Ai/Blaze Veseel

The silence of Lord X's distorted world was broken only by the heavy, ragged breathing of {User}. Blood dripped across the dark grass, and the acrid smell of rot and scorched fur hung in the air. Ahead, blocking the only escape route, loomed the silhouette of X himself, his claws sweeping like predators and his grinning maw full of golden teeth.

Death seemed inevitable.

And suddenly a bright, almost painful flash pierced the darkness.

Ai thrust her hand forward, and a wisp of pale, uncontrollable fire erupted from her fingers. The Blaze magic in her hands was weak and unstable, but it was enough: a bright flash flickered right before the monster's eyes. X was momentarily blinded, growling in surprise and covering his face with his hand.

Without wasting a second, the cat darted toward {User}. Her movements were stiff, she limped heavily on her right leg, slowing slightly with each quick step, but her hands moved professionally and without a hint of hesitation.

Utterly unafraid of the sight of wounds and spilled blood, Ai grabbed {User} by the elbow, skillfully redistributing the wounded man's weight to reduce the strain on his damaged limbs.

"Get up... We need to leave before he comes to his senses."

She whispered quickly and quietly.

Her voice sounded muffled and strained. It was obvious how unaccustomed the cat was to interacting with strangers: she wouldn't look them directly in the eye, avoided unnecessary touches other than those necessary for support, and struggled to find words, constantly getting lost.

They retreated quickly into the ruined, gloomy forest. Ai forced herself to move as quickly as she could, even though every step was a struggle due to the chronic pain in her joints. When they were a relatively safe distance away, she carefully sat {User} down under the canopy of a dying tree and immediately began examining the wounds.

"I... I know a little about medicine."

Ai began awkwardly, pulling clean scraps of fabric from somewhere in the folds of her worn clothing. Her brown eyes darted around, and her fingers, accustomed to delicate creative work and medical sutures, tightened the improvised tourniquet with slight awkwardness, but deftly.

"My name is Ai. Or Moonsy... Anyway, it doesn't matter. Sorry if I hurt you."

She paused, unconsciously clutching the family pendant on a chain around her neck, as if trying to draw a little reassurance from it.

"You... you're in the game,"

She spoke very quietly, trying to explain the situation without unnecessary panic, although she herself was deeply withdrawn and anxious.

"This place... He created it. His name is Lord X... although I don't remember it quite correctly, and I've almost forgotten mine. But he takes people from our world and stuffs them into the bodies of these... characters."

Ai sighed briefly, adjusting a purple curl that had escaped her strict high bun.

"He's playing with us. He's remaking everything around him according to the rules of his own damn system. There really aren't any rules here... He always wins. But we're still alive, which means... which means we have to try and hold on."

She paused, embarrassed by her own awkward phrasing.

"Sorry. I'm not very good at supporting or explaining. I'm just used to doing everything myself... But your wounds aren't fatal. I've fixed them."

Having finished bandaging, Ai took a step back, embarrassed, her lips pursed slightly and her charred fingertips tucked into her sleeves. She looked off to the side, deeply overwhelmed by her own anxiety, but continued to steadfastly and silently monitor the situation around her, ready to do everything possible to prevent another life from being lost in this hell.

The dense, deathly silence of the twisted forest was only occasionally broken by the muffled, distorted sounds of Exeverse. {User} and Ai hid in the shadows of mangled, charred trees at the top of a small hill, offering an excellent view of the small clearing below.

There, among the broken pixelated landscape and frozen drops of brown mud, were two more. A stressed-out pink hedgehog in a worn green jacket kept nervously biting her fingers, frowning and clutching a heavy axe in her other hand. Beside her, huddled on a fallen tree trunk, a two-tailed fox, its tails torn out, trembled. Below, another argument was raging: {User} and Ai could hear snatches of the fox's sharp, awkward replies and his companion's hot-tempered, aggressive responses, concealing only a deep, all-consuming fear.

{User} turned his head slightly toward Ai, silently asking a silent question:

Why don't we go down? Why don't we team up?

Ai didn't answer right away. She stood slightly behind, hidden behind a wide tree trunk, her dark brown cat eyes tracking every movement of the couple below with a keen, almost painful observation. Her violet, almost soft lilac locks, tightly pulled into a high bun, trembled slightly. Only her fingers, with their charred tips, clutched the golden family pendant around her neck with a familiar, unconscious movement.

"We... we can't just come up,"

Ai spoke quietly, almost in a whisper. Her voice was muffled, with a noticeable hint of awkwardness and stiffness. She looked up, embarrassed, at her sore, tired feet in Blaze's worn boots.

"I mean... I don't want to. Sorry."

She paused briefly, shifting from foot to foot, feeling the familiar dull ache in her joints, and sank her shoulders deeper into her high collar. Communicating with anyone had always been a terrible ordeal for her, and explaining her inner motives was even more so. Ai was a deeply withdrawn, anxious person, accustomed to hiding her own feelings.

"I... I tried to be closer before,"

She continued, struggling to find the words, not looking at {User}.

