Work Text:
The world border shimmered like a tightening cage, its red sheen flickering across the ravaged forest. Trees bowed and crackled as the invisible wall lingered, shrinking the world into a cramped arena of desperation. The air felt thin and pressurized, like the very code of the server had drawn in a breath and refused to let it out.
Scott adjusted his grip on his sword, heart pounding beneath his diamond chestplate. His breath fogged in front of him—part cold, part nerves. They were down to the final five.
Himself.
Ren.
Martyn.
Pearl.
Joel.
All scattered across the dying forest. All herded, unwillingly, into the same suffocating patch of land after the timer ended. Somewhere beyond the thinning trees, Scott heard a distant shout followed by a laugh, sharp and unhinged.
Joel.
Scott’s pulse quickened.
He crouched near a tangle of bushes, scanning the treeline. Branches snapped behind him. Footsteps. Fast.
“SCOTT!” Joel exploded through the brush, sword raised, eyes bright with the wild adrenaline of a man who’d been red for far too long. “Oh-ho-ho! There you are!”
Scott leapt back, shield snapping up just in time as Joel slammed into him. The impact rattled through his arms, bone-deep.
Joel kept swinging—wild, chaotic, unpredictable, every strike fueled by panic more than aim. “C’mon! Don’t run! Fight me!”
Scott gritted his teeth, parrying, stepping back, trying to find ground under his feet. Joel was relentless. Every blow felt like a hammer.
“Joel—!” Scott tried. He dodged a brutal downswing, rolled, and slashed upward. His blade connected. Joel stumbled.
His health plummeted. Joel froze. He looked at Scott, then his own dwindling health, then right back at Scott.
“…Team?” Joel blurted, breathless. “Team? Team?? Scott—buddy—let’s rethink this—”
Scott threw the instant-damage potion.
It shattered against Joel’s chest in a violent spray of violet energy.
Joel blinked once.
“Aw, come on—!”
He collapsed.
Smallishbeans was slain by Smajor1995 using magic.
Scott exhaled shakily, lowering his hand. He hadn’t wanted to kill Joel. No one wanted to kill anyone, but the game demanded it.
Scott turned, and immediately heard Martyn’s voice.
“SCOTT! HEY! Don’t you walk away from me!”
Martyn sprinted between the trees like a man chasing the last scrap of hope. His armour was cracked, his movements were frantic, and his breathing was ragged.
Scott backed up instinctively.
Martyn lunged and the ground gave way beneath him. “NO—no NONONO—!” He dropped into a deep, jagged hole hidden in the darkness. His voice echoed upward, hollow with panic. He scrambled at the walls, dirt raining down. He couldn’t climb out.
Scott edged toward the lip of the pit. Martyn looked up at him, eyes wide, teeth clenched, swinging his sword at empty air.
“Scott! Don’t you dare!”
Scott pulled out a block of obsidian and placed it down.
Martyn’s voice cracked. “SCOTT—wait—WAIT—!”
Scott put an end crystal on top of the obsidian. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
He struck it.
The explosion shook the earth. Trees trembled. Dirt blasted skyward.
When the dust settled, Martyn lay motionless at the bottom, gear blown apart.
Inthelittlewood was blown up by Smajor1995.
Scott stared for a long moment, chest tight. This wasn’t glory. It wasn’t triumph.
It was survival.
The border crackled louder.
Somewhere deeper in the woods, Pearl and Ren clashed—steel ringing, shouts echoing in the rapidly shrinking world. Scott crept forward until he found a gap in the trees, and saw Pearl, exhausted, weaving between trunks, desperately trying to keep space between herself and Ren.
“Pearl, come on!” Ren shouted, breathless. “You’re cornering yourself!”
Pearl spun and landed a quick slash across Ren’s arm. Ren hissed but kept pushing.
She stumbled over a root.
Ren struck.
Pearl fell.
Her gear scattered across the grass.
Ren stood panting above her, shoulders heaving.
Pearlescentmoon was slain by Renthedog.
Scott swallowed. Pearl had fought until she couldn’t anymore.
Now only two remained.
Ren turned slowly. His expression wasn’t triumphant or smug—it was tired. Haunted. Desperate.
“Well,” Ren said hoarsely. “Guess it’s you and me now, Scotty.”
