Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The cursor blinked inside an empty text field. Was the obnoxious rhythm supposed to summon an idea out of Anaxa’s imagination or smother it before it had a chance to arrive?

The longer Anaxa stared at the cursor, the less certain he became of the answer. A quick glance at the clock on his phone alerted him that it was already past two in the morning. He inwardly sighed.

He hadn’t meant to stay up working so late. Again.

Blue light emanated from his dual monitors, casting a glow over the apartment that had darkened since the sun set hours ago. It spilled over his cluttered desk, where loose USB drives and post-it notes were covered with the game developer’s unintelligible scribbles. Any reminders of deadlines had been hidden at the very bottom of the cluster.

Out of sight, out of mind. The project would be done when the senior developer judged it to be done.

A mug with a third of its coffee left inside, now cold, had also been forgotten some time ago. Anaxa picked it up and leaned back in his computer chair. Weariness settled heavily in his bones. The monitors’ light reached the windowsill, where a row of cheerful-looking succulents were nestled in hand-painted terracotta pots.

There were too many of them there for Anaxa’s taste, but it was exactly the right number for Khaslana. His boyfriend had been responsible for painting the colorful dromas on the pots. A detail, he’d mentioned in passing, added to bolster Anaxa’s spirits whenever the work day grew too long.

Anaxa wasn’t sure when he had done it. He didn’t even know when Khaslana habitually watered them, or how often. If his boyfriend had come into the office at any point while Anaxa had been working, said anything, or touched his shoulder for attention like he used to, Anaxa hadn’t noticed it for some time.

Khaslana…

Across the way, the door leading to their bedroom was cracked open. It allowed just enough light to escape to spill onto the hardwood floor. Khaslana must’ve already gone to bed hours ago.

The lamp had been left on. He always left it on, just in case Anaxa came to bed like he said he promised he would.

Anaxa couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually kept that promise. He couldn’t even recall the last time they had fallen asleep together with their legs entwined, a shared warmth seeping into his back as they cuddled. There had been kisses before, too. Indulgent and sweet, they often had a bad habit of making his heart race and rendering him unable to sleep from the excitement.

When had such things dwindled away?

As he thought about it, Anaxa realized there had been other absences, too. Little rituals between them that steadily decreased while he hadn’t been paying attention.

Like the warmth of Khaslana’s lips against his temple as he kissed Anaxa goodnight before bed. Or the way he’d shuffle into Anaxa’s office barefoot, a ghost of a smile in his eyes, as he wordlessly placed a mug of fresh coffee beside the keyboard.

Lately, there hadn’t been any kisses at all. There hadn’t been any interruptions, either. Timely or otherwise. If coffee appeared as if by magic on Anaxa’s desk, it was left there in silence. Refilled or reheated, it was delivered without a single word by his partner.

Slender fingers curled tightly, anxiously, around his mug. A tiny bit of sugar had stuck to the inside rim and Anaxa rubbed at it with his thumb, smearing it in slow circles, as if he could rub the guilt out of his chest the same way.

Anaxa was a workaholic. His friends said it with fond exasperation. His boss said it like a blessing, Aglaea’s eyes closed as if the infuriating woman was already calculating the profit margin of the project’s successful launch. Even Khaslana— who didn’t say it outright, but didn’t have to— thought that.

Anaxa was always focused on the next goal, the next build, the next deliverable, no matter what he sacrificed to get there. That was the most important thing to him. It always has been.

The logic was as clear as day. Efficiency in front of his screen translated to a higher pay whenever the developer turned in yet another finished project. With every successful game, he was granted more control over the future he chose. He gained authority. Influence.

Above all, he acquired the free will to go in the creative direction he chose for himself. The future, the finish line. Anaxa ran toward it without looking back.

Khaslana never complained about the long hours. He understood it better than most, having worked the same tiring schedule alongside Anaxa back when he’d been his junior on the team. However, Anaxa could not rid himself of the stirrings of doubt he’d been feeling lately.

Anaxa set down the mug on the desk. He stretched his arms out and cracked both his knuckles, enjoying the relief the ease in tension brought him.

His favorite purple dromas pajamas were well worn by now. Frayed at the cuffs and stretched at the seams, they were a cozy work-from-home uniform he hadn’t bothered to change out of all week. The fabric brushed the tops of his bare feet as he tucked his knees to his chest, his heels balancing on the edge of his seat.

He reached for the mouse. One click minimized his current task queue. Anaxa contemplated the screen for a long minute. His mouse cursor hovered over a long-abandoned folder that was labeled archive_titansfallbuilds.

It had been years since Anaxa had worked on this game. A passion project he’d initially built to gain experience, it was not ever meant for the public to see. For another, highly embarrassing reason, no other living soul besides him would ever get to see it in this lifetime.

Maybe it was nostalgia that guided his hand just then. Or maybe it was because he just couldn’t stand staring at a blank text field for another hour. Anaxa clicked on it.

The folder opened with sluggish lag. Inside was a graveyard of incomplete builds and uncompressed backups dumped into the directory before he’d learned a thing about clean workflows.

One application snagged his attention. phainon_dev_FINAL-build_v3 (khaos).exe

He let out a small snort. Inside the parentheses was a joke his younger self found hilarious. Khaos, which not only referred to the inspiration for the game, but also for the chaotic mess of untested assets, glitchy scripts, and unfinished cinematics contained within the file.

Anaxa double-clicked on it and the screen stuttered. He heard the fans grow louder as the GPU kicked into top gear. Terminal code crawled across the corner of the screen.

^{Loading environment package: ‘Amphoreus_Okhema_SkyAssets.unity3d’ … success
Loading character prefab: ‘PC_Main_Savior_Phainon.asset’ … success
Retrieving legacy dialogue bank: ‘mentor_anaxa.dialogtree_v2’ … deprecated syntax
Syncing quest state flags…
> FLAG: TimeTitanDefeated = false
> FLAG: Trust_Level_Anaxa = High
> FLAG: [REDACTED_ENDING] = null}

The startup music of the game loaded in. He’d asked his then-roommate, Mydei, to handle composing the overture. The musician took it in stride, adding in a backbone of resonant drums and the haunting melody of a cello to create the hype of a heroic journey to come. The main interface appeared. An infinity symbol shimmered on screen, radiant with the shifting colors of a rainbow.

It introduced the world that Anaxa had created.

TITANS FALL

If Anaxa had ever finished this design, the protagonist would have appeared here with the title menu. The hero would be standing in the middle of a wheat field, perhaps, with his hometown village visible just behind him as he swung his sword up triumphantly. He, the only one who would dare to conspire against the fate he’d been given.

Anaxa leaned forward and clicked Start. More text filled the screen.

^{Loading scene: /World_Amphoreus/Quests/Trial_CoreflameOronos_vfxFix.prefab
Instantiating player rig…
Positioning Player: mentor_anaxa (legacy mesh) at spawnPoint_C2
Warning: out-of-bounds memory reference
Warning: player_id = null
Fatal Thread Exception: Emotion_Handler_CacheOverflow}

Fatal thread exception…?

“What the—”

The words died in Anaxa’s throat, choked down by surprise as the screen flashed a blinding white. He winced, momentarily shielding his eyes as he shot up to his feet.

If his computer was going to short out… it’d all be over. He couldn’t imagine the headache of a full replacement setup just because an old game build decided to act up. Anaxa reached for the power button.

At the same time his fingertip brushed against it, a sudden, deafening thunderclap resounded in the air. Stunned by the sound, he turned to the bedroom door, panic leaping into his throat.

“Khas—”

Instead of his voice, there was only static heard. A buzzing hum that made no sense to his ears.

Then, the world plunged into darkness.

Anaxa could not move a muscle, frozen in time as fear chilled him to the core. He felt no pain, only a peculiar sense of weightlessness, as the scene of the apartment disappeared around him.

Gone were the succulents, the desk, and the flickering lamp inside the bedroom. When wind kissed his face, Anaxa rapidly blinked in confusion. He lifted his arm, astonished to see that the purple sleeves of his dromas pajamas were gone and replaced by an elegant coat and sleek black gloves he hadn’t seen in years.

One glove engulfed his left hand while his right hand remained bare. It served as a canvas for an intricate alchemical symbol to adorn the pale skin. Anaxa recognized it as the concept art he’d drawn himself.

