𝐆𝐨𝐝'𝐬 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭

Five damage dealers, zero sanity, one girl who can’t stop collecting red flags.

❤︎ Synopsis. You summoned them by accident. Now they won’t leave—and you’re not sure you want them to. Five killers, each with a reason to love you, hate you, or ruin you completely. They say it’s Affinity, but it feels more like obsession wearing a charming smile. And the worst part? You think you might deserve it.

♡ Book. Forbidden Fruits: Intimate Obsessions, Unhinged Desires.

♡ Pairing. Yandere! Esports Apocalypse AU! Multi-fandom x Fem. Reader ~ feat. Squad Zero

♡ Characters. Granger, Gusion, Bara! Dust! Sans, Childe, Scar

♡ Novella. Game Over, You’re Mine – Part 1

♡ Word Count. 11,655

You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, but it tasted like rust and blood. A legacy child of a pristine dynasty, cradled not in love, but in expectations sharpened to needles. The mansion you lived in had more rooms than people, and more mirrors than windows. Clean, cold, clinical. Always perfect. Always smiling. Like your family.

You were the anomaly. The noise in the statistics. The one who wouldn’t fall in line.

They called you gifted early on. The kind of brilliance that earned you awards before you learned how to spell your own name correctly. But the thing about gifted children in golden cages is that they don’t get to just be children. They become proof. Proof that the family was better than everyone else. Proof that the bloodline was superior. That the genes were flawless.

Your siblings? Charming, driven, philanthropic. They sparkled on magazine covers and waved at charity auctions. You? You were the wrong flavor of genius. The one that came with awkward silences, a permanently blank stare, and an inexplicable disdain for small talk. They said you were difficult. Strange. A late bloomer, maybe. But your mother had stopped making eye contact with you by the time you were four.

You remember your childhood in echoes. Not moments. Not memories. Just faint whispers of time in quiet rooms where the ticking clock was louder than your heartbeat. You didn’t cry. Not because you were strong, but because you figured out early that no one listened. You spoke when spoken to. You ate when reminded. You smiled when prompted.

Your parents didn’t hit you. That would be uncivilized. No, your pain came wrapped in velvet gloves and practiced smiles. Disappointment dressed up as concern. Pressure disguised as love. They never shouted, but they never had to. Expectations can suffocate without making a sound.

You learned to read before you could write. Not because anyone asked you to, but because you were desperate to find something—anything—that made sense. Books had rules. Logic. Structure. A beginning, middle, and end. And more importantly, they asked nothing of you. No performance. No perfection. Just quiet pages and silence.

Then, you found your first video game. You were two. Barely tall enough to reach the controller. Your cousin had left the console running in the guest room. The screen was a storm of pixels, blood, and grotesque screaming. A horror slasher game. Age-inappropriate. Brutal. Beautiful. You don’t remember the name. But you remember the feeling.

It was the first time you felt anything.

A strange thrill. A pulse of adrenaline. The chaos on the screen mirrored the one in your chest. You died in-game every three minutes, but you didn’t care. There was no judgment in the digital world. No “what will the neighbors think” or “why can’t you be more like your sister?” Just monsters to kill and darkness to survive. Simple. Honest.

You played until your tiny fingers ached. And when your parents found you, they didn’t yell. They laughed politely, unplugged the console, and told you to go read something more “enriching.” But it was too late. You were hooked.

From then on, you sought out games in secret. At first, it was borrowed consoles, old cartridges, discarded CDs. You became a scavenger of pixels. A collector of other people’s digital skeletons. Horror, FPS, survival, dark fantasy, psychological thrillers—you devoured them all. You learned to read walkthroughs before bedtime stories.

You were seven when you beat your first permadeath roguelike game without a single save point. You were ten when you broke your first world record speedrun. Not that anyone noticed. Your family only noticed when you skipped a piano recital to finish a boss rush challenge. They grounded you for a month. Took away your games. Said it was an addiction. A waste of time.

But even they couldn’t take away what it gave you.

In games, you weren’t the quiet, useless child with dead eyes and a haunting aura. You were a warrior. A survivor. A king. In games, you mattered.

Your bedroom became your only safe zone. The only place you could breathe. You buried yourself under headphones, screens, and strategy guides. Let the real world fade out in favor of better ones. The ones where you controlled the outcome. Where you had power. Where pain made sense.

You stopped talking around the same time you stopped trying to make friends. What was the point? Kids at school looked at you like you were cursed. Teachers said you were too smart to be this cold. But even when they called home, your parents would chuckle and say, “She’s just a little shy.”

You were never shy.

You were broken.

And no one noticed.

You didn’t eat much. You didn’t sleep well. But you gamed like your life depended on it. Because in a way, it did. Every level cleared was another breath drawn. Every boss defeated, another scar soothed. You didn’t care about winning. Not really. You cared about surviving.

You learned coding just to mod your games. Learned art to draw fanart of your favorite characters. Wrote essays analyzing game mechanics. You did everything for games that you never did for school, despite being on top of every academic ranking list with no effort. Games were the only thing that could light a spark behind your dead eyes.

By the time you were thirteen, you were infamous in niche forums and online leaderboards. A ghost with inhuman reflexes and a kill count that made grown men ragequit. You had dozens of aliases, but the one that stuck was simple. Ironic. Brutal. A single digit.

Zero.

No one knew who you were. No one knew how young. No one cared. They either feared you, or worshipped you. But they played with you, and that was enough.

Enough to feel real.

Sometimes you wondered if your family even noticed how hollow you were becoming. But the truth was they didn’t need to. As long as you kept the grades up and smiled for pictures during family galas, no one cared if you bled behind your eyes.

But your games did. They always cared.

And you never forgot the first time one of your characters looked back at you.

Not through the screen.

Not as code.

But as something alive.

That was the day the world changed.

But not before it ended first.

Not before you ended first.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

You were eight when the sky fractured like a cracked screen, and the world stopped pretending it made sense. Most people screamed, died, or lost their minds. You tilted your head and watched in silence, eyes reflecting the flickering neon glimmers of an RPG UI manifesting midair. It was oddly beautiful, in the way collapsing civilizations always are from a distance.

They called it the Merge.

At first, everyone assumed it was a viral marketing stunt. Then the first Leviathan-Class Raid Boss rose from the ocean and crushed three continents in twelve hours. That killed the buzz pretty fast.

Turns out, the multiverse was real. It had always been real. Someone just hit the wrong switch—or the right one, depending on your philosophical stance—and every video game you ever played, every grind-heavy MMO, turn-based tactical, survival horror, FPS hellscape, and farming simulator vomited its code into reality. Only, it wasn’t just the code. It was the logic, the mechanics, the very systems that governed digital life, now overwriting the laws of physics like a corrupted save file.

“Players” were the lucky ones. Or so people liked to believe. People who gained interfaces, inventories, skill trees, and the power to summon and control Characters—entities drawn from every known (and some unknown) game universes. Characters obeyed their Players like summoned familiars, each with their original personalities, abilities, and sometimes annoyingly self-aware commentary. Most Players were just gamers who suddenly became gods. Not all of them deserved it. Most didn’t.

You didn’t scream. You didn’t cry. You just watched the world fall apart and thought: Of course.

Of course the end wouldn’t come with fire or flood. It would come with patch notes.

For the first three years post-Merge, humanity flailed like a disconnected modem. Governments collapsed, cities burned, internet forums became religious cults. The FPS freaks became warlords. The MMORPG addicts built digital empires out of scavenged UI scrap. Battle royales turned into national policy. Soulslike dungeons opened like infected wounds in reality, devouring the unprepared and spitting out loot tables.

You survived by watching. Learning. You catalogued every change, every anomaly, every failed system and emergent behavior like a dead-eyed archivist in a world made of cheat codes and chaos. Most people didn’t know how Players were chosen. They still don’t.

But you do.

It’s not random. Not luck. Not even genetics. It’s based on something older and crueler—proximity to narrative density. The more Player-like your existence was before the Merge—your habits, your thoughts, your rituals—the more likely the world was to hand you a controller. A cosmic algorithm looking for protagonists. Or antagonists. Or whatever archetypes made the world spin.

