Chapter Text
The world was dying beneath the little knight's feet - and for some reason, it was calming. Black spikes grew from the dark layers of earth, the cavern ceiling wept with caustic dew, and every swing of the tiny sword echoed in his headphones with a dull, lonely clang, like the beat of his own heart. Phainon sat slumped in an old, sagging armchair, its armrests long gone, his entire existence narrowed to the glowing rectangle of the screen. In there, things were fair: if you failed, it meant you didn't push hard enough; if you survived, it meant you deserved it.
"Come on, little guy, come on… to the left, dash, strike!" he whispered, his voice, caught by the cheap microphone, coming out as coarse as sandpaper. "Got it! Just a little more…!"
In the corner of the screen, the chat crawled lazily - three lines, three equally familiar silhouettes.
AglaeaOfficial: My persevering sunshine, you're going to wear a hole in that boss. How many attempts is that now?
OldMan_Hron: A true talent cannot be drowned in a bottle.
BookWorm_Lina: <3 <3 <3
A smile touched Phainon's lips involuntarily. This trio was his invisible support, his small but cozy kingdom where the sun was always the size of a smartphone screen. Aglaea was the one he'd known since their playground days; she could swear in three languages but always chose gentle diminutives for him, as if afraid to scratch him. Hron, by his messages, was a tired but kind troll who had stumbled onto the stream by chance one day and never left; sometimes his jokes were crude, but at the right moment, he would grow quiet, like a streetlamp in the rain. Lina was a silent university student whose hearts all looked the same, but for some reason, he saw a different glint in each one: one was pale, after a sleepless night; another was mischievous, between classes; a third was soothing, like mint tea.
"Probably the hundredth," he admitted with a touch of irony, making his knight dive under the boss's crushing blow. "But I can feel it. This is the one. The victory run!"
The laptop under his hands hummed like a jet on takeoff. The plastic lid was warm, almost hot, and the faint flicker of the screen betrayed the exhaustion of the graphics card. The cooling system had been begging for mercy for a month, and Phainon had learned to live with its rhythm, staying just ahead of the lag, like a sailor keeping his balance on a listing ship. The worn-out WASD keys sprang back under his fingers. The plastic on one of the keycaps had cracked long ago, and a tiny splinter would sometimes remind him of its presence with a sharp prick of pain - a small price to pay for habit.
"He's about to go into a rage," Phainon commented, though he knew he was speaking more for himself than for the three on the other end of the line. "Just have to survive it, just get through this phase..."
Onto the desk - onto the very edge of the fraying mousepad - a ginger furball with a comma-tail leaped gracefully. Ember, the main source of chaos and love within a thirty-square-meter radius, flashed on camera for a second - ears, back - and purposefully marched toward the keyboard. He sniffed the microphone as if checking for a mouse inside, and, having made a decision, placed a paw directly on the spacebar.
The knight on the screen stumbled. The boss - as if waiting for that very moment - unleashed a whirlwind attack, and the knight’s mask cracked, shattering into white fragments. The sound of defeat rolled through his headphones like a distant thunderclap, followed by a short, sympathetic flicker in the chat.
AglaeaOfficial: Ember, and I thought I loved you! That was the one!
OldMan_Hron: The ginger tyrant strikes again :D
BookWorm_Lina: <3
"Sorry, chat," Phainon laughed, lifting the cat off the keyboard. Ember allowed it - condescendingly, like a king permitting his cloak to be removed - then immediately settled on his lap, muffling the entire world with a steady purr. "Tactical sabotage from my furry assistant."
He tried again. And again. Somewhere between the eleventh and twelfth attempt, he caught his own rhythm - that special one where even the lag plays on your side, and your fingers anticipate the boss's attacks from the faintest shadow of movement. Somewhere nearby, the night-time apartment breathed - muffled, pressing its back against the darkness. The neighbors upstairs shuffled around in their socks as if dancing without music. On the long-turned-off stove, pieces of 'celebratory' pizza, bought on sale, were growing cold. In the dim light, the silhouette of an old poster of the same knight, but in the pixelated version from the very first game in the series, glinted - the tape holding it up had yellowed at the edges, like paper in an old textbook.
But still, it wasn't meant to be. Maybe because of a random tremor in his fingers; maybe because Ember chose that exact moment to lick his nose. Phainon exhaled and laughed, retreating as if from an honorable duel. In the chat - three lines, simultaneously warm and gentle.