Scott nodded, raising his sword. “Just us.”
They circled. Cold night air bit at Scott’s face.
Ren made the first move and charged.
Steel clashed in a flurry of sparks. Scott parried, dodged, struck, pulled back. Ren swung again—strong, but sloppy with exhaustion.
“You’ve gotten—hah—better,” Ren panted.
“You too.”
They fought through the trees—crunching leaves, stumbling over roots. Ren landed a hit across Scott’s shoulder; Scott staggered, then countered with a sharp jab that sent Ren back a step.
Ren’s breaths came fast and uneven now, misting in the cold air. He staggered back a step, trying to keep his footing.
He was low. One more clean hit and Scott would win.
Scott shifted his stance, reading for the final push—
A groan tore through the clearing. Then another. Scott’s heart lurched as shapes stirred between the trunks—shambling forms drawn by their noise and the blood already spilled.
Zombies. Three of them.
Ren’s head snapped toward the sound and he cursed. “Oh, you’ve GOT to be kidding—”
The nearest zombie lunged. Ren reacted instantly, his blade flashing and severing his head in a single practiced swing, but the movement cost him. The second zombie barrelled into his side, grabbing his arm with rotting fingers. Ren snarled, wrenching himself free and driving his sword into its chest, shoving it backward.
“Come on, then!” he barked half-laughing, half-panicked. “I can take—”
He never got to finish his sentence. A third zombie slipped out from behind a fallen tree, almost silent in the undergrowth. Scott saw it move, but Ren didn’t.
It struck his back with a deafening crack, claws finding the weakened seam in his armour and driving deep.
Ren’s scream tore through the forest.
Scott lunged forward, but time seemed to slow, freezing him mid-step, but the damage was irreversible.
Ren’s knees buckled. His sword dropped from numb fingers. He collapsed onto the forest floor, the zombie looming over him as though claiming the kill with grim satisfaction.
Renthedog was slain by Zombie.
The woods fell still.
The night swallowed the echo of Ren’s fall, leaving Scott alone among torn earth and broken trees. Victory didn’t wash over him. Only the hollow, sinking weight of what survival had cost.
He walked forward on unsteady legs and knelt beside Ren’s body. Ren’s sword lay nearby, faintly glowing with an enchantment.
Scott’s chest tightened. “Sorry,” he whispered.
No answer.
He stayed there a long moment as the enormity of the win pressed into him. It didn’t feel right. Not when so much of it had been luck. Randomness. Violence he never wanted.
Finally, he stood, shoulders heavy, and pulled out a familiar bucket.
Binkie.
Inside, the axolotl paddled in slow circles, their pink body a tiny spark of color against the bleak forest floor.
Scott exhaled. “Hey,” he murmured. “It’s over. We made it.”
Binkie blinked at him.
Scott’s throat tightened. He turned toward the river that wound through the forest. He followed it to the bank, mud sinking under his boots. Moonlight wavered across the water.
“Alright,” he breathed. “Go on, then.”
He tipped the bucket. Binkie darted away, disappearing into the river in an instant.
Scott watched until the ripples faded.
Peace didn’t come.
Something felt wrong.
A chill crawled down his spine—not natural cold, but something deep, conceptual. The air thickened. The stars blurred.
Scott straightened sharply. “No,” he whispered.
The ground vanished.
He plunged downward through a void of shifting purples and ink-black blues. Weightless. Directionless. Cold that touched thought before flesh.
Something stirred in the dark. An eye? A presence? Dozens of them? He couldn’t tell, but he felt them.
Watching. Always watching.
A voice rippled through the void—soft, melodic, sing-song:
Survivor now, the final one,
the game is played, the deathbell done.
Scott’s breath hitched.
Another voice layered over the first—similar but not the same, like an echo speaking with its own mind.
You rise again where others break,
and so your memory we awake.
A pulse of cold light washed over him.
Images slammed into Scott’s mind—
Grian’s desert.
Scar’s cactus ring.
The throne.
The betrayals.
The alliances.
The screams.
Two lifetimes of bloodshed.
Scott gasped. “Stop—!”
The void only hummed.
A winner keeps what losers fade,
for victors carry every blade.
Scott steadied himself, breath trembling. The Starborne blood in him held fast— it muted the nausea and anchored him. “What do you want?”
A soft swirl of purple.