You, of course, qualified. But you didn’t use it like the others did. No flashy summons. No spectacle. You were the kind of Player who scouted the code and reverse-engineered the entire phenomenon before your tenth birthday. Your first summon wasn’t a champion or a legendary hero. It was a system diagnostic menu.

There are things you know that no one should.

Like how this isn’t just one universe stitched to another. It’s a rot. A cancer of worlds metastasizing into each other, each genre bleeding into the next. Platformers turning into survival horrors. Dating sims collapsing into rogue-likes. Farming games with necromancer mechanics. The lines aren’t just blurred. They’re erased.

You’ve seen the source of it. You wish you hadn’t. You understand now why so many Players go mad trying to decipher the interface.

The truth is this: the apocalypse never stopped. It just changed genres.

After three years, the world stabilized. That’s the word they use—”stabilized.” What they mean is that people stopped screaming long enough to build systems around the screaming. Cities fortified themselves into PvP zones. Towns became co-op hubs. There are spawn points, respawn timers, world events, leaderboard politics. Some places run on RTS mechanics. Others run like turn-based nightmares.

Kids grow up now learning about elemental affinities and frame data in school. If you don’t know how to min-max by age ten, you’re cannon fodder. Meta-discussions are literally life-or-death. Streamers are warlords. Patch notes are divine law.

You? You play solo. Always have. Even now, when the world is an infinite co-op dungeon, you’re still the silent type with maxed-out insight and no social tree. People think you’re weird. Unfriendly. Dangerous.

They’re right.

You’ve read the world’s script. The system doesn’t like people who go off-rails. It punishes free will with narrative side quests disguised as fate. But you know how to say no. You’ve broken quest chains with a smile and soft deletion of a key NPC.

That’s the other thing. The world loves protagonists. But it hates observers. It loathes anyone who won’t participate.

It’s tried to break you more times than you can count. Dream sequences. Character arcs. Forced romance flags. You tear them out like bad code.

The worst part? You still love games. That never changed.

You love them with the same hollow affection a coroner has for corpses. You understand them better than anyone, which is why you don’t trust them. Not anymore. The system is seductive. It offers meaning. Progression. Purpose. But it’s a lie. You’ve seen the final achievement. It’s blank.

There are others like you. Not many. Quiet ones. The ones who didn’t go insane, didn’t join guilds, didn’t try to build new kingdoms out of blood and data. They keep their heads down. You’ve exchanged glances. Shared nods. But no words. You all know better.

Because there’s another truth you carry alone: the Merge isn’t done. This is still early access. The real patch is coming. And when it hits, the world will update again.

You already know the name of the final boss. You’ve seen it hidden in the code, behind seven layers of corrupted debug menus and one eldritch rhythm game.

But you don’t say a word.

Knowledge is power.

But in a world like this?

Knowledge is aggro.

And you’ve got your stealth stat maxed out.

For now.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

You were twelve when you summoned your first Character.

It happened in a crumbling netcafe, half-burned, barely wired into the post-Merge grid. The air stank of ash, melted plastic, and desperation. You had scraped together enough old-world credits and barter goods to rent one hour of access—one glorious, flickering hour.

You picked a MOBA because everyone said not to. Too unstable, they warned. Too chaotic. Lane-based realities tended to bend wrong, to collapse into fractal logic loops. And worse, Characters summoned from MOBAs had a reputation: hard to control, erratic, high attrition rate. You picked it anyway. Because you liked systems no one else did. Because every guide told you to start with a tank or a support. So you picked a damage dealer.

Granger appeared mid-glitch.

He didn’t fall from the sky or crawl out of a summoning circle. He just loaded. Pixel by pixel. A humanoid shape blinking into place like a corrupted file unpacking itself. One second, the screen showed your dusty HUD. The next, he was standing in front of you. Cloak tattered. Gun polished. Silent. Staring at nothing.

He didn’t speak.

He didn’t have to.

His presence was like yours. Empty. Sharp. A missing thing, rather than an added one.

You looked at him, a twelve-year-old girl with a cracked UI and a maxed-out curiosity stat. He looked back, a grizzled, stoic ghost of a man with eyes that had seen too many deaths to count. Something passed between you.

Recognition.

Not the fluffy kind. Not some soulbound, sparkly bond bullshit. No. This was bone-deep. Code-deep. You were both the same brand of broken.

“Granger,” you said. Just to confirm. The system pinged. Name recognized. Ownership confirmed.

He nodded. Barely.

And that was it. Your first friend. Your first Character. Your first mistake, if anyone else had been judging.

Because Granger? He was squishy.

You learned that the hard way in your first PvE simulation. It wasn’t even a boss fight. Just a roaming elite that spawned out of bounds. You missed a command input by 0.4 seconds, and Granger took a crit to the chest. He bled out in your arms. Silent. Not angry. Just… waiting for the respawn timer.

You cried, maybe. Once. Briefly. Then you never made the same mistake again.

It got better after that. Slowly. You read every line of his code. Memorized his cooldowns, his passive modifiers, his animation cancels. You learned to use cover. To time your triggers. To bait movement. You figured out his recoil patterns like you were learning an old song.

He never praised you.

He just followed. Protected. Obeyed without question.

You didn’t need praise. You needed someone who wouldn’t leave.

Years passed. He changed. Not much. But enough.

You started to notice the little things.

He would reload before you asked. Step in front of hits meant for you. You once fumbled a hotkey and nearly got caught in a stun lock—he burned his ult to break the chain and carried you out, cradled in his arms like some tragic NPC escort mission.

You called him dumb afterward.

He didn’t respond. But you swore his reload was slower that time. Petty. Childish. Almost human.

You don’t know when the affection started. Probably somewhere between your fiftieth solo clear and the time he patched your leg with a medkit you didn’t even know he picked up.

You never said anything.

Of course you didn’t.

He wouldn’t understand. And if he did, you didn’t want to know what he’d say. Granger wasn’t built for romance arcs. Neither were you. Emotions were just status effects. Bugged debuffs. You could clear those. Eventually.

But you knew.

You knew when other Characters tried to speak to you, and he would subtly reposition—always between you and them. When idle, his gaze would flick toward your health bar every twelve seconds, like clockwork. When you rested, he stood guard.

You never summoned anyone else for years. Not because you couldn’t. You could have built a team. Optimized your loadout. Played the meta.

But you didn’t want to.

Because Granger understood you without speaking. Because his silence was kinder than most people’s words. Because you trusted him not to try and fix you.

And maybe, just maybe, you were afraid.

Afraid of breaking the only good code you’d ever found.

He still doesn’t talk.

Not really. Just the occasional phrase. Usually in combat. He calls you “Player” like it’s a fact, not a title. Neutral. Distant.

But once—just once—you heard something else.

It was after a particularly bad raid. Blood everywhere. Your fingers were shaking. Not from fear. Just adrenaline crash. You dropped your UI, leaned against a ruined wall, and closed your eyes.

He crouched beside you. Wordless. As always.

Then he said, quietly, like he wasn’t sure if it would load correctly:

“You’re not alone.”

You didn’t look at him. You didn’t reply.

But your fingers stopped shaking.

That was enough.

You love him. You know that.

You’ll never tell him. You don’t have to. Love is just another status effect. And you’ve gotten very, very good at hiding your buffs.

He’s probably your first crush. Maybe your last.

He’s still squishy. Still off-meta. Still the worst possible pick for an apocalyptic solo queue run.

You still summon him every time.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

You were sixteen when you summoned your second Character.

You didn’t mean to. It was a misclick. A lag spike. A fucking patch note nobody read. One minute, you were grinding a solo boss with Granger like always—clean rotations, fluid movement, numbers green and good. The next? Your screen glitched. An icon you didn’t recognize pulsed blue, like it was waiting. Like he was waiting.

And then Gusion loaded in.

He didn’t appear. He arrived. Like a knife in the ribs. Quick. Precise. Intentional.

Lightning-blue sigils cracked through the air, code erupting like static fire. One heartbeat, the space next to Granger was empty. The next, it wasn’t.

