After the second debrief, Eli could feel the tense atmosphere strangling him.

Joanne sat with her arms folded, eyes fixed on the orb. He sat across from her, hands clasped between his knees, waiting for Irene to speak.

The orb pulsed.

"Why should I sit in my own hall and wait for someone to put a blade through my window? Elise, I despise being passive. The Red Moon attacks my fiefdom, and I do absolutely nothing? Impossible."

Eli could feel the visceral anger behind her placid voice, and he sympathized with her completely.

Despite the plan being almost airtight, Irene refused to simply accept it as is. It was just her nature to be relentless.

"This is my mother’s legacy we are talking about. I will not let these accursed cultists desecrate what my mother spent her entire life building. The academies, the people of Sienne — they are all under my protection. Mine, Elise. And you ask me to sit back while I let my people fight for me?"

Eli held still, just as her voice held steady.

"If my mother were alive, she would ride out herself."

His hands trembled. His eyes couldn’t look at the orb.

’I can’t let you do that...’

"And wouldn’t it be better if I left with Julius and our troops? I would be under his protection while joining you all at the academies to fight."

’No... that can’t happen.’

"I want to fight, Elise."

Eli’s mind raced with a single, overwhelming fear.

’No... I don’t want you to!’

His knuckles turned white as he clenched his fist.

It was the one thing he could not allow to happen.

If Irene so much as stepped beyond the estate gates, the story would veer off its rails and everything would unravel. And if that happened, he would lose his ultimate power, reduced to dead weight against the fate already written for the heroines.

He absolutely abhorred being useless again.

The thought of it alone made his stomach knot, made his head spin, made his vision narrow until there was nothing but the image of Irene dying on the battlefield he had not accounted for.

Eli was terrified.

How much more did he have to witness the deaths of heroines?

When one decision of his could determine the fate of a heroine, how could he not torment himself?

He was only as good as the knowledge he carried. Without it, he was nothing but a frightened boy grasping at shadows.

Because in the end, Eli was just a teenager who happened to fall in love with the game. He had spent every long night in the hospital reading line after line until the screen blurred. His chest would hurt, and it had nothing to do with his illness.

And Irene... she was the character he related to the most. She lost everything at the hands of the Duchess — her mother, her best friend, her home, her people, her future. Yet, she kept walking forward with unbending grace that made Eli’s throat close up every time.

She reminded him of himself in a way that hurt to think about, because Irene lost everything and still chose to fight, while Eli could only lie there and watch the ceiling, waiting for the nurse’s next visit.

Yes, there was a time he did not have any life in him. He did not have a purpose, because what could a purpose even do for someone in a hospital bed, anyway? He would just watch the other kids playing outside, their face bright with smiles, wishing he could join them and smile his hearts out as well.

His life was a limbo, stuck between a cycle of day and night, eyes opening and closing.

And then, against all odds and reason, Irene entered his life, and everything began to shift.

He ate. He slept. He woke with enough strength to move through the day like a real person again — because she kept fighting.

He left the confines of the hospital bed. He ran until his lungs burned. He talked to strangers and somehow made his first friends — because she kept walking forward with that unbending grace.

For the first time, happiness didn’t feel like a luxury, like some bright toy sealed behind glass.

Irene had given him a purpose, and he clung to it until it became the person he was now.

But he couldn’t explain how Irene had such an impact on his life. There were plenty of characters in other games who had to go through the same circumstances, maybe even worse than hers.

Yet, he cried more for her than anyone else. He yearned more for her happiness than anyone else.

And Eli loved her for that, for bringing some color into his bleak life. He loved her so much that when the game finally killed her, he had to put the phone down and press his face into the pillow, because the tears came too fast to hide.

In that moment, he thought to himself, I wish I could be there. He reasoned to himself, I could have done something to save her.

Yes, Eli was that delusional, convinced that he could be her savior.

So delusional that... the heavens granted him his ultimate wish and put him in the one character who sacrificed herself for Irene’s survival.

Such irony.

The greatest irony in the world, served on a platter he had kindly wished for.

And that was precisely why the story had to stay on course, because it was all he had. It was the reason he could sit in this room and speak with conviction, because it was all he knew. It was the reason Joanne had listened to him, the reason Juli trusted his instincts, because it was all he could do for the people he loved and came to love.

If the path broke, if anything went off course, if Irene rode out, then the boy who had wished so desperately to be here would have nothing left to offer the woman who had saved his life without ever knowing he existed.

And Eli would sooner tear himself apart than let that happen.