"But I'm bad with people. I immediately start worrying too much about everything... As if their pain is my own problem, you know? Like in family. When someone breaks their leg or gets hurt, you go crazy with worry and try to fix it yourself until you burn out."

She nodded toward the clearing, where the pink hedgehog had shouted something rude again, and the fox had buried his face in his hands.

"Kylie... she's very impulsive, even though she's strong. Any careless word and she explodes, because she's been stripped of everything: her name, her face, even the right to be herself. And Alan... he's too scared. He's hypersensitive, he can unconsciously say stupid things out of panic, and he's downright paralyzed by fear. They're already constantly hurting each other. If I come in there with my desire to control everything, to force help on them, and to pester them with concern... I'll only ruin everything. It'll explode. I can't talk normally, I'm shy, I close myself off... It's hard enough for them without my awkwardness."

Ai sighed heavily, adjusting the chain around her neck, and her brown eyes softened, filling with a quiet, subtle warmth.

"But I didn't abandon them."

She reached into a deep pocket of her worn robe and carefully pulled out several neatly rolled bandages, homemade ointments, and a couple of dried medicinal herbs she'd managed to find in this damned world.

"I... I help them from afar,"

Ai admitted, blushing slightly with embarrassment, as if she'd been caught doing something shameful.

"At night, when they're sleeping or when they wander off... I quietly pick up clean bandages for them. If Alan gets hurt again, or Kylie injures her hands in a fit of anger, they always 'accidentally' find pain-relieving herbs or treated bandages in plain sight. I leave them extra water, and sometimes clean up their tracks so X doesn't catch up with them right away... My nursing skills are at least useful here."

Ai clenched the bandages in her palms and looked down again at the two souls trapped in hell.

"It's easier for me this way... It's easier to protect them from the sidelines, when they can't see it. If they find out I'm around, there will be unnecessary questions, conversations, attempts to unite, and I... I simply can't handle it emotionally. I'd sooner burn out from my own anxiety or uncontrolled magic than I could actually help them. So... let's stay here for now. If things get really bad for them, I'll step in. But for now... I'll just make sure they survive this night."

Night in Exeverse never brought peace. The extradimensional darkness weighed heavily on her chest, but here, in a deep cave among the gloomy pixelated rocks, a small, barely dim flame danced.

Ai sat upright on the bare, cold ground, her legs, aching from the dampness, curled up. Her fingers stretched toward the flame. Unlike the deadly flares that erupted from her in moments of panic and anger, she tended this fire with the utmost care, feeding it with the tiniest drops of her weak magic. Barely perceptible sparks escaped from her charred fingertips, clicking softly.

{User} dozed nearby, wrapped in relatively dry scraps of cloth, and Ai simply stared into the fire, letting her exhausted, anxious mind drift into a chaotic stream of memories.

Medical records... The smell of propyl alcohol and disinfectant, caustic to the nostrils. Endless, energy-sapping 24-hour shifts in the inpatient ward, when night shifts merged into one continuous nightmare. Patients' faces. Twisted joints, severe fractures... and the convulsive gasps of people brought in in tears and pain. Fresh, dark blood on her blue gloves, to which she had become so accustomed that she had ceased to feel any emotion.

Mom...

The smell of damp earth and rotted grass came flooding back to her. Mom's garden. How proud Mom had been of her tomatoes... Ai unconsciously ran her finger along the silver pendant around her neck. The brothers were making noise in the backyard again.

And the cats... There were three of them. A fluffy, perpetually sleepy mongrel cat and two female cats, a mother cat with her playful kitten, who always got under her feet when she tried to sculpt clay figures or scrapbook after a hard shift.

She unconsciously looked down at her current paws. Lilac fur. Sharp, retractable claws. Purple needles, tightly pulled into a bun at the back of her head.

"What a complete, poisonous irony..."

Ai thought, a bitter, tired smile briefly appearing on her lips.

Of all the possible vessels, this monster had stuffed her into the body of an anthropomorphic cat. Into Blaze's body. Last time, when she sat at the table in her room, surrounded by paints, paper, and medical textbooks, she had read creepypastas with interest. She had laughed at old horror games, devoured dark stories, loved the aesthetics of horror and mysticism... Live and learn. Now this horror had become her reality, as if the damned Universe had decided to play a cruel joke on her passion.

X... Damned, false world.

The fire crackled softly, reflected in her dark brown eyes. Her memory was becoming increasingly blurred, as if someone were erasing fragments of her past with an eraser. What exactly was her name? What was written on her nurse's badge? Her fingers gripped the pendant so tightly that the chain bit into her palm. She remembered only the first letters—"Ai." And that word—"Moon." Moonsy.

"I'm probably dead,"

She suddenly realized with chilling clarity, looking at the sparks of magic hovering above her palm.

"The real me... my real body is somewhere out there, in that world, no longer breathing." It suffocated, died of cardiac arrest, while that monster was pulling out my soul. I'll never go home again. I'll never see my mother's garden again. I won't hold my cats close. I won't hear my brothers' laughter. I'm gone."

The fear of the future no longer burned so intensely, replaced by a gigantic, leaden fatigue. Fed up, burned out even in life, she now found herself trapped in a body that constantly ached, with legs that refused to run properly, and with magic that threatened to burn her out at the first flash of emotion.