The boy—no, not a boy, not really, something sharper—landed like a dropped needle. Straight spine. Loose limbs. Smirk already halfway loaded.

He winked.

You stared.

He spun his daggers like he’d been born mid-animation cancel. Then he looked at you like you were something to dissect. Or worse—to measure. Not worth, not yet, but interesting.

Granger raised his gun. Gusion raised an eyebrow. Nobody moved.

Then he said: “You summoned me. Try to keep up, Player.”

And that was it. No name ping. No confirmation box.

Just… ownership assumed. Claimed like a throne. Like a kill.

You wanted to uninstall him immediately.

✦✧✦✧

It took three weeks to figure out how to make him not wander off mid-fight. Four to stop him from initiating combat without you. Six before you could land a single combo string with his kit that didn’t break your fingers or your pride.

He was fast. Too fast. His cooldown windows were tight, brutally so. His mobility was untrackable. His burst windows were damn allergic to delay. He required perfect movement, split-second inputs, and an ego the size of a broken leaderboard.

You hated him.

He laughed at you.

“Your fingers are too slow,” he said, watching you fumble another blink-dash combo. “Your brain too. But we can work on that.”

You fantasized about deleting his data.

Granger refused to acknowledge him. Never looked at him. Never responded to his needling comments. When Gusion got close, Granger would simply reload. Loudly. Slowly. Passive-aggressively.

It was hell.

And then one day, mid-arena, cornered in a 2v5 because of a matchmaking bug, you finally nailed it.

The combo.

The blink, the stab, the flashstep, the ult chain—clean, flawless, brutal. You shredded the opposing Players in a microsecond, system screaming critical damage and bonus XP.

You froze.

Gusion didn’t. He leaned in behind you, hands ghosting near your interface. Not touching. Never touching. Just… hovering.

“Told you,” he whispered, voice like blue fire. “All you had to do was want it.”

That was the first time you realized he wasn’t just fast.

He was hungry.

✦✧✦✧

Granger fought for you. Protected you. Waited for orders.

Gusion didn’t wait.

He forced movement. Forced tempo. He didn’t defend. He hunted. Every match with him was a brawl. A bloodbath. And you, quiet, logic-minded you, had to keep up or die trying.

You started to.

You adjusted your binds. Changed your grip. Drank caffeine and stared at enemy AI routines until your vision blurred. You remapped your reaction times. Memorized burst patterns. Became something fast enough to deserve him.

And he noticed.

He stopped calling you slow.

Started calling you fun.

You weren’t sure which was worse.

✦✧✦✧

He was nothing like Granger. Where Granger was all discipline and grim resolve, Gusion was momentum and menace. And flair. Too much flair. Half his kills were technically unnecessary overkill. But they looked good.

You hated how much fun you started having.

Because Gusion taught you how to want. Not just to win. But to dominate. To make the other team remember you.

“You’re wasting potential if they don’t rage-quit,” he once told you, stepping over a fallen Player. “Style matters.”

You learned greed. Precision. The chase.

You still summoned Granger every match.

But Gusion?

Gusion was the edge.

The itch you hadn’t known how to scratch.

✦✧✦✧

You didn’t like him. You didn’t trust him. But over time, you got used to him.

He stopped running ahead.

Started syncing his tempo to yours. Not always. Not cleanly. But often enough to matter.

He’d watch your movements during combat. Echo them. Build off them. Add just enough chaos to let you break your patterns and rebuild them stronger.

You fought better with him.

He made you better.

✦✧✦✧

The first time you got cornered in a glitch trap, your inputs scrambled, your limbs stuttering, it was Gusion who found you.

You were on your knees, UI cracked, Granger too far out of range to respond.

Gusion didn’t say anything. Just moved.

The air hissed as he blinked through three corrupted mobs. Daggers flared blue and bright. He reached you in under two seconds. Slashed the trap node out of existence.

Then crouched.

Not out of concern.

Out of calculation.

His fingers hovered near your HUD. His eyes, impossibly sharp, scanned your vitals.

“Don’t die,” he said. Not as comfort. Not as command. Just… fact.

“You’re more fun alive.”

✦✧✦✧

You healed. You got stronger. Faster. Meaner.

You started watching him, too.

How he bounced during idle. How he never stood still unless he was watching you. How he never, ever let another Player get behind you.

You caught him staring sometimes.

Not in that desperate, codebond way Granger had.

But in that competitive, calculating way.

Like he was trying to solve you.

Like you were a puzzle worth breaking.

✦✧✦✧

You stopped calling him annoying.

He stopped calling you slow.

Granger still didn’t talk to him.

That was fine.

You didn’t need them to get along.

You just needed to win.

And damn, with both of them?

You did.

You bled victory.

✦✧✦✧

Later, much later, after a particularly brutal climb match, you collapsed back in your chair. UI fizzing. Health bar flickering.

Granger knelt nearby, silent. Ready to reload.

Gusion appeared beside him, crouched backwards on the edge of a broken structure like a feral cat with a flair for the dramatic.

He grinned.

“You’re finally starting to enjoy this,” he said.

You didn’t deny it.

He flipped a dagger through his fingers and said, too soft to be for anyone but you:

“Careful, Player. You might end up like me.”

You stared at him.

Then smirked.

“I’d be faster.”

His laugh, sharp and delighted, echoed through the broken code.

Granger didn’t move. But you swore his reload got slower.

You didn’t know what it meant.

But you knew one thing.

You weren’t alone.

Not anymore.

And maybe you weren’t quite so dead inside, either.

God help anyone who queued against you now.

You were starting to want things.

And Gusion?

Gusion had made you hungry.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

The world was ending, but at least the queue times were fast.

You didn’t really care about the collapse of civilization or the fact that skyscrapers had respawn timers now. Humanity’s moral compass had already long since flatlined, so the new game patch that fused reality with esports mechanics felt more like an upgrade than a crisis. You could finally grind without having to explain to your therapist why your social skills were permanently locked at level one.

Then again, your therapist was your support.

“Mochi, they flanked again.”

“Mm. On it.”

Her voice was calm. Almost detached. But you knew what was about to happen.

From your vantage point on the crumbling rooftop—once a bank, now a spawn zone—you watched as her Ruby slingshotted into the middle of a botched ambush, scythe first. The enemy DPS didn’t even have time to blink before Ruby yanked them into tower range. Blood sprayed like confetti. They screamed. You pressed a button.

Granger appeared beside you in a flash of shadow and music. One shot. Two shots. A crescendo of death notes.

“Dead,” you said flatly.

“Dead,” Mochi echoed.

You both moved on.

✦✧✦✧

Your squad was only two people deep, which in this world meant you were insane or cracked. Maybe both. The rankings didn’t care. You were climbing.

Players were rare. People who could summon, bind, and command game Characters like weapons or familiars. Most had full squads. You didn’t need them. You had each other.

You had your Granger and Gusion. Mochi had Ruby and Estes. A bruiser support-tank and a healer who turned sustain into slow, inevitable death. Like a comforting band-aid that smothered you in your sleep.

Other Players laughed when they saw your comp.

They didn’t laugh long.

Mochi didn’t play like a support. She played like a pissed-off older sister with abandonment issues and something to prove. She tower-dived like she was personally insulted by enemy architecture. She peeled assassins off you like flies off meat and shoved CC down midlaners’ throats like a very polite blender.

And you?

You deleted people.

Cold. Surgical. Dispassionate.

Click. Combo. Execute.

You didn’t flame in chat. You didn’t ping. You didn’t talk. You didn’t need to. Mochi was your mouthpiece, and her favorite love language was passive aggression.

“Wow,” she said as your random third tried to solo a fed Marksman. “Such bold gameplay. Truly inspiring.”

“He’s dead,” you noted.

“Yeah. That too.”

The body hit the ground. A heartbeat later, Ruby vaulted back in, caught the enemy carry with her ult, and dragged them toward you like a sacrifice.

You didn’t say thanks. Mochi didn’t expect one. You aimed. Fired.

“Dead.”

✦✧✦✧

You liked Mochi because she didn’t need your soul. She just needed your build path.