He looked up. A blue sky stretched as infinitely far as the eyes could see. It was too vast and scarily realistic. Pillars of white stone towered in the distance, riddled with ivy and looking too hauntingly familiar. He’d digitally painted this exact design once.

The air crackled at the same time a horrifying realization sank in.

“Long time no see, Professor Anaxa.”

Anaxa stiffened, his back still half-turned toward the towering archways behind him. A breeze whistled through the air, ruffling mint tresses that were confined by a ringlet of brass. A faint smell of incense teased his nose.

The coat felt too real on his shoulders, too specific in detail to the rigged mesh he remembered coding years ago. These flowers surrounding him— vibrant red and purple morning glories— had petals that swayed a little too realistically to be just his imagination.

This was Okhema. And that voice…

Anaxa swiftly turned around, fascinated to see its source for himself.

Phainon stood just a few paces away. His ivory hair was tousled from the wind, his epaulets scorched from a recent battle— presumably, from the monsters spawned from the black tide, if Anaxa recalled the story correctly. He looked every inch the handsome swordsman hero Anaxa had designed in mind.

Bright blue eyes and sure-footed, yet carrying the quiet fatigue of someone who bore too great a destiny even for his broad shoulders. There was a smear of dried blood at the corner of his mouth that Anaxa didn’t remember programming in.

And yet, it wasn’t the blood or the gear that caused his heart to lurch. It was the expression that Phainon wore as he gazed at Anaxa. An unguarded joy peeked through beneath tiredness. His sunshine smile not only lit up the veranda where they stood, but also warmed a secret place inside Anaxa’s heart.

“Who are you?”

Anaxa’s mouth moved without his consent. Lips shaped the scripted words of dialogue he’d written for this portion of the game’s story. He tried to say something else, experimenting with trying to say Phainon’s name instead, but his throat stayed stubbornly locked.

It must be the limitation of the game’s coding. He was forced to follow the script, but for how long? Did it only last as long as the scene did?

As he wrestled with questions, Phainon’s gaze softened.

“...It’s been a while.” The corners of his eyes crinkled, as if trying not to laugh at Anaxa’s bemused expression. “I’m the one who once overthrew the entire classroom in that spiritual physics lecture.”

Anaxa knew those lines. He had written them himself during a forgotten haze of too much coffee and missing someone he shouldn’t have missed. His heart was racing— too fast and too real— and it prevented him from responding.

He knew the next line but his mouth felt too dry. A traitorous part of him, one that hadn’t felt so alive in months, wanted to throw this scene by the wayside and close the distance between them. He wanted to pull Phainon into his arms and embrace him tightly.

He had built Phainon like this. It was a fragment of his Khaslana, who had once been filled with the exact same, contagious warmth when they’d first met all those years ago.

A fresh-faced and wide-eyed recent graduate, Khaslana quickly adapted to the stressful culture of the dev studio. More than once, Anaxa had emerged from his computer station to observe him tapping away in front of a monitor at the far side of the studio floor. Khaslana had been a smiling colleague who brought coffee when he didn’t need to. One who spoke too quickly when excited, but also thoughtfully whenever Cipher probed him for a second opinion about her latest designs.

He was the one who called Anaxa “sir” for weeks before finally, awkwardly, switching to his first name.

Phainon tilted his head. “Professor?”

He couldn’t evade the scene’s progression forever. The system must have grown tired of waiting for him, for Anaxa’s voice was forced out, yet again, without his approval. “Oh. It’s you.”

The swordsman’s grin fully bloomed, reaching his eyes until they shined a mesmerizing, heavenly blue. “No way… do you really still remember that, Professor?”

Phainon stepped closer, his boots sounding soft against the stones beneath their feet. “I’m here to seek enlightenment, as always. Could you please teach me everything you know about the black-robed swordmaster?”

That was the cue. The one that advanced this specific questline.

Anaxa knew what he was supposed to say next. The lore demanded a warning, a handoff of tattered cloak remains, and an exposition about crescent-shaped blades and a man they all should fear.

Instead, all Anaxa could focus on was how close Phainon was, standing just before him. How the golden light of the morning warmed the curve of his jaw and how those eyes sparkled so prettily with joy.

Don’t, Anaxa scolded himself. Attraction to this man, who wore the same face as his beloved— his crush, once upon a time— was too easy a trap to fall into. This wasn’t his Khaslana. He wasn’t real.

“I…” Anaxa forced the next line out slowly, each word scraping harshly against his tongue like sandpaper. “I can only tell you that it is clad in a black robe and wields a greatsword.”

“By the way, take this with you,” he added, and reached into his coat. His hand closed around the in-game item, a relic from a boss event meant to load into the player’s inventory. It felt so strangely solid in his palm. Coarse black fabric torn from a madman’s cloak.

When he handed the item over to Phainon, the hero received it with a coded solemnity. Anaxa knew what would come next. He braced himself as Phainon took a deep breath and released it slowly.

“I was right,” Phainon murmured, his gaze locked on the tattered cloak. “It is this thing. The one who torched Aedes Elysiae… and killed everyone.”

There was a raw pain in his voice that hurt to hear. Anaxa’s heart thudded in his chest. Not from excitement this time, nor from natural attraction to this man who wore a stricken expression. Rather, this overwhelming sensation was born directly from guilt.

Phainon’s tragic backstory had been inspired by Khaslana’s, as well. His parents, his childhood friend, the house where he’d grown up— all were distant memories Khaslana rarely spoke about.

Anaxa couldn’t shake a sense of unease. He’d used a default grief flag for Phainon’s behavior here, choosing an expression of mild sorrow at most. But this… what he heard with his own ears was someone who sounded as if they’d lost something personal. Like someone who’d watched their village burn and felt helpless in the aftermath.

There was gravity in those eyes and a weight in his voice. The careful way he held the cloak seemed like its existence felt heavier than a gameplay objective.

“…Don’t try to be a hero,” Anaxa said to him in a strained voice. “No one in Okhema stands a chance against that thing right now.”

The poignant notes of a flute underscored his words. Anaxa frowned at the intrusion as Phainon lifted his eyes again, his gaze gentle.

“Is that what the Titan said as well?”

He was still speaking the lines of the script but they sounded softer, as if he already knew the answer and only wished to hear his professor say it aloud. Anaxa’s hands closed at his side, his fingers curling into the hem of his coat.

It was all too easy to slip into this character. He’d been Khaslana’s mentor, too, once upon a time. The junior developer had sought his senior’s guidance during the toughest stretch of their joint projects. Then, like now, Anaxa couldn’t help the cadence of his voice that encouraged the younger man.

“Hmph. Not at first. But the god relented after a taste of its power. Even with a god possessing me, I couldn’t fight against that blade…”

He trailed off. Phainon watched him, nodding as if he'd already filled in the rest of the information that Anaxa hadn’t finished.

Then, Phainon whispered, “It’s not like you to be afraid.”

Anaxa’s gaze narrowed. That line wasn’t in the script.

It was too pointed. Too familiar, like what Khaslana had once told him during a project meeting when Anaxa debated taking a risk on a new build. He’d worn the same expression then, too. Kind, but exasperated. He acted as if he knew Anaxa far better than Anaxa allowed anyone to understand him.

Maybe he’d fallen asleep by his computer and this really was a dream. What other kind of supernatural, unexplainable force would trap him inside his own game?

Phainon was just like Khaslana that Anaxa had fallen in love with all those years ago. The eager young pup who would cling to him, demanding attention whenever Anaxa could spare it. The same affectionate one who would hold Anaxa close to his chest as they fell asleep just before sunrise.

The Khaslana he’d been before the distance, the missed dinners, and the silence caused them to drift further than ever. At some point, Anaxa had changed, too. He’d become the person who forgot what time his partner went to bed. Or when he watered their plants, day after day.

These days, shame had replaced Khaslana as his ever-present companion.

The silence stretched on between them until Phainon’s voice broke it. The hero spoke gently, choosing his words with care. “I’m not here on anyone’s orders. I just want to eliminate a threat to the city I pledged to protect. That’s all. The tragedy at the Grove must never happen again.”