AglaeaOfficial: Taking a break is also a strategy. I'm getting up to make some tea!
BookWorm_Lina: <3
OldMan_Hron: No chance against the ginger boss, lol.
"That's it," Phainon said aloud, to himself and to them. "Enough for today."
He said goodbye to them as if he were closing a door - quietly, on a soft spring. The camera clicked off, the screen went dark, and the room grew heavy with silence. Taking off his headphones, he suddenly heard just how loud the laptop was humming - like someone's stubborn heart, working overtime. Ember flowed onto the desk, sniffed a mug of long-cold tea, and, with a huff, returned to his lap.
In the dark, all objects became more honest. The bed looked small, like a boat forgotten at the shore. The wardrobe was honest because there was no room to hide skeletons inside. A lone nail gleamed on the wall, from which a mirror had once departed into other hands - for an exchange, for bread, for a bus pass, it no longer mattered. The dim window looked out onto a courtyard where a streetlamp shone not down, but sideways, splitting the asphalt in two: one half in light, the other in the whisper of darkness.
His phone buzzed. A small, even, polite sound - like someone tapping a fingernail on glass. 'A reminder that your payment is due by the 25th'. He already knew the contents but opened it anyway; it was a kind of ritual - to look his little dragons in the eye, even without a sword. The account was nearly empty. His last freelance gig was only half-paid, with the rest promised "soon"; "soon" was blurring like the horizon. There were no new orders in sight - not tonight. Not in this city. Or maybe there were, just not for him.
A light melancholy, familiar as an old scar, stirred somewhere in his chest. He loved streaming. He adored gaming, adored sharing that passion with others. But that passion didn't pay the bills. Sometimes it felt like he was running in place, legs churning desperately but remaining in the exact same spot. Invisible, unheard, one of thousands of dreamers just like him, whose voices were lost in the general noise.
Phainon ran a hand over his face, counted to five, and stood up. The plastic tablecloth on the kitchen counter rustled. He took a bite of the cold pizza; the cheese no longer stretched, the tomato was cool, but the salt and oregano still knew how to make life a little warmer. Ember politely asked, and he gave him a crumb of ham - their little pact.
Returning to his desk, he didn't turn off the laptop right away. He stared for a long time at the screen, almost as black as a pond at night, where the dead rectangle of the finished broadcast remained frozen. His reflection in it was slightly blurred, as if painted with a wet brush. Maybe Aglaea is right, he thought. Maybe it really is time to look for a normal job. Normal - meaning one that would stop the bank from having a reason to write. One with a schedule, insurance, 'discipline' in the headline. And at the same time - one without that ticklish place under his ribs where, it seemed, all the words for 'I want' lived.
He randomly opened a job search site: "Manager of...," "Operator...," "Courier..." Each line was as straight as a ruler, and not a single one was about a little knight, about three hearts in a chat, about how the two words "left, strike" could connect people who would never meet in an elevator. He closed the tab without feeling guilty; sometimes, allowing yourself not to choose is the only way to make it to morning.
On the side - on the platform's panel, like a royal invitation - hung the thumbnail of someone else's stream. A golden background, a title where all the words were perfectly in place, and a face - recognizable to any regular: Mydei. The king of this ball, Phainon thought with a smile devoid of envy. He had dropped in for a minute before - to catch the timbre of his voice, to figure out the scene settings, to understand what it was like when there were thousands in the chat, and you still addressed each one. Tonight, he turned it on for a second. The foreign image flashed brightly: even lighting, perfect sound, a chat scrolling like a meteor shower. He caught the intonation - not spoiled, but even, calm, familiar to those who know how to hold a sword with two fingers. Phainon's fingers rested on a key of their own accord and - turned it off. Not because it hurt. But simply because sometimes, it's just not the right time.
He closed the laptop lid and stroked it with his palm as if calming a horse before a new journey. Ember crawled closer and nudged his nose against his wrist, leaving a tiny wet mark.
"Well, ginger boy?" Phainon asked quietly, almost in a whisper, so as not to startle the night. "We're not giving up, are we?"