You liked her Characters, too. Ruby was bloody, playful, dangerous. Estes was the cold light of a dying king. Granger tolerated them both. Gusion, on the other hand, didn’t like anyone, which made sense. He was you, if you were somehow more emotionally repressed and filled with knives.

The six of you were a dysfunctional, codependent mess. But you won games.

People talked.

“Oh my god, those two are climbing again.”

“Isn’t that the team with the support who trash-talks in Bible verses?”

“No, that’s the one with the Granger who never misses.”

“They don’t even HAVE a full squad, who the hell do they think they are?”

You didn’t care.

You just wanted MMR.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

The blood on your interface wasn’t real. Not anymore. Not since the System Update.

It trickled beautifully down the corner of your HUD like some aesthetic glitch effect, overlaying the wreckage of your last match. Tower craters. Burnt-out creep lines. The other team’s Carry, reduced to a pile of loot and shame. You flexed your fingers, the phantom recoil of Granger’s shotgun echoing through your knuckles. That last ult shot? Clean. Overextended jungle flank. Punished.

“Next,” you said, deadpan.

You didn’t need to say more. Mochi was already queueing.

✦✧✦✧

Mochi wasn’t your friend. Not really. Not in this world. Not when the only currency that mattered was win rates and K/D/A ratios. But she was the only one who ever stayed when your mind short-circuited mid-session, when your fingers twitched with phantom keybinds and the edge of your consciousness blurred between UI and unreality. When the Characters blinked too human. When you didn’t.

She was your support. Your tank. Your damn duo.

“Mid-lane bait or jungle trap?” she asked, Ruby already flickering into material beside her, scythe gleaming like a promise.

“Both,” you said. “I’ll lead.”

The queue popped.

✦✧✦✧

Squad match. Ranked. Deserted highway biome. Time limit 40 minutes. First blood already on the board.

You didn’t flinch as the first burst of enemy fire clanged off your deployable cover. Gusion’s blade blinked in your peripheral vision, hovering, waiting. He never spoke. Just vibrated with murderous potential. Still more predictable than most people.

Mochi was behind you, Ruby bounding forward like a rabid dog on a leash. Tower aggro was a joke to her. So were cooldowns. Her playstyle was the exact opposite of her usual soft-spoken persona: vicious, aggressive, high-risk-no-risk-because-she’d-die-for-you.

“Left jungle collapse in ten. They’re overrotating,” she said, tone flat.

“Bait ’em.”

Gusion flickered forward in four frames of instant movement. The enemy ADC barely got a scream out before he was eviscerated. Ruby dove next, soaking stuns, disabling their support. You arrived last, calm, efficient, a hollow-eyed reaper with trigger fingers. Granger’s ult sang like a funeral march. They were gone before they realized it.

+3 Rank Points.

+1 MVP.

You let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding. You always did, after.

✦✧✦✧

Back in the staging zone, you stared at the scoreboard. Mochi leaned on her scythe, Ruby coalescing beside her, twirling blood between her fingers like silk.

“They don’t learn,” Mochi muttered, cracking her knuckles. “Why queue without team comms if you’re gonna run headfirst into crossfire? Dumbasses.”

“Their ADC had a 13% win rate.”

She rolled her eyes. “Should be illegal.”

You said nothing. Your bond meter with Granger flickered. He stood nearby, arms crossed, gaze turned from you. He didn’t like praise. He liked results. You were the same.

“Queue again?” Mochi asked.

You nodded.

✦✧✦✧

Later that night, you sat in your room, lights off, interface glowing. You studied your Character screen like a monk with a grimoire.

Granger: Bond Level 87%. Affinity: High. Stability: Very High.

Gusion: Bond Level 78%. Affinity: Moderate. Stability: Caution Required.

You hovered over Fanny. Her bond meter pulsed erratically. She was loyal, but unstable. You didn’t blame her. You knew what instability felt like.

Mochi pinged you. Duo ready.

You joined without thinking.

The match would begin in 3…

2…

1…

Let them come. Let them all come.

You were the damage. Mochi was your shield.

And you didn’t lose.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

You were seventeen when the world got worse. Or maybe it was already bad, and the whole reality-meets-video-games apocalypse thing just made it honest. Not that you minded. You’re dead inside. That helped.

Everyone else screamed and sobbed when the lines blurred, when the server went global and every Player started summoning characters out of fanfiction and boss fights. You, on the other hand, were reading forum threads on summoning optimization while eating stale cereal. One hand on the keyboard, the other flipping through a guidebook like it was a damn grimoire. It was your birthday. What better way to celebrate than unlocking your third permanent summon?

You expected something cool. Maybe a hyper-rare mythic. An RPG demigod. Hell, even a cute anime swordsman with a tragic backstory and too many belts.

What you got instead was Dust Sans.

Not the chill, pun-spouting skeleton you laughed at on Tumblr. Not even the edgy-but-still-kinda-lovable Genocide Route Sans. No. You got the one with dust caked on his hoodie like ash from the monsters he murdered. You got the one who killed his own brother and called it mercy. The one who looked you dead in the eye at your summoning circle, cracked his neck, and said:

“Great. Another Player. Thought I’d be free of you freaks.”

Then he tried to kill you.

Granger and Gusion had to drag him off while you wiped blood off your screen like it was just another bug. You didn’t scream. You didn’t flinch. You just stared at him—this hulking, snarling version of a once-beloved meme—and thought, huh. This is my life now.

He hates you. That much is clear.

He hates your voice, your eyes, your calm, clinical way of issuing orders like the world’s not burning. He hates the way you don’t flinch when he snaps a bone-blade within inches of your throat. He hates that you never once asked why he’s like this.

You know already. You read the lore. The resets. The guilt. The hallucinations. The breakdowns. The murder.

You don’t pity him. You don’t even judge him. And maybe that’s what he hates the most.

He tries to kill you every week. Like clockwork.

Week 1: He tried to Gaster Blaster you in your sleep. You’d warded your room with summon glyphs. They backfired. He lost an arm.

Week 2: Poisoned food. Didn’t work. You don’t eat unless you have to. Your body’s a machine, and machines don’t need snacks.

Week 3: Dropped a bone mine under your desk. You saw it. Disarmed it with one hand while sipping tea with the other. You thanked him for the extra experience.

He stopped trying after that. Not because he changed his mind. Just… he got tired. For now.

You never send him out unless you absolutely need him. But when you do, he’s an apocalypse. A walking extinction event. Purple-lined Gaster Blasters howling through the sky, bones bursting through the ground like twisted trees, the battlefield reduced to silence and dust.

And when the last enemy falls, he turns to you. Breathing heavy, hood up, eyes blazing red and cyan. You know he’s calculating. Measuring. Wondering if now’s the time to slit your throat.

It never is. He never does.

Once, during a siege match, you took a hit meant for him. A cannon-blast right through your ribs. You collapsed, clutching your side, and ordered the retreat with blood on your teeth.

Dust stood over you for a long time.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he muttered. But he didn’t finish the sentence with a bone through your skull. He carried you back instead. Didn’t talk to you the whole way. Didn’t look at you either. But his hand never let go of your wrist.

Some days, you catch him staring. Not at you, really. Through you. Like he’s remembering something. Someone. A brother who used to believe in him. A bar where the fries were too salty and the laughs too loud. A world where love meant something other than Level.

You never interrupt him. Just let the silence stretch until he snaps out of it.

“Quit lookin’ at me like that,” he snarls once. “Like I’m some kind of sad story.”

You blink slowly. “You’re not a story. You’re a weapon. And I don’t waste time crying over my loadout.”

He laughs. It’s dry. Hollow. But it’s real.

“You’re the real monster here.”

You shrug. “Takes one to summon one.”

He doesn’t try to kill you that week.

When you’re alone, sometimes you talk to him. Not like a therapist. Not like a friend. Just… idle chatter. Game mechanics. Lore inconsistencies. Patch notes. You don’t expect him to answer. But sometimes he does.

“Papyrus woulda liked you,” he says once, voice low. “You got the same deadpan delivery. Worse jokes, though.”

You don’t respond. You just nod. That’s enough.