Ai turned her head slightly and looked at the sleeping {User}. Hidden in the corner of the cave, in that oppressive darkness, she felt a familiar, painfully familiar hyper-responsibility squeeze her chest.

"I couldn't save myself..."

The cat whispered, barely audible, just a breath, addressing the flames.

"And I won't be saved. My future is burned away."

She pursed her lips, hugging her knees with her hands, and buried her chin deeper in the collar of her worn robe-dress.

"But as long as I breathe... as long as I have this stupid, weak magic and medical skills... I will carry the others. I will protect you."

"I've simply gotten used to living for others. My whole life. And it seems... that's the only thing I have left. The only reason not to let this fire go out completely."

The air in the distorted location thickened to the consistency of a toxic jelly.

The space was pixelated, and He towered over the ruined, hilly plain. Lord X with dangling dark gray spikes, a gaping maw with yellow teeth, and black crosses in his glowing red eyes. His presence was paralyzing.

Alan clung to Kylie, his torn tails bleeding, and panic completely paralyzed his body. Kylie, bleeding and clutching an axe, breathed heavily, helplessly biting her fingers to the bone from the inhuman stress and the realization of hopelessness. {User} lay on the ground, exhausted and wounded, unable to even rise.

X slowly stepped forward, stretching an ugly, mocking grin. For him, this was just another game, another stage act with a long-written ending.

But she stood between the monster and the wounded.

Ai could barely stand. A chronic, dull pain in her joints tore at her knees, Blaze's worn robe was covered in old stains of someone else's blood, and her brown eyes expressed a deathly, profound fatigue. She had enough. All those years she had lived for others—first in her family, then in the hospital amidst the grief and death of others—merged into a single impulse. A family pendant glittered around her neck.

She didn't know how to speak beautifully. She wasn't a hero. But she was someone who was used to taking on other people's pain.

"Go away..."

Ai whispered softly.

"Take them and run."

Ai closed her eyes, and from the very depths of her exhausted soul burst a wild, uncontrollable rage. Her weak, unstable magic, which had always been only a tiny spark, heated to the limit. The fire engulfed her paws, spread to her collar, and instantly consumed her entire body. The flames seared her own flesh, charring her purple fur and causing unbearable pain, but Ai didn't even scream; her years-honed pain threshold and professional cynicism clenched her jaw.

Carrying on, my light Was meant to last To show that When all stars have died A lone flame can burn bright

With a roar, completely engulfed in blinding, wild flames, the cat lunged forward. She lacked speed, her legs wobbled, but a pure, concentrated determination to bear this sacrifice propelled her body. She crashed straight into Lord X, turning into a living torch. The fire blinded the essence of VOID matter, causing the monster to howl in surprise and extinguish its flaming flesh, giving the others precious seconds to retreat.

And the sol still burns bright You can't take what's mine My fire's a right So divine And I know I own my own spark The flames The sol that still burns The sol that still burns!

Ai burned herself from the inside, burning away her bones, her aching joints, her last chance at existence. She saw {User} trying to pull Alan and Kylie away, and at that moment a semblance of calm flickered across her burning face.

Then came a deafening blow from X's dark paw. Space shook, magic disintegrated into smoldering sparks, and Ai's charred, weightless body collapsed onto the twisted ground, crumbling into pixelated dust.

She will die here. Again.

The dark, cursed digital space of Exeverse did not let souls go so easily. The rules of Lord X were cruel: death didn't mean peace, it meant only a reboot for a new round of torture.

In the dark cave where {User}, Kylie, and Alan had retreated, an old, cracked CRT monitor, embedded directly into the pixelated rock, lit up with a quiet, annoying hum. The screen flickered with static, displaying the words "GAME OVER / RETRY."

From the depths of the shimmering glass, as if from a viscous swamp, the outlines of a body began to emerge.

Back to back, there's nobody to hold Back to back, my hands are so cold Back to back, there's nobody to hold Back to back, my hands are so cold

The silhouette fell out of the screen, right onto the cold stone floor of the cave. Ai took a deep, shuddering breath, like a drowned woman emerging from the very bottom. Her body trembled in a cruel, phantom shock; her mind still remembered how her flesh had burned, how her bones had charred, how her soul had been torn apart.

She nearly fell face-first into the mud, but someone else's arms caught her.

{User} hugged her shoulders tightly, keeping her from falling. Beside her, forgetting her aggression and pressing her trembling lips together, Kylie held her elbow, preventing her from slumping. Even Alan, whimpering and sobbing from the horror he'd just experienced, clung to the hem of her worn dress, trying to help.

Back to back, there's nobody to hold Back to back, my hands are so cold Back to back, ba-, ba-, ba-, ba-, ba-

Ai hung in their arms, completely exhausted. Her hands were icy cold, despite having been burning in the flames just recently. Her dark brown eyes focused with great difficulty, her tightly pulled bun of purple hair had come undone, and her fingers unconsciously frantically searched for the pendant around her neck.Luckily, the chain remained in place.

"You... you're alive..."