The cat answered as only he could - he rolled his eyes, rubbed his forehead against his hand, and sighed like a world-weary adult. Somewhere below, the building's entrance door slammed shut; the foreign smell of tobacco drifted up, mixing with oregano and cold plastic. In the courtyard, someone whistled, keys jingled - everyone had their own path to their own midnight home.
Waves of memories washed over him - small and poignant. Aglaea as a first-grader with a scraped knee, who didn't let anyone laugh at his enormous backpack; in college, the one who taught him how to pretend to be asleep when he couldn't sleep. Hron, who appeared unexpectedly in his DMs early one morning as he was walking to the bus, chewing on yesterday's bread, and wrote: "why are you so stubborn?" - and then he stayed. Later, he sent his first donation - just enough to pay for internet for a month, with the note, "you'll pay me back with fame." Lina - he knew nothing about her except that she sometimes changed the color of her hearts, and for some reason, that was enough to feel less alone.
He sometimes imagined them - not their faces, but their gestures. Aglaea with a mug of tea, in thick socks, with a tired "I'll handle it" expression. Hron with a slow laugh, with hands that always seemed a little heavy. Lina with short nails and a filled notebook, with little paper bookmarks between the pages. It seemed foolish - projecting his own hopes onto three nicknames - but his foolishness was the best of what he had.
Cinderella, he chuckled to himself. Funny and accurate. At midnight, his stream turns into a pumpkin, his armchair into a walking stool, mice into letters from the bank, and he himself into a guy in old sneakers with several lives in his backpack and not a single one that was completely real. And still - he loved this moment after. When the world still echoed with the rhythm of battle, and silence was just stepping onto the stage, testing the acoustics. In moments like these, it felt like anything was possible - just not right away.
"Tomorrow," he murmured, and the word sounded like a password.
And he smiled - the way you smile when you still believe in fairytales. Even if you don't have a glass slipper - you have old sneakers, ready to endure another dance on the stone tiles. Even if the ball starts without you - you're already learning the music by heart. Even if the chat is only three lines - they sometimes make the night brighter than a thousand torches.
In the darkness, Ember purred, the sky rumbled back in response, and somewhere inside him - where a fragile but real hope was hiding - it became quiet and warm, like in a room where the lights have long been turned off, but someone forgot to close the kitchen door, and the scent of cinnamon wafts in. Tomorrow, he would turn on the stream again. And he would say to his three viewers:
"Thanks for coming."
And someday - maybe not right away - he would look up and see that the screen no longer fits in the room. That the music has finally invited him to the ball. That a ginger cat would still be on his lap, and in the chat - the practical Aglaea, the ironic Hron, and the constant Lina. And that somewhere, on a neighboring channel - or maybe on his own - a voice with an even intonation would smile back.
"Alright, little guy," he said quietly to the little knight somewhere inside him. "To the left, dash, and strike."
In another part of the city, the silence was different. Not soft, like a blanket over the shoulders, but ringing, like glass in the frost. It arrived instantly - with a single click on "End Stream" - and severed him from the world with surgical precision. The roar of the chat, the explosions, the whistle of bullets, and the music that had just held hundreds of thousands of people in its grip were all cut off in mid-air, leaving behind a vacuum where you could hear a single crumb roll across the tabletop.
Mydei remained in the center of his own stage - motionless, like a piece on a chessboard after the final 'checkmate'. His chair cost more than many apartments; it adjusted to his spine, memorized his posture, responded with gentle resistance - and still couldn't bring back the feeling of being alive. The studio was a perfect machine: three monitors with colors that never lied; a system unit - an aquarium with transparent walls where a luminous liquid ran through tubes like blood through arteries; a microphone on a boom arm - black as a wing, from the tip of which his words were born and died; the walls - covered in panels that absorbed any extraneous sound and, along with it, any stray emotion. Everything here was calibrated. Efficient. Cold.
He took the headphones off his head: a familiar, almost ritualistic gesture. His head felt lighter, but the world did not. The reflection on the darkened center screen showed a face: sharp cheekbones, tight-lipped, a calmness that was too easily mistaken for emptiness. Sometimes he felt he was looking at a stranger who had been mistakenly placed in his chair. Where was the kid who used to enthusiastically explore every corner of a new game? Where was the laughter that would burst from his chest at some ridiculous bug? They hadn't died suddenly - they had quietly evaporated over the years. What remained was the brand: CRIMSON CASTRUM - a perfectly polished emblem above the fortress gates.