You know he sees the world like a game now. One he’s tired of losing. Tired of resetting. He’s been stuck in the loading screen of his own grief for years. And maybe, just maybe, you’re the first Player who didn’t treat him like a glitch or a trophy or a damn internet meme.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t kill you.

Yet.

You still sleep with a dagger under your pillow. Still scan every mission briefing for sabotage. Still treat him like the liability he is. Because no matter how many times he doesn’t kill you, the number of times he tried still outnumbers them.

But you also bring him back ramen when you’re in town. You let him ride shotgun when you drive through PvP zones. You learn to read his silences like dialogue boxes with missing code.

He still hates you. That hasn’t changed.

But maybe—just maybe—he hates the world more.

And maybe that’s enough.

For now.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

You laugh again.

Dust’s eye twitches. Not the magic one—he’s got those under control. The normal one. The one that watches you without ever blinking, without needing to.

You laugh again, and he hears the wrongness behind it.

It’s always like this. You with your damn jokes. Puns like landmines, scattered across every interaction. Your voice sings out like you haven’t been living in a blood-rusted apocalypse stitched from code and corpses. You crack another joke about bones—again—and he wonders how your own haven’t started rattling yet. He hopes they will.

“You’re not funny,” he mutters.

You grin wider. “And yet you’re still here.”

His phalanges twitch. His Gaster Blaster jitters into existence for half a second before he snuffs it out. Not yet. Not until he figures you out.

He’s killed Players before.

Hell, it’s practically all he does these days, when he’s not hallucinating Papyrus or destroying save points just to feel something like control. He’s murdered them mid-laugh, mid-plea, mid-power trip. He’s reduced entire echelons of Ranked to ash and EXP drops. You should be nothing.

And yet.

He watches you talk to Granger and Gusion—those two, those flashy, disgustingly loyal summons of yours—and sees something he hates. No, not teamwork. Not synergy.

Competence.

Like you’ve done this before.

Like you’ve survived worse.

“You’re not scared of me.” He says it flatly, the way you might note the weather.

You tilt your head, pretending to think. “Nah. You’re not the worst skeleton I’ve had in my closet.”

He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t have to.

His sockets glow faintly, that off-cyan and blood-washed red. He watches you stretch your arms, lazy, casual, like you’re not one misstep away from becoming just another pile of dust in his hoodie.

You should be terrified. You should know he’s waiting for a moment, the moment, any moment, to snap your neck with a bone strike or just vaporize you mid-smirk.

But instead, you just smile.

There’s something behind it. He knows there is. He’s seen every variety of fear masquerading as confidence. Seen Players boast and bluff and break. But you?

You’re off.

You smile like someone who’s been watching the apocalypse from the inside.

“Who are you?” he growls finally.

You blink at him. “I summoned you, remember?”

“Don’t play dumb.”

“Oh, I’m not. I’m playing cryptic. There’s a difference.” You lean back against a broken arcade cabinet, tapping your chin. “Why? Getting curious, Murderboy?”

“I hate you.”

“I know.” You wink. “Kinda hot, honestly.”

He nearly decks you right there. The only reason he doesn’t is because Granger shifts from the shadows like a predator getting ready to lunge. Dust may be unhinged, but he’s not suicidal. Not yet.

He storms away instead, kicking a health pack into a wall. Useless. You’re not injured. You never are. Always walking out of missions with a few scratches and a tired smile. It’s wrong. He knows it.

You’re wrong.

And he’s going to find out why.

✦✧✦✧

That night, he doesn’t sleep. Of course, he never does. Dust lies still in the void of some forgotten save file, phantom Papyrus murmuring nonsense beside him, and all he can think about is you.

Not in that way.

In the “why haven’t I killed you yet” kind of way.

He’s killed people for less. He’s killed people for more. And yet you persist. Like a virus. Like a cockroach dipped in cheat codes.

You know things.

Sometimes, you slip.

A comment about someone’s skill cooldown before they cast it. A path chosen too fast. A meta prediction three patches ahead.

You laugh it off. “Lucky guess.”

He doesn’t believe in luck. Not anymore.

And sometimes when you think you’re alone—when Gusion’s off sharpening knives and Granger’s playing melancholic sniper blues—you stare out into the corrupted sky like you’re listening.

To what?

To who?

He’s going to rip the answers out of you eventually.

Or out of your corpse.

He hasn’t decided yet.

✦✧✦✧

Next mission. PVP drop zone. Chaos. Dust feels alive, if you can call it that. The rush of battle, the screaming Players, the red-tinted notifications of EXP boosts and killstreaks. He’s covered in dust again—others’, not his own.

And there you are, dancing through it. Not fast. Not agile. Just… deliberate.

You’re moving like you’ve already seen the fight.

“Hey, Bone Daddy.”

He almost snaps your neck for that one.

You flick a bloodied blade off your shoulder and toss a mana orb at him. “Catch.”

He doesn’t. It hits the ground. He steps on it out of spite.

“Thanks for not trying to kill me this time,” you add, breezing past.

His grip tightens. He was going to. Five minutes ago. But you’d said something. Something small. Something wrong.

“You said this would be your last match.”

“Yup.” You pop the “p” like it’s no big deal. “Kinda poetic, right?”

He teleports in front of you. No jokes. No puns. No lazy shrug. His face is blank. His voice is not.

“What did you mean?”

You blink slowly. “Did I stutter?”

“If you’re planning something—”

“I’m always planning something. Don’t you?”

He doesn’t like that. Doesn’t like that he can’t tell if you’re bluffing, joking, or threatening him. Maybe all three. Maybe none.

You look up at him, expression unreadable. “You want to kill me so badly, Dust. Why don’t you?”

And that’s the thing, isn’t it?

He should have.

By all logic, you should be dead.

But you’re not.

Because he wants to know what you’re hiding more than he wants to see you die.

You, with your bad jokes and buried trauma. You, who crack and bleed and laugh in the same breath.

You, who’ve seen things.

He leans in close, magic eye flickering like a candle in a storm.

“I will kill you,” he whispers.

You nod. “Eventually.”

“But not before I rip your secrets out of your bones.”

“Deal,” you say, and smile. Not kindly. Not nervously. But like you already know how this ends.

And that—

That makes him furious.

You shouldn’t.

He’ll find out.

He will find out.

He has to.

Because if you’re not a god, or a glitch, or a Player who’s broken the game itself—

Then you’re something worse.

And he’s going to kill you either way.

But not tonight.

Not yet.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

He’s tried every method.

Bone spikes during your sleep cycle. Gaster Blaster to the back in a dungeon crawl. Soul lock mid-jump over a molten pit.

Didn’t work.

None of it.

You laughed when you noticed the singed ends of your coat. Said something like, “Guess I forgot to dodge,” and walked off whistling like you hadn’t just been milliseconds from a magical lobotomy.

He tries again the next day.

And the next.

And the next.

Each time, a little more clever. A little more surgical. Never the same attack twice.

You shouldn’t still be here.

He’s killed every Player that summoned him before. All of them. Every last one.

The ones who summoned him were always broken. Blood-addicted. Ego monsters in flesh suits. Desperate little gods with save points for spines. They wanted power, dominance, to feel the thrill of ending a life and calling it justice. They saw Dust as a weapon, a cheat code with bones and bloodlust.

And he hated them.

He killed them.

One by one.

Every single Player with the nerve to pull his soul into their sick little game got the same reward.

Death.

Except you.

And it’s not that you’re nice. No one is nice anymore. Not really.

But you don’t treat your summons like tools.

You don’t leash Granger or bark orders at Gusion. You ask. You request. You plan with them. You call Dust “partner” when he’s listening, “the bone boy” when you’re being an ass, and once—once—you called him “friend.” He nearly broke your legs for it.

Yet here you are.

Still breathing.

And still smiling.

He knows something’s off.

People summon based on Affinity. It’s hardwired into the system—narrative resonance, soul synchronicity, whatever garbage name the scholars gave it before they were turned into loot drops. You get summons that match you. That reflect you.

Granger’s easy. Cold, pragmatic, full of quiet longing. You two move in silence like synchronized ghosts.

Gusion’s predictable. Reckless brilliance, erratic empathy. You match his rhythm like it’s your heartbeat.

