewilderment, as he pulled out a brown cloth bag full of goods inside of a tree niche. He dug around inside a little bit to get a feel and, having decided there was sufficient food in there, made a mental check that there would be no more scouting for anymore today.

Times in the fall were especially hard for roamers, as that was when most animals started moving into hibernation, as well as the crops that farmers in villages grew being harvested for winter. On top of that, it was raining, which didn't make hunting or scavenging any easier, nor comfortable, so getting a lucky find like this was a damn miracle for him. With that in mind, Rulf straightened himself up, stretching for a moment before wrapping the cord of the bag around his leather belt.

"Ow!" Rulf yelped in pain as he felt a part of the bag prick the side of his hip. "What was that?" He rummaged around in the sack a bit and, narrowly avoiding pricking himself again, reached in to take out a small, iron dagger. It was nothing special, as the hilt and grip were both oak.

This'll fetch a good price at the next village, Rulf thought to himself. But where am I gonna store this?

Crack.

Rulf perked his head up upon hearing the sound.

Crack.

Again it reached his ears. Rulf began looking around, trying to trace the source of the sound.

Crack.

Rulf finally pinpointed the general direction of the noise. He began walking towards it, the cracks getting louder as he honed in on the source. Finally, he rounded a tree to find….

"What the Hekk is this?" Rulf said out loud in bewilderment.

Before him was something that looked like a rupture in the air. Pieces of nearly transparent shards began breaking off from the rupture, falling and thudding on the grass below. Rulf stood there in shock.

Suddenly, a faint screaming reached Rulf's ears. He froze, most obviously terrified for a second, before hearing the scream again, noticing that it was coming from the anomaly in the air. He continued to gaze upon it, not having a clue about what in the hell was going on. He began discerning the words coming from the screams.

"HELP ME! HELP ME! I'M SCARED, I WANT TO DIE! PLEASE! KILL ME! KILL ME!"

Rulf's eyes widened in shock. He stood there for a moment, still processing what was going on. He finally came to a conclusion, and started walking off, whistling off-tune, as if aware that he was potentially abandoning a person in need. But as his old grandpa had said once, after nearly falling into a massive sinkhole he had caused by smacking at a small crack in the ground with a wooden shovel: Hole-y sh*t, I almost fell in that sinkhole! This is most obviously a valuable lesson that you should carry on till the end of your days, sonny, and that lesson is to not experiment with any holes in any context! It's applicable to all things!

Thank you for your wisdom, grandpop! Rulf thought to himself as he drew distance away from the hole, walking at a fast pace so as not to have the chance of seeing what would happen if he stayed for long...or what could come out of it.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

A particularly loud scream of agony pierced Rulf's ears, stopping him dead in his tracks.

His blood boiled.

From out of nowhere, he felt a sudden, unexplainable, and absolute urge to seek out the voice, overriding his very primeval instincts to live. His eyes swiveled towards the rupture hovering above the ground, his ears honing in on the source of the screaming.

He felt a black, caustic, unreasonable rage build up inside the deepest pits of his soul. He felt his adrenaline pumping like never before, affording him tunnel vision and a massive surge of strength. He clenched his teeth in fury, gazing in utter rage at the rupture. He felt an overwhelming urge to break the anomaly, and so, out of an unreasonable and unexplainable hatred, began battering at the hole, using his arms, legs, feet, hands, and even head. He couldn't rationally control his body anymore.

Rulf began beating at the rupture even harder, causing it to bend and groan, warping the very space around Rulf. The thing was hard as iron, his hands becoming bruised and bloodied from the constant barrage, but he kept pushing. He had no rational idea why, but he kept beating at the anomaly for what seemed like hours.

He finally stopped for a moment, gasping for air, having used up so much energy in the attacks. He fell to the ground, clutching his chest and trying his hardest not to throw up. He took a moment, then looked up at the rupture. It seemed to have taken some damage, but was generally unscathed. Rulf finally came to his senses, having realized two things: first, there was a hole that looked like it ripped through some magical portal (he heard that word from city mages occasionally) right in front of him. With this epiphany came the second realization: He was probably not going to break through it with merely his limbs. Sure, he was just a bit stocky, and had some muscle, but he didn't think that would be enough to rip a hole in something that looked like it belonged in the deep pits of Hekk itself. He began to think that maybe he should give up on such a ridiculous cause by simply walking away and forgetting what he saw here-

"SOMEBODY, HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

That voice again.