Not you.
Not yet.
Only your sight.
The voices braided around him.
A champion born of frost and flame—
We mark the one who wins the game.
Scott’s jaw tightened. “I’m not your pawn.”
None ever are.
And yet… they play.
Light surged. Snow bit his skin. Wind cut across his face.
He stood in Rivendell.
Home.
But carrying two seasons’ worth of death like a second pulse in his chest.
Snow fell across the stone paths of Rivendell, drifting in loose spirals that glowed in the lanternlight. The mountains behind the empire were serene tonight—quiet in the way only high places could be, where wind tangled with starlight and breath crystallised before it touched the air.
It was uncomfortably peaceful.
Scott closed his eyes, letting the col anchor him. The void’s touch still clung faintly to his ribs, like static beneath the skin, but the Starborne in him pushed back against it with every steady breath. He’d always been resistant to that kind of presence. Born of something cosmic—half light, half night sky.
Still… even his blood couldn’t shake the heaviness.
He rested a hand on the railing that overlooked his kingdom, ignoring how the frost bit at his fingertips. Below, moonlight shone on snow-dusted rooftops, and his people were in their homes. Everything was as he had left it: orderly, safe, quiet.
And yet, he felt watched.
Not by the Watchers—he would have felt them—but by the memory of them. Their voices still hummed faintly behind his ears, lingering in the places silence should have sat.
A footstep crunched lightly behind him.
Scott didn’t flinch externally, but his body coiled, instinctively reaching for his sword (why wasn’t it blue anymore?)
“Scott?”
The voice untied the tension in his spine.
fWhip.
Scott turned as the human climbed the final steps to the balcony, goggles pushed up into his messy hair, expression far too serious for this late at night. fWhip never visited without a reason, and we never wore worry so openly.
“You’re back,” fWhip said, breath fogging the air. “Finally.”
Scott’s smile was automatic, small, and far too practiced. “Did you miss me?”
“What? No. Yes. I—uh, shut up.” fWhip shoved his hands into his pockets. “Do you know how long you were gone? Weeks, Scott. Weeks. Jimmy vanished the same day you did, then he just reappeared like he’d been on a hunt for resources. No memory, no explanation, just bam—’Hey guys, what’s up?’”
Scott blinked slowly. “Jimmy came back before me?”
“Forever ago.” fWhip paced a step, then another. “And when I asked him what happened, he stared at me like I spoke another language. Completely blank.”
The cold that touched Scott had nothing to do with snow.
Of course Jimmy didn’t remember.
Of course he didn’t.
“fWhip…” Scott exhaled, visible in the chill. “I didn’t leave by choice.”
fWhip stilled. “Not by—what does that mean?”
Scott hesitated. This was where the lie should go, the tidy and safe version of events. But he’d already lived two lifetimes pretending the game wasn’t clawing at his heels.
And fWhip was the admin. Regardless of his relationship with him on the server, he still deserved the truth.
Scott rubbed his fingertips together, watching the faint trails of blue-purple Starborne glow shimmer beneath the skin. “The Watchers took me.”
The mountain went quiet.
fWhip’s brow twitched. “The… Watchers. As in, the Watchers? Grian’s cosmic stalker fan club? The rhyming weirdos?”
“Those ones.”
fWhip let out a long string of swears. “Great. Great. Yep. Should’ve expected that. Xisuma mentioned once that something similar happened a while ago. A kind of… cursed death loop? His players disappeared, reappeared, had memory loss, it was a whole thing.”
Scott’s voice lowered. “So none of the Hermits remembered any of it?”
“Only the winner.” fWhip’s gaze softened. “You know, Jimmy hasn’t stopped asking about you. He keeps showing up by my base asking if I’ve ‘heard from Scott yet.’ He wants to see you.”
The words hit somewhere deep in Scott’s chest. Of course Jimmy did.
“Alright,” Scott said quietly. “I’ll go.”
fWhip nodded, then hesitated. He reached out, squeezing Scott’s shoulder briefly. “Don’t vanish again. Seriously.”
Scott mustered the smallest smile. “I’ll try.”
He didn’t say he didn’t have a choice last time, or that he probably wouldn’t the next.