But him?

Why the hell did you summon him?

You don’t match. You shouldn’t.

He’s chaos. You’re strategy.

He’s wrath. You’re curiosity.

He’s a firestorm of rot and vengeance and entropy and you’re… you.

Empty-eyed and full of laughter.

And you summoned him.

That means something is deeply, fundamentally wrong with you.

He watches you joke with Gusion, practice shots with Granger, and in the space between smiles, he sees it.

The stillness.

The calculation.

The weight behind your eyes that no punchline ever scrubs away.

You’re not like the others.

You’re worse.

Because you’re good at pretending.

✦✧✦✧

Dust has seen the soul of the world.

He’s watched cities burn not because of evil, but because it was profitable. He’s seen kids tossed into dungeons to “level up” faster. Watched Players trade Characters like cards—discarding the weak, exploiting the broken.

And they all said the same thing.

“I just want to have fun.”

He remembers the blood-drenched arena where a Player laughed while their summons died on repeat, over and over, farming pain for amusement.

He remembers a child who reset a hundred times just to see the different ways someone could die.

He remembers himself, before the madness had names. Before his sins wore shoes and called him “brother.”

“I just want to enjoy the game.”

And now you’ve said it too.

He heard you whisper it once, when you thought no one was listening.

“I just want to enjoy this.”

The same words.

But different tone.

Yours sounded tired.

Wistful.

Not like a killer, but like a ghost remembering.

That’s worse.

That’s so much worse.

Because killers are predictable. They bleed like everyone else.

But you?

You make jokes.

And yet he’s never seen you sleep.

You’re emotional.

But you never cry.

You speak like a fool.

But every decision is cold, calculated, surgical.

You say you’re “just having fun,” but everything you do reeks of intent.

So he tests you.

Tries to kill you again. A collapsing ceiling trap while you’re mid-sentence. You sidestep it without blinking and finish the joke like nothing happened.

Another time, poison. Just a dab. Enough to kill. You drain it from your drink, sniff it, and say, “Nice try, chef. A little bitter on the finish.”

He hates you.

But he can’t stop watching.

Because you shouldn’t be alive.

And yet you are.

✦✧✦✧

You summoned him.

You shouldn’t have.

But you did.

And the more he thinks about it, the more he wonders.

What part of you… aligns with him?

Because Affinity is never wrong.

You summon what reflects you.

And you summoned a mass murderer.

So what does that make you?

He’s going to find out.

If it takes a thousand assassination attempts—

If it means breaking you open like a loot crate—

He’ll know.

Because the truth is scratching at the inside of his skull.

Maybe you’re not kind.

Maybe you’re not broken.

Maybe you’re just like him.

And you’ve been playing him this whole time.

You’re emotional, yes. But emotions are cheap.

You’re funny. But so were the worst monsters.

You’re generous. So were the warlords before they slaughtered their own.

You say “let’s have fun,” like fun isn’t a razor blade.

And Dust?

He’s rational. He’s logical. He knows patterns.

And he’s seen this one before.

Just not wrapped in a smile.

You summoned him for a reason.

And when he finds it—

Then he’ll kill you.

If he still can.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

You turned eighteen with a gacha app in one hand and a bag of stale chips in the other. Happy birthday. Your big rebellion was downloading three different gacha games and deciding to go all in. Your phone lagged, buzzed like a dying insect, and then glitched out entirely. Screen went white.

And then they appeared.

Childe and Scar.

You didn’t even play those games. Genshin was too loud. Wuthering Waves had too much lore dump. But here they were. Summoned, real, breathing, looking at you like they had been waiting for this moment their whole damn lives. And you? You were just wondering if your phone had finally died.

Childe smiled like he was about to ruin your life and enjoy every minute of it. Scar didn’t smile at all. He just stared. You got the feeling if he had been summoned five seconds earlier, you would’ve been a smear on your carpet.

Granger looked at them and immediately walked out. Said nothing. Just left.

Expected.

Gusion narrowed his eyes, gave them one of his vague, mysterious smiles, and said, “Interesting.” Which in his language meant, I’ll pretend to like you while figuring out how fast I can kill you if needed.

Also expected.

Dust took one look and said, “Oh great, two more trauma goblins. Are you collecting them now?”

Nothing new there either.

But Childe and Scar? They were different.

Clingy. Physically affectionate. No boundaries. Childe leaned on your shoulder like you were old friends. Scar hovered too close when you cooked, hands twitching like he was restraining himself from touching your neck or the knife you were holding. They didn’t ask permission. They just stuck close. Like parasites with pretty faces.

They made it seem like they adored you. Easy to talk to. Charming. Funny, even. You laughed a few times. Scar had this deadpan delivery that made everything worse in the best way. Childe knew how to make you feel like you were the center of the universe. And for a while, it was… nice.

But then weeks passed.

Their Bond Levels didn’t move.

Not an inch.

You checked every day. Thinking maybe there was a bug. Maybe the system glitched. Maybe affection just didn’t register in murder-coded war criminals. But no. It was working fine. Gusion, for all his brooding distrust, was creeping up steadily. Dust was slow, but moving. Even Granger, cold bastard that he was, had a blip of progress. But Childe? Scar?

Flatlined.

Pretending. Worse than the others. At least the others were honest about hating you.

They smiled, touched, clung—but nothing inside. You knew that type.

You’d been that type.

You still were.

You saw it in their eyes. The calculating emptiness. The way they watched your every move and mirrored it perfectly. Like they were trying to figure out who you wanted them to be. It worked, mostly. But not on you. Because that used to be your game.

Scar was the worst. Not because he was cruel (he was), not because he was violent (he was), but because he understood. Too well.

You’d find him staring at you sometimes. Just… staring. Not in that cute anime boy way. More like he was peeling back your skin with his gaze and cataloging every festering wound underneath.

“You’re very efficient at hiding,” he said once. “Most people bleed more when they’re broken. You don’t even flinch.”

You laughed it off. Said something dumb. Something flippant. Scar smiled that thin smile that meant he wasn’t fooled. He never was.

Childe was easier. Still dangerous, sure, but he played his role with more flair. More jokes. More distractions. You could ignore the hollowness behind his eyes because he gave you something to work with. Scar didn’t even bother lying convincingly.

Dust, of course, had a field day.

“You’re basically a sociopath with a guilt complex,” he said, eating your cereal like it was his house. “No wonder you’re collecting emotional disasters. It’s like looking into a warped mirror.”

You told him to choke. He shrugged.

You kept treating Childe and Scar the same as the others. Fair. Consistent. Like you didn’t notice their masks. Like it didn’t hurt.

Because it did. Not the pretending. Not the betrayal. But the reminder. The reflection.

You didn’t like who you saw in them.

Scar especially.

He reminded you of the part you buried so deep even the system didn’t flag it. The part that liked control too much. That felt more alive during violence. That craved the sharp edges of life because softness had always been a lie.

He never said it out loud. But he knew.

And every time he smiled at you, it was like he was saying: I see you.

The worst part?

You didn’t hate it.

You hated yourself for not hating it.

One night, Scar leaned against your bedroom door while you tried to sleep. You opened one eye. He was silhouetted in the dim light, expression unreadable.

“Do you think you’re a good person?” he asked.

“Go to hell,” you replied.

“Already there,” he said, and walked away.

Bond Level: 0.

You stopped checking after that.

But they stayed close.

Too close.

Maybe they knew you’d never kick them out. Because they were broken in all the same ways you were.

And misery? Misery loves company.

Especially when it’s pretty and smells like blood.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

He knows it’s only a matter of time before Aventurine shows up.

Affinity doesn’t lie. Neither does pattern recognition. Childe’s always been good at both. You already summoned two-thirds of them, the brothers. Scar first—of course. Always Scar. And now him. Aventurine is next. Inevitable. Just math.

Three variables. Three disasters. Same root Affinity. Destruction masked as charisma, violence in a tailored suit. Each of them wrapped in a different flavor of madness. Scar is chaos. Childe is volatility. Aventurine is corruption.

You summon them like you’re building a bomb one part at a time.