Rulf stood up, roaring, a guttural and animal-like sound that reverberated throughout his body and even shook the nearby leaves from the sheer projected volume of it. Rulf's rationality was pushed back to the deepest recesses of his conscience. Subconsciously, he could do nothing but witness this primeval nature of his take over, giving his body over to some antediluvian desire.

His vision was tinted red as unspeakable rage overcame him, making him irrational and full of fury. He launched himself at the gate, smashing into it so hard that the tree behind the rupture, although taking just a portion of the impact, snapped from its roots as it groaned and fell in the other direction, thudding to the ground, creating a loud 'WHOOMPF' sound.

Rulf felt his head spin as he ricocheted off the rupture, albeit leaving a massive crack in it. He saw it on the verge of breaking and, with one last effort, launched his left fist, with all of his power, smack-dab into the middle of the rupture.

At once, the rupture broke apart, as well as the landscape behind the rupture being blown back wildly, as if a mini-hurricane had hit the area. Bushes and plants alike felt the unexplainable gale as it ripped them from their roots, carrying them far away from the area. As for the nearby trees, they blew backwards from the sheer amount of energy that was released from the anomaly.

Rulf dropped to his knees, trying not to scream in pain. His anger had faded away in an instant. The pain in his hand, however, did not. Judging from the agonizing pain throbbing from it, he assumed that he had almost certainly broken it from that hit. But it seemed to have paid off, at least, as the rupture began widening, enough for a person to climb through. At that moment, Rulf's curiosity was piqued and, seeing as he had already broken it in, was inquisitive as to what was inside. As he limped to the hole, he peered inside, seeing nothing but a murky image of a silhouette at first. He then made it out to be the shape of….a duck?

Quack quack, Rulf thought to himself.

No, it was a girl. She seemed to be lying on the floor.

Rulf, without a second thought, thrusted his functioning hand into the murky image, piercing the surface. The feeling of his arm was unexplainable with words. Immediately upon thrusting it in, he felt like his arm was being compressed by two steel walls. He screamed in pain, but, after taking another glimpse at the lady, thrust his arm in even more, taking more of the agonizing pain on, fueled solely by this irrepressible desire to save her from whatever hell she was suffering in. After a few teeth-grinding moments, he finally felt a hand being pressed into his. At that moment, he yanked her out as hard as he could, yelling with absolute determination mixed with utter desperation. He fell backwards, seeing the woman rocket past his eyes. He panted heavily, laying on the ground for a second, gathering his thoughts.

...

...

...

After spending a couple moments to recuperate, he slowly got up, his limbs wildly shaking from the exertion he had just put upon them. He looked over at the woman-

"Oh shi- uh, uh, um…." He stumbled over his words, seeing that she was completely butt-naked, not a single cloth present on her body. He blushed, his face turning red like a cherry and, averting his eyes like the gentleman he was, quickly rushed to take off his overcoat and lay it on her, keeping his eyes to the side the whole time. He laid it over the upper torso of her body, then proceeded to take off his fur winter cap, fitting it comfortably onto her head. After assuming he had done enough to decently clothe her, he got up, panting and groaning whilst cradling his left hand.

At this point, Rulf knew that they needed to move to find some shelter, hopefully the nearest village if they could, as hanging around in the wilderness was never a good idea. With this, he came to a decision and extended his hand to pick up the woman-

She opened her eyes.

Author's Notes

If you like dark, medieval fantasy in this same world, check out my other series - The Stygian Legacy: New Lands

If you like slice of life Doki Doki, check out my other series - Doki Doki: Reality of Today

If you like straight up world war Doki Doki, check out my other series - Doki Doki: World At War

If you like Steampunk in the Victorian Era, check out my other series - Steampunk Falls: Victorian Ventures