Ai/Blaze Veseel

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..."