Anaxa unclenched his fingers and smoothed down the fabric of his coat. There it was again. The spoken earnestness that made all of this seem a little too real. Phainon was just a puppet he’d made, nothing more.

Phainon smiled, just a flicker of it passing over his lips, but the sight of it made Anaxa’s breath hitch. “Professor,” he said, this time teasing him. “You’re staring.”

Anaxa glanced away. His voice returned in reflex as he muttered, “You always were a perceptive student of mine.”

Phainon chuckled, rubbing at the back of his neck with the grace of someone who didn’t know how truly charming he was. “Some things never change.”

“Neither does your fondness for flattery. Did you drag me out here just to bat your eyelashes at me, or are we meant to be accomplishing something?”

Yes, that worked. Slipping into Professor Anaxa’s sardonic way of speaking gave him a foothold to navigate the uncanny valley of his own creation. Phainon’s expressions were too nuanced, his husky voice too pleasant on the ears, as if it had been touched by a real soul.

That wasn’t possible, of course. He hadn’t programmed adaptive dialogue past the tutorial arc. Phainon’s unusually personal line delivery was simply Anaxa’s nostalgia talking.

“Okhema is a safe haven for the people, but its borders are plagued by beasts born of the black tide.” Phainon jerked his chin in the direction of the city’s outer limits that were visible from where they stood. A cavern was half-sunken into the cliffs, one that Anaxa recalled was planted into the game as a Cavern of Corrosion.

A place to power up the player’s gear. Phainon wouldn’t understand its exact purpose as a character in the game. To him, it was as much a part of the world as himself.

“There’s a corrupted fragment buried there. Aglaea sent me to retrieve it before the black tide spreads further. Unfortunately, I can’t do it alone.”

A side quest. Anaxa swallowed past his disbelief. The characters, not understanding the meta importance of a leveling dungeon, had their own lore reasons for approaching it. The Caverns were designed for cooperative turn-based assistance. In other words, the player could use an entire team for it.

Which meant… he’d have to join with Phainon to fight inside it.

“Fine,” Anaxa muttered as he adjusted the coat on his shoulders. His mind tripped over itself trying to reconcile these impossible circumstances. “Just don’t expect me to carry the mission. I’m not exactly at peak combat capability.”

“You’re still brilliant, though,” Phainon flashed him a lopsided grin. “That’s what counts.”

Anaxa didn’t answer. Instead, he watched the swordsman’s back as Phainon walked ahead of him. The cape he wore flared up as the breeze sped past them, evoking the image of a handsome hero one could only ever dream about. And yet, the rhythmic swing of his arms and the familiarity of how he moved… it bothered Anaxa.

It was just like Khaslana’s gait.

When Phainon paused to glance back at him, his blue eyes full of light and a trust reserved for the professor alone, Anaxa felt a stirring of butterflies at the sight.

He really was handsome. Phainon. His Khaslana.

How embarrassed Anaxa would feel if anyone ever learned about this secret. At a time when Anaxa felt conflicted, still figuring out his blossoming feelings for a junior colleague, he’d coded a character who looked and behaved exactly like his crush.

Only a fool lost to his feelings like this. Anaxa took a deep, bracing breath and then released it, air whistling through his teeth.

They walked in silence for a while, their boots crunching over a cracked stone path that led outside of Okhema’s safe walls. Phainon’s steps were sure and confident beside him. The sword sheathed by his waist swayed as he looked up, his palm shielding his eyes from the sun as he scanned the horizon for any sign of a threat.

Anaxa didn’t blame him. Aggro was a big problem once they left the safe area of Okhema’s main map.

Only after they’d passed a display of fallen ruins, the stone pillars broken and covered in corrosive black tide, did Phainon speak up again.

“So,” he said lightly, “was it strange? Coming back here?”

“This world?”

An unreadable shadow passed over Phainon’s eyes. Before Anaxa could examine it closer, it disappeared. In the next second, Phainon smiled again. Brighter this time and warm enough to bring the sun above to its knees.

“Okhema,” he said. “It’s changed since you last visited here, hasn’t it?”

Anaxa’s footsteps slowed. Odd. That wasn’t the same question he’d asked. A programmed script would only ever repeat the same lines if requested. It wouldn’t alter them even slightly.

“Changed?” Anaxa echoed, cautious.

Phainon nodded. “After the Grove fell, a lot of the upper city was sealed off. Aglaea would prefer that we stay within the sanctioned zones unless otherwise called out.” His tone shifted, and a crumb of frustration leaked out. “It’s not as if we have the luxury of waiting. Not with the Coreflames still waiting to be mastered.”

That response sounded polished. Consistent with Phainon’s coded personality. And yet, something still itched at the edge of Anaxa’s mind.

“You seem well-informed,” Anaxa said, instead of pressing his suspicions. “I half expected you to be wandering around worrying about the monsters who spawned from the Tide, not concerning yourself with Aglaea’s political maneuvering.”

Inwardly, Anaxa berated himself for not changing Aglaea’s name in the game to something else. His boss would not let him hear the end of it if she knew he’d coded her as a secondary antagonist. No matter how true it was to real life.

“I go where I’m needed.” Phainon shrugged. “The city is under constant threat. All of this world is in danger.”

“And are you planning to throw yourself at another impossible quest to prove a point?” Anaxa said dryly.

Phainon smiled again. “Only if you’re coming with me.”

That answer was so him. Or at least, the version of him Anaxa remembered building out of half-coded affection. Khaslana’s flirty banter back then had been what pried open the lock kept around Anaxa’s true feelings.

A man unused to giving affection had not known what to do when confronted with someone who had an abundance of love to give. But, as Anaxa came to learn about his dearest one, Khaslana’s persistence was second to none. Over a year of consistent love had melted Anaxa’s reservations.

They reached a quiet overlook, where a slanted ledge gave way to the view of the Cavern’s entrance located just below. Black tide monsters crawled around everywhere on this particular map, but strategically, the duo remained just outside of the aggro range so as to not attract their attention.

Anaxa turned to Phainon. The sun hadn’t shifted from its mid-morning hue (it rarely did in the dev build to reflect the game’s lore of All Day), and Anaxa was rewarded with the sight of the light bathing Phainon’s attractive features in gold. His profile, so strong and composed, looked as perfectly sculpted as the ruins they’d passed— or how they would have looked, in their glory days.

Phainon’s tousled hair. The brightness in his eyes. The confidence he wore that was edged with a careful restraint. It had been code written by hands that wanted to capture the essence of the man he loved so deeply.

Anaxa’s heart ached. He never should have programmed the hero to smile like this.

He remembered the exact evening he’d done it. There had been a project in queue three years ago. It was a mobile build with tight deadlines, sleepless nights, and a collaborative team that forced themselves to their physical and emotional limits.

Anaxa was the senior narrative lead who had been assigned to rewrite the early campaign after a shake-up in the dev department. Khaslana had joined their team mid-cycle— he’d been a new hire, just barely out of university— who’d been assigned to help on combat scripting and cutscene quality assurance.

A younger Khaslana had been rough around the edges then, and earnest, to the point of being clumsy. He had a habit of drinking too much sugary iced coffee, asking too many questions during meetings, and ran late to every single one of them.

However, despite the relentless scoldings Anaxa unleashed on him, he worked hard and learned fast.

Anaxa recalled that night clearly. It had been well past midnight, the office half-lit and half-empty, when Anaxa had caught the junior developer asleep in the break room. Khaslana had been hunched over his laptop, with his headphones slipping off. He’d fallen asleep halfway through coding and the proof of his half-finished efforts were scrolling endlessly on the screen.

He’d had a favorite water bottle he took with him everywhere. The printed writing on the outside said, “Devs don’t sleep, they reboot!”

Anaxa couldn’t help but smile at that. No one was watching him. No one witnessed when Anaxa gently removed the headphones so Khaslana could sleep more comfortably. Nor when he ran his fingers through those white strands, amazed at how soft his hair felt as he brushed it away from the sleeping man’s closed eyes.

He’d never told Khaslana that was the night he started building Phainon. A swordsman character who truly wanted to become a scholar, who asked too many questions of his Professor Anaxagoras in lectures, and who never missed a chance to brighten someone else’s day.

Anaxa had coded the laugh lines by his lips. The roguish tilt of the head. The nickname Professor that followed Anaxa wherever he went.