Jimmy’s swamp was a warm, humid contrast to Rivendell’s night-chilled air. Fireflies drifted above lilypads, casting faint golden halos over the water. Slimes bounced in the distance with rhythmic, soft thuds. The mud sucked at Scott’s boots as he crossed into the clearing.
Jimmy stood by his house, hands on hips, boots muddy, and expression pinched in a way that made him look more human than slime. When he saw Scott, everything broke open.
“SCOTT!” Jimmy rushed to him. “Where were you?! You were gone! No message, no note, nothing!”
The worry in his voice made Scott’s throat tighten. “I didn’t leave on purpose.”
Jimmy’s eyes widened. “Did something take you? Was it any of the other emperors? I swear, if one of them dragged you off I will—”
“It wasn’t anyone here.”
“Then who?” Jimmy whispered.
Scott studied him carefully—the earnest eyes, the slight tremble in his hands, the concern radiating off him like heat.
He looked nothing like the Jimmy who died fighting for Grian in Third Life.
Or the Jimmy who bounced around the Southlanders’ camp, joking at stressful moments, or the one who irritated Grian just a little too much and paid the price for it early in the game.
“Do you remember anything?” Scott asked gently. “Before you came back?"
Jimmy’s face scrunched. “Uhh… I remember building? Maybe? Sorting wheat—or was it potatoes? And then… I dunno. It’s just weird fog. Why? Did something happen to you?”
Scott held his breath.
There was no flicker or spark of memory.
No recognition of red names or alliances or dying under Skizz or Grian’s hands.
“Nothing,” he said quietly. “Just wanted to check.”
Jimmy stepped closer, concern written loud and obvious. “Hey, Scott. You’re shaking.”
Scott hadn’t realised. “I’m fine,” he lied.
Jimmy searched his face, clearly unconvinced, but he didn’t push. He never pushed where Scott drew lines. “Just… don’t disappear again, please?”
Scott nodded. “I’ll try.”
Jimmy invited him inside and they spoke for a while. Jimmy told stories, made jokes, and did everything in his power to cheer him up without knowing why he needed cheering in the first place.
Scott smiled where he could, laughed where he should.
But the ghost of two worlds lingered under his ribs.
And he left the swamp at sunrise with Jimmy waving after him, mud-splattered and worried, calling, “Come visit again! Seriously, Scott—don’t make me come drag you back!”
The next night, Scott typed a message.
To: Grian
Need to talk. The warded world?
Grian’s reply came instantly.
From: Grian
Already there.
The warded world was as still as ever—flat grass stretching into a pale, enchantment-hazed horizon. Grian stood near the center, back turned. The tension in his shoulders said he’d been waiting longer than he would admit.
Scott approached quietly. Grian sensed him anyway and turned.
“You remember,” he said, voice low but sure.
Scott didn’t bother denying it. “Both games.”
At that, Grian’s eyes closed for a moment—not surprise, not even dread, but a quiet ache. “I was afraid you might.”
Scott exhaled, letting the truth settle between them. “They spoke to me. In the void. Said the winner keeps the memories. Said I’d… caught their attention.”
A humorless breath left Grian. “They always latch onto someone.”
“They also said there’ll be more games.”
That made Grian look up. No shock crossed his face—only the weary acceptance of someone who’d been listening for footsteps in the dark for too long.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Figured as much. They've been circling for months.”
Silence stretched between them—not empty, but heavy. Two survivors who shouldn’t remember anything at all.
Scott broke it. “Why us? Why any of this?”
Grian didn’t answer right away. He studied the flat world around them, the wards humming like distant bees. When he spoke, it was soft and flat, scraped clean of humor.
“Because we survive. Because we make choices they find interesting. Because we bleed in ways they like watching.”
That truth settled cold in Scott’s chest. He’d suspected as much, but hearing it aloud… it solidified something.
Grian stepped closer, his voice dropping even further. “There’s no point pretending this is over. They’ll call again.”
Scott felt a shiver run down his arms—not fear exactly, but recognition. Destiny. Something inevitable tightening around them.
“We?” Scott asked before he could stop himself.
Grian’s smile wasn’t quite a smile—crooked, tired, but achingly sincere.
“You didn’t think I’d let you deal with them alone, did you?”
The words hit deeper than Scott expected. In this blank world, where the Watchers' gazes couldn’t reach, that promise felt like the first solid thing he’d touched since waking in Rivendell.