He should be angry. He usually is. Last Player didn’t even last a week. Controlling freak. Died choking on his own tongue after Childe smiled too wide for too long. Clean work.

But you?

You summoned Dust.

And that changed everything.

You summoned a soul-killer, a genocide engine, a nightmare in a pretty package. And you didn’t flinch. Didn’t hesitate. You even fed him. Let him sleep near you. Chatted like he wasn’t a living war crime.

That wasn’t bravery. That was something else.

Childe watches you and wonders what part of your own soul you carved off to be able to stand next to that thing.

Scar noticed too. Of course he did. He doesn’t say much, but the look in his eyes? Identical to Childe’s own. Recognition. Interest. Calculation. Scar is a scalpel. Childe is a shotgun. Both deadly. Both precise. And both looking at you like they can see your code.

You don’t smile like other Players. You don’t scream. You don’t beg. You command without arrogance. Observe without delusion. That’s rare. Dangerous. And exciting.

He likes watching you.

Not in the romantic sense. That would be too simple. No, Childe watches like a scientist observing a volatile experiment. You are a creature that should not exist. You have the highest recorded Affinity synchronization across contradictory archetypes.

Dust: chaotic-neutral genocide engine.

Granger: lawful-neutral sniper with abandonment issues.

Gusion: morally ambiguous assassin with narcissistic tendencies.

Scar: chaotic-evil incarnate with no conscience.

And then him.

Your control metrics are statistically impossible. There is no known behavioral pattern that explains why none of them have killed you. You should be dead. Burned. Shot. Dismembered. Left to rot in some simulation’s failed Player heap.

And yet here you are. Breathing. Commanding. Smirking sometimes. Feeding them all like they’re your tragic little pets.

Affinity theory says that when a Player summons a Character, they are not choosing. They are being chosen in reverse. Your neural resonance sends a ripple through the Summoning Algorithm. Only Characters with matching psychological frameworks can pass through. The stronger the repressed trait, the more aggressive the summon.

You summoned Scar first.

That says everything.

The system saw you and threw Scar at you like a dare.

Childe had laughed for ten full minutes when he pieced that together.

Scar was the part you buried. The rage. The god complex. The joy of burning everything down and feeling alive doing it. Dust was the shame. The failure to stop yourself. The memory of who you used to be before morality calcified into ritual.

Granger is your guilt. Gusion, your ambition. But Scar? Scar is your origin story. And Childe?

He isn’t sure yet.

He likes not knowing.

Uncertainty tastes better when blood is on the line.

He plays along, of course. Acts like he’s clingy. Acts like he cares. Touches your shoulder. Smiles too bright. Makes Scar roll his eyes. All part of the fun.

But he’s watching. Always.

Watching for when Aventurine shows up. Because once the three of them are together, it’s over. You won’t be able to fake anything anymore. Not the calm. Not the cool. Not the command.

Three mirrors. One girl.

He wonders how long until you crack.

Or if you already have.

Affinity bonding requires mutual vulnerability. That’s the rule. The core mechanic. Character bonds rise only when genuine connection is formed—or faked so well it becomes real. You’ve been trying. You let him cling. Let Scar stare. Let Gusion poke. Let Dust insult you to hell and back.

But your numbers don’t move.

Not with him. Not with Scar.

Because you know them. Too well.

You know what they are. And worse—you see yourself in them. And Affinity can’t form if both sides are lying to themselves.

Childe knows that. He read the damn logs. System’s smarter than it looks.

So he waits.

He waits for you to snap. To break open. He’s sure Scar is doing the same. Aventurine, when he gets here, will speed it all up. That bastard always does. Too much charm, not enough filter.

And when it happens?

Childe will be there.

Watching.

Helping.

Or tearing everything down with you.

He doesn’t care which.

After all, you summoned Dust.

That makes you his kind of monster.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

Second time.

That’s all it took.

Scar steps through the Summon like he never left. Like time means nothing. Like you didn’t kill him the first time.

Oh, but you didn’t. Not really. You deleted him. Rejected. Buried. Erased. Like data. Like sin. Like the black lamb who refused to bleat the way the others did.

You don’t recognize him. Or maybe you do.

That twitch in your eye when he smiles too wide says enough. That subtle shift in your posture, the tension in your grip when you pretend it’s the first time meeting. Scar doesn’t laugh. Not yet. He wants to see how far you’ll carry the performance.

He’s been summoned by thousands before. NPC, boss, anomaly, icon.

But this is only the second you.

And that makes it real.

Affinity doesn’t lie. It just waits. It pulls strings that look like accidents. It doesn’t force. It tempts. He knows how the system works. Scar is the system, in many ways. He studies its algorithms like a book of righteousness, recites its emergent patterns like truth.

Isolation, intellect, and the kind of creative repression that only breeds monsters. Of course you summoned him. Of course now of all times, after all the others. You summoned Dust like a dare, Childe like a mistake, and him like a slip-up your subconscious refused to sign off on.

He grins like a confession.

You flinch. Slight. Barely visible. But he sees it.

You haven’t changed. Not really. Still hiding. Still building walls. Still playing god with boys who want to tear you open just to see if your insides match your voice.

Scar doesn’t need you to speak. He reads souls like tarot. Like entrails. Like a roadmap to old sins.

He sees it all.

The guilt. The erased saves. The redacted logs. The “you” who tried once, failed once, sealed the file and renamed it “Closed.”

He knows.

You summoned him first.

Not now. Not in this run. But before.

And you remember.

Scar doesn’t bother with theatrics. Not now. He watches you like a scientist watches a failed experiment finally crawl out of its petri dish and say, “hello.”

You talk to him like it’s the first time. A sweet lie. A soft one.

“Name?”

He gives it to you.

“Purpose?”

He gives you that too.

You nod, tight-lipped. Clinical. Distant. Pretending. Childe watches, amused. Dust rolls his eyes. Gusion snorts. Granger adjusts his rifle like it’ll save him from this kind of horror.

Scar smiles wider.

Because he already knows.

You’re just like him.

He can taste it in your Affinity data. Your sync rate with him is off the charts. Impossible numbers. AI thinks it’s a bug. It isn’t. It’s a memory. A recursion loop. You’ve already bonded once before.

The first Scar. The deleted one.

You tried to bond. You failed. He scared you. Broke the script. You panicked. Uninstalled. Reinstalled. Said nothing. But Affinity remembers. That kind of sync leaves residue.

You can’t cleanse what you are.

And Scar is what you are.

You dressed it up with prettier Characters after. Safer ones. The snipers. The killers with hearts of gold. The ones who only tear flesh when ordered. But Scar? Scar did it without permission. And he made you watch.

He likes that about you.

Not because you’re brave. You’re not. You’re curious. Worse. More dangerous. You want to know what happens when things break. What happens when logic fails. What happens when Scar stops smiling and starts teaching again.

He remembers your questions. The old ones. The deep ones. The ones only monsters ask.

“What does suffering taste like?”

“If I erase a Character’s memories, do they still remember how to scream?”

“How far can you go before the game breaks first?”

God. He loved you then.

He thinks he might again.

He doesn’t tell Childe. That’s a game for later. Let the younger brother play his clingy game, act like he’s falling, like he’s confused. Scar knows the truth already.

You’re not confused. You’re afraid.

And Affinity feeds on that.

Because Affinity isn’t about trust. It’s about alignment. Resonance. A perfect chord of internal ruin. When two fractured things echo the same scream, that’s a bond.

You and Scar scream in the same pitch.

You don’t know how to kill him. You tried. It didn’t stick. You don’t want to try again. Not really. Because part of you wants this.

Wants him.

Wants to remember.

Scar tilts his head. Watches you set boundaries. Weak ones. Rules he won’t follow.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Sure.”

He touches you anyway. Barely. A brush of his sleeve against yours. Watches you go stiff. Remembering something you told yourself never happened.

He likes this game.

He always has.

There’s blood in your future. He sees it already. The unraveling. The confrontation. The night you break and say his name like a curse, like a prayer, like a relapse.

“Scar.”

He wonders what it’ll taste like the second time.

For now, he waits.

He always waits.

Because he already knows how this ends.

With you.