And Anaxa stopped pretending that what he felt for Khaslana was merely a crush. He’d always returned his junior’s feelings, even if it had taken him a long time to figure it out.

“You’re quiet,” Phainon said beside him, his voice low. “Do you want to rest before we take on the Cavern?”

It wasn’t a bad idea. Anaxa had yet to assess the capabilities of the character whose skin he wore. Professor Anaxa’s weapon of choice was an impressive, alchemic-powered pistol. He specialized in mid-range combat, using distance and alchemy to implant elemental weakness on a multitude of enemies.

“No. Just thinking about the foes we will face.”

Phainon offered up a knowing smile. “That’s just like you, Professor.”

The game’s idle banter system allowed for a range of character-consistent lines. Nevertheless, that one hit a bit too close for personal comfort.

So much of this was fake, he reminded himself, but far too much of it was seemingly real. The difference between the two of those was shrinking by the minute. He was sinking deeper into this illusion.

Phainon stood beside him, his shoulders relaxed, gazing up at the vast heavens above. Kephale’s sun shone brightly. Endlessly. He looked at the sky like he belonged here with it.

Anaxa watched him. Stared at him, to be more accurate. He assessed the slope of Phainon’s straight nose. The way the corner of his mouth lifted whenever Anaxa said something to amuse him. There was golden ink etched into the side of his neck, just visible beneath the narrow strip of leather that encircled his throat.

He had rendered that mouth. He’d designed these clothes. The calluses on Phainon’s hands. Anaxa had done all this but hadn’t expected it all to feel this real.

Or maybe what he hadn’t expected was his own reaction to it. This wasn’t just about the game anymore.

It was him again. The younger Khaslana. The one Anaxa used to catch staring at him across the row of monitors, blinking, then smiling shyly whenever their eyes met. The one who had once brought Anaxa a thermos of soup during a crunch week, awkward yet hopeful as he’d mumbled, “You forgot lunch again.”

Phainon had his same voice. Not in sound exactly but in feeling. The kind of voice one wanted to believe in and trusted with the worst of themselves.

Anaxa’s gaze dropped. It was human nature for people to change. Even Khaslana, as good and warm-hearted as he’d been, had inevitably changed.

It wasn’t sudden. Just… inevitable. There was a point, Anaxa remembered, when Khaslana had stopped humming while he coded. When his messages stopped including those cute little dog emojis. When his shoulders seemed too heavy to carry the burdens of his personal life.

Whatever happened had happened before they’d started dating, officially, and Anaxa had been hesitant to pry after asking twice with no answer. Work was too demanding and they both fell into a rhythm of silence that was easier than unraveling what lay beneath it.

But now, sitting beside this younger echo of his Khaslana, this pixel-perfect golden hero full of laughter and sunshine, Anaxa felt that ache of not knowing come rushing back. He should have asked. He should have pressed harder.

It wasn’t just guilt he felt over not prioritizing Khaslana’s mental health, but also longing. He missed Khaslana. Not just the version of him he was now— quiet, distant, a half-ghost in their home— but also this version of him that still reached out, still teased, and still burned with possibility.

Was this who Khaslana used to be… or just who Anaxa imagined him to be?

He didn’t know. He only knew that he wanted to linger in this illusion just a little longer. And maybe, just maybe, it would help Anaxa get closer to answering the questions inside his heart. If he got out of here— no, when he got the hell out of here— he would reach out to Khaslana and demand that they finally talk.

Anaxa had been ignoring the situation between them for far too long. 

Phainon folded his arms over his chest and tilted his head toward Anaxa, his lips quirked up into a crooked smile. “So, Professor,” he drawled, playfully light, “how do you feel about a bit of monster slaying? For old time’s sake.”

Anaxa arched a brow. He brushed his fingers through the air and felt as his pistol materialized against the palm of his hand. The sleek gun felt lightweight, yet powerful. “Is that your way of asking for my unnecessary help?”

“Depends. Are you spoiling me by saying yes?” Phainon offered out his hand, his palm roughened from sword training and warm to the touch from the overbearing sun.

Anaxa hesitated, just long enough to scold himself for it, before reluctantly reaching out to take it.

Chapter Text

Body heat. The subtle, yet undeniably critical requirement of a living person.

Phainon did not have any. If he’d been a living person, Anaxa would have felt the warmth of that body heat as it soothed his chilled hands. Palm against palm. Their slender fingers entwined. The fact that Anaxa could feel nothing from the other should have been a relief to his conflicted mind.

It proved Phainon wasn’t real.

And yet, as the two reached the entrance to the cavern and Phainon’s hand slipped away from his own, relief was not the emotion Anaxa felt the strongest at that moment.

It was longing.

The ache of it burned behind his ribs. The professor chose to hold his head high, appearing unbothered as he scoped out the danger awaiting them inside. He sensed Phainon’s gaze as it lingered on his cheek but said nothing.

Phainon looked away. “Lady Aglaea said there was a report of a corrupted beast making its rounds through here. It’s been warding travelers away from the cavern. My hunch is that it has taken up territory there.”

“Let me guess,” Anaxa drawled. “You intend to charge in, your sword swinging and without a backup plan, and claim victory over this beast by force?”

“No back up plan? Professor, do you think so little of me? You are the backup plan.”

The first monsters crept out of the cavern’s entrance. The corrosion of the black tide had turned flesh-and-blood beasts into hulking creatures. Corroded torsos revealed the golden core of infection: Destruction. It was the antagonist deity written into the overarching plot of Titans Fall.

Judging by the look of them, Destruction had consumed these monsters for its own ends. They were fodder for a greater cause, nothing more. One that dually worked for gaining player XP.

It was a simple code written into the system. The monsters were meant to be slow and predictable. They would provide no real challenge to a seasoned player who had geared up their fighters to the recommended level.

Anaxa discreetly swiped his fingers in the air. He called up the HUD to examine his character build. Mentor_anaxa (legacy mesh). His build was weaker than Phainon’s. Anaxa was only wearing the +12 purple relics necessary for the opening arc of Amphoreus’s plot.

Annoying, but it would do for now. It wasn’t like he was the vanguard or anything.

No, that role belonged to the one who surged forward with a gleam in his eye. Phainon’s deadly sword flashed in the air like sunlight incarnate. The blade swept around in wide arcs, a devastating sight as it carved a swath through these corrupted enemies with a practiced ease.

Phainon’s stance was impeccable. Each movement followed the one before like a dance. Anaxa found himself staring at him for several beats too long, utterly speechless.

“Professor Anaxa!”

Anaxa shook himself out of his daze at the sound of Phainon’s call. The edge of his peripheral vision lit up. It was a visual effect from the turn-based aspect of the game. From the player’s outside perspective, he’d coded that in to alert the player whose turn would be next. From the character’s perspective, it was incredibly blinding.

He loaded his alchemic pistol with a flick of his wrist and raised it. A pulse of force rippled outward, freezing an enemy beast mid-lunge and incapacitating it. Its solid state remained long enough for Phainon’s next turn to reduce the beast’s HP to zero with a swing of his blade.

“Looks like you’ve still got it,” Phainon teased, throwing him a wink over one shoulder.

Anaxa rolled his eyes. “Hmph. It looks like you have forgotten who you are talking to.”

His mentor, Phainon’s professor, who had essentially taught Phainon everything he would need to know to survive the endless days ahead.

They had found a rhythm together, quiet and instinctive, as if their movements had always been tuned to the same measure. Perhaps they had. Maybe not in this world, but in another life.

That life where they worked together at a cramped game studio with their computer desks pressed side by side. When the two developers would work on a joint project from midnight until dawn. Without sleep and surviving just on the snacks Khaslana would steal out of the broken vending machine.

A memory rose in Anaxa’s mind, unbidden. A day when Khaslana had leaned in close, his elbow brushing against Anaxa’s as they bent their heads together over a monitor. The error code logged on the screen refused to yield despite their best efforts but, on that day, Anaxa’s focus had faltered for an entirely different reason.

Heat had gathered where his and Khaslana’s arms had touched. It lingered, refusing to dissipate. Anaxa’s cursor wavered on the screen, betraying the control he had always prided himself on.

Khaslana did not call him out. The younger had only smiled and tilted his head, as if he knew exactly why Anaxa was so discomfited in that moment. Khaslana’s boyish smile had been soft and unguarded. It was the sweet kind that slipped past every one of Anaxa’s defenses.

The secret smile that seemed meant for his mentor and no one else.

Anaxa’s gaze caught on that same smile as Phainon struck at their foes.

Back then, Khaslana used to bring him coffee without being asked. The lid retained its warmth and was indented faintly with the curve of Khaslana’s thumb. Sometimes there’d be an additional scribble across the cup.

“You can’t spell codependency without CODE.”

His jokes would always be too absurd to dignify with a response. Yet Anaxa had kept every single cup. In the quiet moments, he had allowed himself to believe that this was what it meant to be cared for. That this was what it meant to be loved.

Phainon caught his gaze and flashed him a lopsided grin. “We make a good team.”

The words hit like déjà vu. Anaxa didn’t reply. He didn’t trust his voice.

The heat rose fast, creeping up his throat until it threatened to choke him. He forced himself to turn and swapped his pistol into his left hand. Without looking he shot at the last creature with more force than necessary.

The resemblance between Phainon and Khaslana was in every movement and in the careless confidence of his stride. It was as if the game had taken Khaslana’s ghost and rendered it into Phainon, detail by detail, down to the warmth that slipped past Anaxa’s guard.

The resemblance was uncanny. Worse, it was completely Anaxa’s fault.

He swallowed hard, his heart pounding with a confused ache. Khaslana had changed so much in these last years. He’d been tempered into someone much more restrained in displaying his emotions. The laughter that once burst out of him with reckless joy had become rare.

Somewhere along the way, the sparkle in him dimmed, replaced by a steadiness that Anaxa had come to lean on.

Anaxa had told himself it was necessary. His work demanded quiet. He needed the calm to concentrate and focus on his current project to finish it before Aglaea’s harsh deadlines. He had leaned on Khaslana’s silence. He’d depended on it, even to the point of convincing himself he preferred it.

His acceptance of that had been a betrayal. The truth now pierced him with merciless clarity as Anaxa watched Phainon’s grin catch the light.

He ached for the man he first fell in love with. Not because Khaslana was gone, but because Anaxa had let that light slip away and hadn’t noticed until now.

Khaslana—

A beloved name on the tip of his tongue was swallowed back down. Phainon would not understand these feelings of his even if it was a good idea to explain it. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

Phainon put away his sword with a flick of his wrist. It dematerialized within an instant, gone to a void that someone who wasn’t a game developer wouldn’t think twice about. Particle lights from the fallen creatures evaporated into the air. Phainon did not notice these visual effects, of course, but Anaxa eyed them with a critical glance.

“Looks like we’ve got most of them out now,” Phainon observed. “We can keep going further in, Professor Anaxa.”

“If you wish.”

Anaxa followed Phainon into the cavern in silence, with his heart still lodged somewhere in his throat. The path they took wound upwards, black stone giving away eventually to an exit that brought them back out to the crisp, fresh air of outdoors. If Anaxa remembered the map correctly, this secondary entrance of the cavern would lead them to the crumbled ruins of an old Kephale temple.

Half-sunk into the ground and swallowed by vines, the temple would have been glorious in its original condition. Curved archways were detailed with the carvings of golden suns. The tall columns of the temple were shattered, broken into pieces with the passage of time and the black tide’s curse.

The ramshackle temple was nothing more than a skeleton of what it once was. Luckily, it still had most of its roof. A temporary shelter was better than none.

Phainon waved Anaxa forward. “We can rest here, Professor Anaxa. No enemies will come this far.”

Anaxa stepped inside the temple. The heels of his boots clicked over the broken stone floor. At the temple’s edge, rainbow glitches flicked in and out of his sight. It was an obvious seam in his code that needed fixing. For now, he chose to ignore it.

They sat in what remained of the sanctum. Wind moved through the high arch behind them, catching the tails of Phainon’s cape and the ends of Anaxa’s coat. Silence lingered between them. Anaxa studied his hand curiously, his gaze roaming over the red stone embedded into the skin, before his attention shifted upward.

Phainon wasn’t looking at him. The swordsman sat cross-legged next to Anaxa, his hands braced behind him as he leaned back. His head was tilted upwards as if to study the broken stone of the ceiling above. He was immersed in his concentration, his silvery brows furrowed in thought.

Khaslana used to look like that as he worked in the office. The monitor’s blue light would hit his face as the clock ticked closer to 2AM. That was one of the moments when Anaxa had finally noticed how often he stared at Khaslana without realizing.

“I always wanted to fight beside you, you know,” Phainon said aloud, his gaze still fixated on the roof above. “Not just as your student but as me.”

Anaxa’s chest squeezed with an emotion he couldn’t put a name to just yet. Was it shame? Embarrassment?

When he didn’t immediately answer, Phainon turned to him with a worried glance. “Are you all right, Professor Anaxa?”

Anaxa’s hand twitched slightly against his knee. “You…” he started, voice barely audible, “Phainon, you’re not supposed to say things like that.”

“Why not?”

Phainon scooted closer to him. Their knees bumped together slightly, just enough to make Anaxa all too aware of their proximity. Phainon reached out, his hand hovering just beside Anaxa’s cheek but not quite touching.

Anaxa forgot how to breathe. He used to do that, too. This hesitation, lingering, waiting for a permission he never asked for outright. The choice had always been given to Anaxa. It was always on Anaxa’s terms to say yes and take that brave first step.

“Phainon,” Anaxa murmured, his voice unsteady.

Their faces were inches apart now. The warmth of Phainon’s breath touched his lips, so soft and teasing. Anaxa’s heart pounded loudly in his ears.

His eyelashes fluttered and then, it hit.

A flicker of red.

A glitch.

Anaxa’s eyes flew open in shock. His ears buzzed with a sharp crack of static. For an instant, Phainon’s face distorted into something wrong. The rendering on his eyes inverted for half of a frame.

Anaxa blinked as Phainon’s hand dropped to his lap. The Deliverer straightened up, his smile wavering as disappointment flashed behind his gaze. Anaxa had hesitated for too long.

“You look like you’ve seen something terrifying, Professor,” Phainon murmured, his voice shaking slightly. “Did I scare you?”

Anaxa swallowed with difficulty around the lump in his throat. Suspicion was screaming inside him and it was far too loud to be ignored. The little clues had all been there but Anaxa, in his usual stubbornness, had refused to let doubt win.

He couldn’t ignore it anymore. “You glitched.”

A bright, clueless laugh fell from Phainon’s lips. “I don’t know what that means. I hope it’s not a fatal curse of some kind.”

A lie.

Anaxa’s gaze narrowed. Phainon had already moved on, or pretended to, as he leaned back again. His hands were braced against the cracked floor as he smiled brilliantly, as if to convince Anaxa that what just happened between them— what had almost happened— had not happened at all.

Unfortunately for him, Anaxa wasn’t fooled anymore. That brief distortion had pierced through the veil of his doubts. He’d seen it. And now, Anaxa would be asking the real question that mattered: not what caused the glitch, but why Phainon had enough self-awareness to cover it up.

An NPC, no matter how buggy, would not be able to do that.

“Tell me something,” Anaxa said, his words spoken with care. “Phainon.”

Phainon tilted his head in Anaxa’s direction. His ivory lashes lowered over his too-blue eyes. “Hm? What is it, Professor?”

“You asked me earlier if it felt strange being back,” he said, “and then you said Okhema.”

Phainon’s gaze didn’t waver. “Yes.”

“You didn’t mean my life outside of this place. You didn’t mean the real world.”

“You have been gone a long time, Professor Anaxa. I thought perhaps you missed Okhema after being in the Grove for so long.”

The answer came too smoothly. Anaxa felt the tension in his shoulders coil tighter.

“Then tell me this, Phainon,” he pressed harder, leaning forward at the same time. “Why does it seem as if you know what I will say before I say it?”

Phainon’s lips curved faintly but the smile did not reach his eyes. The silence that followed felt heavier than any almost-kiss they had shared. Glittering blue eyes dulled as a shadow fell over them.

Phainon’s voice lowered into a whisper. “I missed you, Professor.”

Every atom in Anaxa froze. “What?”