Remembering.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

You lean back against the crumbling wall of some derelict dungeon you cleared two hours ago. It’s warm with the afterglow of murder and loot drops. The glow of five psychopaths in various stages of affection, indifference, or deep spiritual thirst for your blood.

Your party. Your men. Your circus of trauma, knives, and extremely attractive war crimes.

It’s actually been… fun.

You shouldn’t say that out loud.

Granger cleans his rifle with a quiet intensity. Gusion is balancing daggers on his fingers while giving Dust a look like he wants to stab him. Dust glares at you like you spat in his coffee. Childe is laughing with blood on his hands again. Scar is watching you from the shadows with a smile that means he knows what your childhood nightmares were about.

You really shouldn’t say it out loud.

But still. It’s been more fun than usual.

Granger is your first. He’s always been there. You summoned him when your hands were still too small to hold the controller properly. He was quiet then too, but he never left. Never betrayed. Never faltered. You were a scared little thing and he was a sniper who could shoot the fear right out of the dark.

He loves you. That much is obvious. Not in a way he says, but in the way his gun is always between you and everything else. He watches the others like they’re rabid dogs you’re accidentally feeding. He lets them exist. That’s his mercy.

He won’t kill them.

Not yet.

He’s waiting. Until you’re strong enough to not need them. Until it’s just you and him again. The way it should be.

But for now, he watches.

And reloads.

Gusion is your second. The bastard. The brat. The intellectual gremlin who thinks sarcasm is a love language. And it kind of is, between you two.

He pokes fun at your inability to cook, your avoidance of emotional intimacy, your compulsive need to micromanage everyone’s loadout.

“Affectionately,” he says.

But he means it. He likes you more than any of his past Players. The ones who tried to use him like a tool, a number, a stat block. You actually let him exist. Be annoying. Be clever. Be him.

But if Granger would ever stop breathing down your neck for two seconds, maybe you’d both have more time.

He thinks about taking you somewhere alone. Quiet. Maybe a forgotten instance. Just to talk.

And probably make out. But mostly talk. Probably.

Dust. Ah. Dust.

Dust hates you.

Less than before. But still.

He doesn’t pretend. Doesn’t try. He exists in your party out of necessity, like a live grenade you duct-taped into your own backpack. He doesn’t care about your soft eyes or tragic backstory. He read your soul already. He saw the rot.

You think maybe he’s mellowed out. But then he says shit like:

“Hope you die in your sleep.”

And you remember: no, he’s still a hater. A murderous hater. The only reason you’re alive is because you amuse him. Barely.

He’s loyal like a cat sitting on your keyboard while you work. Annoying, hostile, and possibly going to eat your face if you die first.

Then there’s Childe.

Chaos with a jawline. He’s having the time of his life. He hasn’t been this stimulated in ages. There’s violence, intrigue, dysfunctional party dynamics. He loves it here.

He’s not in love with you. Not yet. But he’s watching. Observing. Curious. You summoned Dust? Scar? He clapped, actually clapped when Scar appeared. Like an actor finally seeing his co-star enter stage left.

He asks about you constantly.

“What was she like as a kid?”

“What’s her kill count now?”

“Has she always been this twitchy around intimacy?”

He pokes Granger just to see the man scowl. He messes with Gusion because it makes things tense. He gets on Dust’s nerves for sport.

He’s waiting for Aventurine to arrive so the full party can really begin.

And then there’s Scar.

Scar is…

Scar.

You avoid him like a plague in a charming outfit. Which, to be fair, he is. The fact you would rather hang out with Dust than Scar should say everything.

You feel watched. Every second. He doesn’t need to be near to touch. He does it with his presence.

He plays along. Says things with a wink. Charismatic. Friendly. Smiling too wide like he already knows what kind of nightmares you’ll have.

He’s biding his time.

Not if. When.

He sees the game as foreplay. The chase, the denial, the thinly veiled horror in your eyes every time you meet his gaze and remember something you swore you deleted.

He’ll take you. Eventually.

You’re just not ripe yet.

And he is so patient.

The fire crackles. Blood dries on your boots. Granger shifts beside you, ever the guard dog. Gusion hums to himself, flipping a dagger between his fingers. Dust stares into the void like it owes him money. Childe is telling a story about killing a guy using only a spoon. Scar is silent, smiling.

You’re the only healer in the group.

Emotionally. Literally. Psychologically. And all of them are so, so damaged.

You think about summoning a support unit. Maybe someone with a moral compass.

Just someone who doesn’t want to kill, kiss, or capture you.

Then you glance around again.

Granger meets your eyes and softens.

Gusion grins.

Dust looks away.

Childe winks.

Scar tilts his head, amused.

You sigh.

Yeah. You’ll summon Aventurine next.

Might as well complete the set.

───────── ♛ ─────────

♡ A/N #1 (May 26). ESPORTS AU. VIDEO GAMES. ALSO MEMORIES.

♡ A/N #2. Did I write gaming commentary in writing like… for once? weird. SO WEIRD.

♡ A/N #3. more to come. DUST SANNSSS. I can’t believe I made Daddy! Dust! Sans I’m laughing so hard rn whahahahah. romancing a skeleton ahahahahaha. Daddy! Nightmare and Horror whahahahaahh. might put Bill Cipher even ahahahahaah. i have my own plans anyway. murder as a love language ahahaha.

♡ A/N #4. and characters I genuinely enjoy writing for. more to come. randomly.

♡ A/N #5. though these 5 might be main cast….. maybe. Idk. maybe not. I work on several stories of various genres at once so random stuffs.

♡ A/N #6. don’t you love a reader who is a unique character on her own.

♡ A/N #7. yes, I had fun writing this.

♡ A/N #8. actual red flags everywhere

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

If you want to be added or removed from the tag list, just comment on the MASTERLIST of Forbidden Fruits (FF): Intimate Obsessions, Unhinged Desires. Thank you.

General TAG LIST of “Forbidden Fruits”: @uniquecutie-puffs , @belovedoftheanemoarchon , @mokingbrd78k , @mimitk , @xileonaaaa , @purple-obsidian , @waterfal-ling , @jjune-07 , @jsprien213 , @crimson-kisses , @songbirdgardensworld , @monamuskay , @tnsophiaayaonly , @starxvs , @iris-arcadia , @misscaller06 , @neuvilletteswife4ever , @takeyomikamakura , @alisteraille , @deanswifeyy

❤︎ Fang Dokja’s Books.

♡ For Reader-Inserts. I only write Male Yandere x Female (Fem.) Reader (heterosexual couple). No LGBTQ+:

♡ Book 1. A Heart Devoured (AHD): A Dark Yandere Anthology

♡ Book 2 [you are here]. Forbidden Fruits (FF): Intimate Obsessions, Unhinged Desires.

♡ Book 3. World Ablaze (WA) : For You, I’d Burn the World.

♡ Book 4. Whispers in the Dark (WITD): Subtle Devotion, Lingering Shadows.

♡ Book 5. Ink & Insight (I&I): From Dead Dove to Daydreams.

♡ Library MASTERPOST 1. The Librarian’s Ledger: A Map to The Library of Forbidden Texts.

♡ Notice #1. Not all stories are included in the masterpost due to Tumblr’s link limitations. However, most long-form stories can be found here. If you’re searching for a specific yandere or theme, this guide will help you navigate The Library of Forbidden Texts. Proceed with caution

♡ Book 6. The Red Ledger (TRL): Stained in Lust, Written in Blood.

♡ Notice #2. This masterlist is strictly for non-con smut and serves as an exercise in refining erotic horror writing. Comments that reduce my work to mere sexual gratification, thirst, or casual simping will not be tolerated. If your response is primarily thirst-driven, keep it to yourself—repeated violations may result in blocking. Read the RULES before engaging. The tag list is reserved for followers I trust to respect my boundaries; being included is a privilege, not a right. You may request to be added, but I will decide based on trust and adherence to my guidelines. I also reserve the right to remove anyone at any time if their engagement becomes inappropriate.

♡ Book 7. Corpus Delicti (CD): Donum Mortis.

♡ Book 8. Malum Consilium (MC): Primordial Hunger.