“I missed you,” Phainon repeated. His voice was quiet but there was a certainty beneath it. “I struggled so hard to say it.”

For a moment Anaxa could not breathe. That voice. The way Phainon clicked his tongue, his lips curling with mockery towards himself. It was not Phainon speaking. It was him.

“Khaslana,” Anaxa whispered, his heart aching.

Phainon’s eyes widened for the briefest instant. “…Oh. So you knew.”

Anaxa inclined his head once. His chest felt too tight, the oxygen whistling out of his lungs and leaving him breathless. “I only suspected it. It wasn’t only the glitch, but your words… and the way you fight. I certainly didn’t build the moveset like that.”

Phainon— no, Khaslana— gave a soft laugh. “You remembered that I enjoyed playing a sword fighting character the most.”

“I still do,” Anaxa corrected in a soft voice, nearly whispering the words. “Khaslana, I haven’t forgotten a single thing about you.”

Khaslana did not answer. The silence stretched between them until it became almost suffocating. Neither wanted to move first, but Anaxa would not let him escape so easily.

“How did you get in here?” Anaxa asked at last. “And when?”

Khaslana’s gaze fell to Anaxa’s lips. “I heard you call out. When I woke up and you weren’t there, I knew something was wrong. You’d left the game build open. I recognized the framework and I used a backdoor route to patch myself in.”

“You didn’t know about… this, right?”

“Not until I saw myself.”

That quiet admission cracked something open in Anaxa. It was shame, longing, disbelief, and love all tangled together into one aching mess. Anaxa rubbed at his cheek with the heel of his hand, desperate to conceal the embarrassed flush on his face.

“You modeled Phainon after me, didn’t you?”

Anaxa’s answer caught in his throat. He forced it out, knowing it was as impossible for him to lie to Khaslana, just as Khaslana couldn’t easily lie to him.

“Yes.”

Khaslana’s lips parted. He searched Anaxa’s expression with an indescribable emotion in his eyes. “Why?”

Anaxa dropped his gaze. “It was so long ago. Before we were ever anything, I… sensed there was something special about you. When we met, you had so many ideas as a junior developer. Too many, at times, and you certainly didn’t know when to stop talking about what was on your mind. You were so earnest, like a puppy, and you were so brilliant. You would babble about anything and I found myself wanting to hear every single word.”

Khaslana stayed silent as Anaxa’s lips curved into a self-mocking smile.

“I have never listened like that to someone before. The words of others tire me. Their thoughts are too mundane to maintain my attention. But you… you have always been so different. I built this before I realized how I felt about you.”

Khaslana did not speak for a long moment. He weighed his own thoughts before quietly asking, “Then why are we so unhappy now?”

“I don’t know.”

He did. He just didn’t know how to fix it. Anaxa was even unsure how to breathe again with all this guilt tangled in his chest.

“So you modeled a character after me. Coded me into a game you never intended me to find. That’s one hell of a way to express a crush.”

The playful smugness in Khaslana’s voice gave birth to a momentary urge to strangle him. Anaxa tempered it down with the greatest willpower. "If you’re offended by it, just say so.”

“I am hardly offended.”

“Ah.”

“Very flattered, actually. Phainon is extremely handsome, if I do say so myself.”

“Khaslana.” Anaxa toyed with the end of his mint hair, the silky strands twining around his fingertips as he tugged on them. “You should be furious. This is hardly normal behavior.”

“Oh, well, neither of us are exactly normal.” At Anaxa’s pointed glare, Khaslana offered up a small, apologetic smile. In truth, it was only a slight twitch of his lips.

“I'm not angry," he said. "Not really."

His tone was underscored with a bitterness that Anaxa did not miss. How peculiar to see such a dejected expression upon Phainon’s lovely face. He and Khaslana had become fused into one being: a beauty whose edges were darkened with a sorrowful resignation.

"But I do know... I was lonely for a very long time," Khaslana admitted. “And I don’t think you noticed.”

Anaxa’s stomach dropped to the floor. “Khaslana…”

“I’m not blaming you,” Khaslana said quickly. “I know how much you were working. I just… there were nights when I made you your favorite coffee just to hear your voice, but you didn’t even look up at me, not even once.”

Anaxa’s lips thinned into a single line. He fought back the urge to defend himself, knowing it was important in this moment to let Khaslana speak his heart.

"I started leaving the lamp on even though I knew you wouldn't come to bed. At some point, I think I stopped getting my hopes up entirely.”

Anaxa lowered his gaze. The words sat heavy in his chest. “I’m sorry. Khaslana, I never meant to make you feel this way. I didn’t… I don’t want to lose you.”

Khaslana took a deep breath. “I don’t want to lose myself either.”

Anaxa’s hands curled against his knees. “You think I chose the work over you.”

Khaslana gave a faint, bitter smile. “Didn’t you? Every deadline was life or death to you. Every update, every patch… it was as if the world would collapse if you didn’t wring yourself dry for it. Sometimes, I wished I could be the bug in the code so you would give me half that attention.”

Anaxa winced. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Maybe not in your mind,” Khaslana said softly, “but I lived with those silent hours. I kept waiting for the moment you’d look at me— not the screen, not the code, look at me— and when you didn’t, I started asking myself what I was even waiting for.”

Khaslana’s fingers curled inward. The nails dug into his flesh hard enough to turn it bright pink. His voice shook as he continued, “Anaxa… do you have any idea what it feels like to be in the same room as the person you love and still feel invisible? I lived with that torment every day. I still do.”

Anaxa’s throat tightened. The truth was crueler than denial: he had made Khaslana feel that way. Day in and day out.

“I thought I was building something for us,” Anaxa said at last, his tone strained as he tried his best to explain. Even then, something inside his mind told him it might not be enough. “Every long night and every meal I missed— Khaslana, I told myself it was fine because, one day we’d get to stand back and look at everything we created. It would all be worth it.”

Khaslana’s eyes glistened with a wave of sadness. “I didn’t need the world, Anaxa. I just needed you.”

Anaxa remembered the silence in their apartment and how often Khaslana had folded in on himself. His dulled laughter. The elusive warmth. Anaxa had mistaken it for patience. In truth, it had been his resignation.

“I was so caught up,” Anaxa said, his voice low, “in building everything, in making sure it all lasted. I told myself it was for us, but I did not see what it was taking from you.”

Anaxa closed his eyes briefly. The thought of Khaslana, once so radiant, dimming himself out of necessity, clawed at him. He had been the one person Anaxa should have protected, not neglected.

Khaslana’s voice was whisper-thin as he asked, “What was Phainon’s planned ending?”

Anaxa shook his head. “I never wrote it.”

“Why not?”

“I… didn’t know what he deserved.”

Khaslana’s voice softened again. “And what about now?”

Beyond the entrance of the broken temple, the sky rippled. Anaxa glanced up in time to see a wave of glitches as they spiderwebbed between the broken columns. The world was starting to fall apart.

“Would you believe me if I said I’m still figuring it out?”

A loud crack tore through the sky. Lines of code shimmered at the edges of the temple’s ceiling. Then, the terrain changed.

What had once been rolling hills and grass turned into jagged stone everywhere Anaxa looked. A sickly fog hovered around them, clinging to his clothes and fingertips. It all felt so wrong. An error in the design that kept expanding no matter where Anaxa looked.

“Khaslana,” he said, concern in his voice. “This area. It’s corrupted.”

Khaslana reached for his sword, already an expert at conjuring it in his time of need. The false sun above glinted off of its deadly blade. “That's probably why you— we were drawn here in the first place.”

Thunder struck. Anaxa froze, reminded suddenly of the sound that had jolted him right before he’d been sucked into this game. It was followed by a roar that tore through the sky.

Anaxa looked up as something broke free from the clouds. A winged beast— a gryphon, he recognized— had been corrupted by the black tide, like all the others. It slammed into the ground with enough force to splinter what was left of the nearby columns.

Instantiating Corrupted Asset: [NOONTIDE_GRYPHON.v2]

The name floated overhead in a white coded script. Anaxa frowned.

“That wasn’t supposed to be in this questline.”

He’d designed the gryphon back when he’d been in the middle of a fight with Khaslana. It was back when Anaxa hadn’t known how to properly apologize. Instead, he’d internalized the anger and coded a monster born out of sheer spite.

“You don’t have to fight this,” Anaxa told Khaslana.

Khaslana glanced at him, his smile filled with a wry humor. “Oh, I do. Because who else can outwit your mischievous creations but your most loyal student, Professor Anaxa?”

The beast lunged. Khaslana moved like light, his sword plunging through the corrupted data to wound the gryphon to half health in a single strike. Anaxa instantly recognized that there was something different in his fighting style.

There was far less flourish and far less puppy-like eagerness like he’d witnessed in Phainon’s fighting. Khaslana was far more restrained and incredibly precise with each and every move.

Khaslana slashed at the monster and hurled his blade with a perfect trajectory into the beast’s exposed head. The animation staggered at the instant of the strike. He’d landed a critical hit.

But it wasn’t enough. Khaslana dropped to one knee, panting, as the Gryphon struck back at him on its next turn. The health bar on this monster was far too inflated. Phainon’s build was still too weak to one-shot it, as he would later on with the proper supports to aid the character in battle.

For some reason, the reminder of that offended Anaxa. Khaslana didn’t need a support unless it was him.

The interface blurred as Anaxa conjured his pistol back into the fight. He no longer cared if this was a dream, a botched code, or a terrible cosmic joke. Anaxa wasn’t letting Khaslana fight alone.

Between the two of them, they moved in tandem to fight on their respective turns. Anaxa’s weakness-inflicting skill decreased the enemy’s defense. It was the perfect follow-up before Khaslana’s sword came down to deal the brunt of the damage.

The only thing they argued over was the distribution of skill points. Anaxa couldn’t help it that his skill was so useful, and Khaslana debated that he dealt more damage overall, but ultimately, they found a rhythm that worked for them.

It felt natural in a way that made Anaxa’s heart skip a beat. This was how they used to work back at the company, when late nights and constant arguments brought them together in more ways than one. While Anaxa wouldn’t waste the energy listening to someone else, he lived for the thrill of going head to head with his headstrong junior until his blood boiled over.

The corrupted gryphon finally exploded in a burst of corrupted code. Khaslana let out a shaky breath. “Really, we need to work on that HP inflation. What was that about?”

“I thought that if it lasted longer, it would be a suitable vessel for relieving one’s stress through battle.”

The fog thinned around them. The broken columns framed a scenic portrait of Kephale’s sun bleeding gold through the fractured sky. He and Khaslana stood together in the ruins, chests rising and falling harshly as they sought to catch their breaths.

The sky flickered slightly, as if the game knew it had been pushed too far.

Anaxa cleared his throat delicately. There was something he’d wanted to bring up and there was no better opportunity than now. With pursed lips, he blew away the smoke emanating from the end of his pistol.

“Khaslana… before we accepted our feelings, I could feel that something had changed inside you.”

Khaslana’s eyes flickered warily in Anaxa’s direction.

“Back then, I had convinced myself that you would slip away if I pushed you too hard, too soon. I told myself it was simply human nature and whatever burdens you bore, were ones you weren’t willing to share. Now, I blame myself for not trying hard enough to reach you.”

“What happened back then was not your fault, Anaxa.”

“Regardless, I want to fix it. When we go back, Khaslana, will you tell me about your past?”

Khaslana drew in a slow breath, then exhaled. For a long moment, he simply stared at the sunshine bleeding into the fading mist around them.

What did Khaslana think of the world that Anaxa had built in his secret moments of madness? Anaxa couldn’t help but want to know each and every thought that fluttered through Khaslana’s turbulent mind.

The golden light caught in Khaslana’s pale lashes as he murmured, “Do you think the past is something you can fix? I could not change the tide of fate, no matter how much I prayed for otherwise.”

Anaxa’s gaze didn’t waver. “I will remain by your side, Khaslana. I will wait for you, however long it takes.”

Khaslana’s lashes lowered over tormented eyes. His hands curled at his sides. “I buried my past to keep myself standing in front of you. When Cyrene fell ill and struggled to recover, I blamed myself for choosing the deadlines over being by her side. I pushed away a decade of friendship to take a chance on love and a future with you. If you ask me to open the door to the past, Anaxa, you may not like what you find.”

Anaxa stepped closer to him. His hand found its rightful place twining around Khaslana’s, their fingers threading together naturally, as if they had never spent a single moment apart.

“I would rather know you in your worst hours than to lose you in this terrible silence.”

Khaslana’s gaze was gentler as he regarded Anaxa with a smile. Close as they were, Anaxa could feel his boyfriend’s breath as it teased his cheek. Khaslana leaned in. “Anaxa—”

At that instant, the world shuddered. A deafening crack rumbled through every rock, blade of grass, and the heavens above until it nearly sent the two of them down to their knees.

FATAL THREAD EXCEPTION: UNRESOLVED EMOTIONAL ARC
FATAL THREAD EXCEPTION: CHARACTER_ID_MISMATCH
Runtime error: persistence layer degraded.
Object reference lost: character_asset: mentor_anaxa (legacy mesh).

The world was ending. More precisely, Anaxa concluded that the simulation was coming to a close. They were out of time. The once-lush fields of Okhema’s outskirts bled into a sea of gruesome black and gold. Kephale’s temple around them began to blur at the edges.

Khaslana turned toward Anaxa. Urgency bled into his voice as he clung fiercely to Anaxa’s hand. “There’s a failsafe we can use. We can piggyback on the shutdown sequence and extract our data before the server collapses. But we have to go back now.”

Anaxa finally looked up. His thoughts felt heavy, as though he was finally swimming upwards and surfacing from a deep, long dream. “Go back?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“To what, Khaslana?”

Khaslana searched his gaze. Blue eyes were shadowed with uncertainty, but also the stirrings of hope. “To whatever’s next,” he answered. “All I know is that neither of us belong here.”

Anaxa’s throat was tight. “I never got to finish this world. I wasn’t able to give Phainon the good ending he deserved.”

Khaslana lifted his hand and cupped Anaxa’s cheek. His feet were unsteady on the ground, shifting carefully to avoid the flickering gaps that began to emerge beneath his boots.

“Anaxa, I’m not mad that you built him, or even this world,” Khaslana told him in a low voice. “When I got here, I was confused. I didn’t realize you’d been holding onto that version of me all this time. It made me wonder if you still liked me. The present me. The tired one who doesn’t flirt with you anymore and doesn’t bother you when you’re pulling another all-nighter.”

“You’re the one I—”

Khaslana’s thumb brushed once across his lips. “Let me finish. I don’t want to be Phainon. Anaxa, I don’t need to be your bright-eyed junior dev. I don’t need to be some tragic hero with a perfectly scripted ending. I just want to know that the person you are with right now still matters.”

Anaxa’s lower lip quivered. Even devoid of body heat, this touch was more real than anything he could have scripted. Their faces were close, even closer than before. Anaxa leaned in, drawn to Khaslana even when the world around them began to collapse.

“Of course, you do,” Anaxa whispered, as white light split across the sky.

Khaslana’s lips parted. But whatever he wanted to say was lost in the deafening boom that made Anaxa’s vision spin. He lost grip on Khaslana, his hands clutching onto nothing as his sight went completely dark.

His vision was filled with nothing but blinding white text as he felt the world beneath his feet disappear.

private RunExitSequence()
{Debug.Log("[EXIT] BEGIN FINAL STATE DUMP.");
{Debug.Log("[EXIT] TRANSPORTING PLAYER MESHES TO EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT…");
if (dissolveFx != null) dissolveFx.Play();
if (playerRig != null && externalSpawnPoint != null)
TogglePlayerControl(playerRig, false);}}

Anaxa came back to himself with a gasp.

Thankfully, he was still standing on his feet. He spun on his heel and faced the monitor, where Anaxa caught sight of his reflection distorted in the screen. The relief that flooded through him almost caused his knees to buckle. Anaxa’s hand shot out to steady himself with the edge of the desk.

The room was filled with the noisy hum of the computer fans. He also heard a quiet click of the computer mouse.

Anaxa exhaled loudly. Beside him, Khaslana was seated in his ergonomic chair. Knees up, hoodie on, Khaslana looked like he’d rushed straight from bed without stopping to even wash his face.

The story he told Anaxa inside the game checked out. Khaslana hadn’t hesitated to rush to Anaxa’s aid, despite all the anger, loneliness, and resignation he’d shouldered alone all this time.

Selfless Khaslana. His Khaslana.

Khaslana’s head was bowed, his expression unreadable even when illuminated by the monitor’s light. The log window on the screen was still open. Anaxa saw the black command terminal and its lines of bright white text blinking back at him.

private lock thread()
{ User Anaxa; lock (Anaxa);
User Khaos; lock (Khaos);}
VOID(TitansFall.exe)

Khaslana clicked the corner of the window to close it. Only then did he speak, his voice quiet as if he didn’t want to scare Anaxa off. “I heard you call out my name. Earlier, I mean.”

Anaxa nodded, his memory resurfacing as he’d heard what he’d believed to be thunder. In truth, it had been a phenomenon without fathomable origin, yet still just as dangerous to them.

“The build was running something but there was no active thread under your user ID. Just a suspended rig. The logs didn’t make sense.” Khaslana glanced at the monitor. “I used the old backdoor you left behind in the network layer. Do you even remember writing that?”

“Barely,” Anaxa admitted. “It was years ago.”

Khaslana sat back a little. There was something distant in his expression that Anaxa didn’t enjoy the sight of. The heaviness of their conversation lingered in his mind. He wanted to bridge the distance until there was no space of uncertainty left between them.

“I didn’t know if it would work. But then, there I was. You were there, too.”

Anaxa moved to the space in front of the seated Khaslana, inserting himself between his boyfriend and the monitor. He perched against the edge of the desk and took a deep breath. The room felt so still. It was like nothing had changed, and yet, everything had been gutted in these passing hours, minutes, seconds. How long had they truly been gone?

“You got me out, Khaslana.”

Khaslana shrugged, a touch awkwardly. “I wasn’t going to let you stay trapped there forever.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Anaxa met Khaslana’s gaze unflinchingly. The hood Khaslana wore threatened to slide down over his eyes but Anaxa reached out before it could. His fingertips brushed against the fabric as he pushed the hood back and over Khaslana’s head. Mussed silver locks caught against Anaxa’s fingers.

“I shouldn’t have buried myself in work like that.” He ran a hand through Khaslana’s hair. The bright blue eyes that blinked slowly back at him, filled with uncertainty, was nearly Anaxa’s undoing. “I thought I knew best but, after seeing you, after seeing Phainon, it made me realize something important.”

There were dark circles ringed beneath Khaslana’s eyes. He must not have been sleeping well despite going to bed on time every night. Had he stayed up waiting for Anaxa to come to bed every night? Or had he truly given up and moved on, only to find himself unable to sleep because of his restless thoughts?

“I don’t want a fantasy, Khaslana,” Anaxa said clearly. “I want you. Here. Now. However we are.”

The light from the screen flickered once, then dimmed to black as the monitor went into sleep mode. It submerged the room in shadows until the only light was the beginning of sunrise filtering in through the window.

Khaslana laughed under his breath. The sound was filled with an undeniable fondness. “That’s rather dramatic coming from a guy in dromas pajamas.”

Anaxa flushed bright pink. “Unbelievable.”

“I’m serious,” Khaslana said, even as the corners of his mouth curled up in amusement. “Imagine my surprise hearing a confession like that while you’re wearing those ridiculous slippers.”

“They’re comfortable.”

“They’re two sizes too big. I know because they’re mine.”

A huff escaped Anaxa. “You don’t even wear them!”

“You can have them.” Khaslana’s voice lowered. It was gentler as he added, “You can have me, too.”

Anaxa’s shoulders sagged. “I know I’ve been… distant, lately.”

“You’re not the only one to blame. I could have said something, too. You just always looked so tired and I figured you’d come back when you were ready.”

“You shouldn’t have had to wait so long.”

“I agree, and yet, here we are.” Khaslana tilted his head in thought. His small smile hadn’t faded in the slightest, instead it grew bigger as he observed, “Phainon was very handsome.”

Anaxa rolled his eyes. “Stop that.”

“That gorgeous hair? The sword? That tragic backstory that sounded so interestingly familiar?”

“Khaslana.”

“And the flirting— my goodness, Anaxa— he was just your type.”

Anaxa awkwardly rubbed a hand over his face. “I didn’t model him after you because of your flirting.”

Khaslana grinned even wider. “Sure, you didn’t.”

“You talk too much.”

“I missed you, too.”

The words landed harder than they should have. Anaxa lowered his hand, and in that moment after, Khaslana took it for himself. He pressed a kiss to the center of Anaxa’s palm.

Anaxa exhaled. “He wouldn’t shut up, you know.”

“Phainon?”

“No, you.” Anaxa looked down at their joined hands, his thumb grazing over Khaslana’s knuckles. “Even when I was pretending I didn’t know, I couldn’t help but notice you in everything he did.”

Khaslana squeezed his hand once. Their fingers chased each other in a dance that coaxed a smile out of Anaxa’s tense mouth. “For a little while there, I didn’t know who you preferred me to be.”

“You’re the only one I’d ever want,” Anaxa admitted unthinkingly. Only when Khaslana’s widened in shock did he realize what he’d said aloud. “Tch. I shouldn’t have said that out loud.”

“I’m never going to forget that as long as I live.”

“Shut up.”

“The amazing Anaxagoras only wants me. Write it on my grave.”

Khaslana lowered his legs to the ground. In the next moment, he tugged Anaxa forward so abruptly that the other found himself stumbling over his too-big slippers. Anaxa landed squarely on Khaslana’s lap, flushed but not protesting, as Khaslana enclosed his arms around him.

Anaxa could feel the warmth as it radiated from Khaslana’s chest. Body heat. Khaslana wasn't an imagined code but a real and grounding presence. Anaxa relaxed into the embrace. The tips of the dromas horns sewn into his pajamas tapped lightly against Khaslana’s cheek.

“You can make it up to me from now on,” Khaslana told him, his voice soft. “You can start by sleeping in the same bed as me again. And you can use up those breaks you keep promising you’ll use.”

Anaxa snorted, but not in dissent. He leaned into Khaslana’s touch as his boyfriend fondly stroked the curve of his face. Khaslana’s touch was ticklish in the way that made Anaxa whine. “You’re really not going to let this go, are you?”

“Not a chance.”

He lifted his chin and stared at Khaslana, whose eyes glinted with a familiar mischief Anaxa recognized from years ago. Maybe a version of Anaxa from yesterday would’ve scowled and brushed Khaslana’s worry off, burying himself in work until these unsettling feelings passed.

But now, he’d resolved that things from now on would be different. “I’ll take a vacation then.”

Khaslana blinked in surprise. “You— wait, what?”

“A real one,” Anaxa murmured. He rested his head against Khaslana’s shoulder, suddenly unable to look his stunned lover in the eye. It was far too embarrassing to witness the delight on Khaslana’s face. “Two weeks. Maybe longer. We’ll go somewhere quiet.”

Khaslana’s smile was nothing short of blinding. “Aglaea will be okay with it?”

“As if I care what she thinks. I’ll call the office tomorrow and reschedule my project deadlines. You can pick the place we go.”

A beat of silence passed. Then, Khaslana whispered, “Do I get this in writing?”

“Don’t push it.”

Khaslana’s happiness wrapped around them both. It was emanating off of him as if it were a tangible thing. He tightened his arms around Anaxa and refused to let go. For once, Anaxa didn’t mind. He was too absorbed in Khaslana’s scent that he’d, at some point, considered synonymous with home.

“So,” Khaslana murmured, his voice low and intimate. “You're finally going to spend more time with your handsome boyfriend.”

Anaxa made a noise of dismissal. “Handsome, without a doubt. Still, he gets distracted easily and is unexpectedly obsessed with succulents. I believe he’s also capable of holding quite the grudge.”

Khaslana laughed, a full and warm sound that Anaxa hadn’t heard in a long time. Anaxa’s heart thudded in time with his emotions as Khaslana leaned in to rest his forehead against Anaxa’s.

“I take it that, If you got to optimize him to your ideal specifications, he’d be your favorite build.”

The corner of Anaxa’s lips twitched. His hands curled around Khaslana’s wrist, with no intention of letting go. “There’s no need for that. He’s already the very best one.”