On the second monitor, the stream control panel was fading: dry graphs, columns, numbers. Peak viewership - three hundred and forty thousand. So many new subscribers the eye stumbled. The sum of donations in three hours - an amount that would have made his teenage self cry with happiness. Now - they were just numbers. Marks on a ruler.
He ran his fingers over his temples, where a tight but honest fatigue resided, and leaned back in his chair. This apathy had settled into his life as neatly as the cables in the PC's lighting: almost invisible from the outside, but without it, nothing worked. He was at the summit - and it turned out to be surprisingly quiet there. The noise was down below, in the valley. On the mountain - no wind, no birds, no challenges. Opponents were a set of pixels. Victories were checkmarks. Defeats were data for analysis. A spark - a word from advertising scripts.
His phone vibrated. A name his heart had grown used to: Hephaestion. The only one allowed to call right after a stream - in that fragile moment when the silence hadn't yet solidified, and he himself hadn't quite turned to stone.
"Yeah," Mydei said, putting the call on speaker.
"Perfect," Hephaestion remarked lazily, as if complimenting a stranger's tie. "Flawless. The only thing more boring is an operating room with no witnesses. And even that's debatable."
The corner of Mydei's mouth twitched into a smile no one saw. Hephaestion had a knack for it. Seeing. Prodding. Disarming him with a single line.
"Tell me honestly," his friend continued. "Did you smile even once in those three hours? Or maybe swear? Anything to show that there's still a human inside that machine?"
"It's my job," he replied evenly, as a machine that doesn't overheat should. "Emotions interfere with efficiency. My audience comes for skill, not for clowning around."
"Your audience comes to see a legend. And legends, you know," Hephaestion countered, "can be alive too. Remember the old strategy games? You, me, three in the morning in the kitchen. When your spearmen died, you'd yell so loud the neighbors' dishes rattled. That was the sound of life, brother. And now..." he paused for a second, as if searching for the right word, "you just exist."
Mydei ran his palm over the perfectly smooth surface of the desk. Hephaestion, as always, hit the mark not because he wanted to hurt, but because he spoke a truth for which Mydei himself could find no words. To admit it would be to admit that he had built this entire ice palace around an empty courtyard.
"Did you call to pontificate?" he tried to shift the conversation to a flatter plane, where everything was jokes and schedules.
"I called to remind you: the 'Dawn of Okhema' is on Friday," Hephaestion answered calmly. "No one canceled your commentator contract."
For a moment, Mydei felt something inside him cringe. The tournament. Three days in an arena, under the spotlights, with a microphone into which he had to smile with his voice. Three days of watching second-tier teams and ambitious amateurs try to play his game - with the kind of naive excitement he had stolen from himself long ago.
"I remember," he said.
"Try not to look like you're at your own funeral," Hephaestion groaned softly. "You might see something worthwhile. Some new talent. A spark."
The word struck the glass of silence, leaving a crack: a spark. He heard it all the time - in motivational videos, in press releases, in wishes to 'keep the fire burning'. But now, it smelled of his childhood kitchen, where Hephaestion would add cinnamon to his tea and call it "buffing his stats", and he would laugh because he believed you could buff anything if you knew where to click.
"Unlikely," Mydei clipped, more out of habit than anything else. "Talent isn't grown these days. It's manufactured."
"Talent, no," Hephaestion agreed. "But life grows. Sometimes - in the most barren fields. Anyway. I'll send you the bracket tomorrow. And - please," a faint smile entered his voice, "leave some room in your suitcase for a face. Your human one. Just in case."
"Very funny."
"I know," Hephaestion replied, and it sounded like he finally smiled into the phone. "Goodnight, stone head."
The call ended. Silence reclaimed the room, but it was no longer completely sterile; a faint scent of voices lingered in it - like the smell of smoke on clothes after a bonfire. Mydei sat for a while longer, staring at his reflection in the black glass. 'A statue,' Hephaestion had once said. He could place it in the middle of a square, and people would take pictures with it. He could light it from below to emphasize its strength. But how do you make stone warm and alive again?
He opened one of the lower drawers of his desk. There, among neat boxes and compartments, lay the small trinkets of his past: an old gamepad with shiny sticks, a cheap headset with electrical tape on the band, a note pinned to a piece of cardboard: "Don't forget to laugh, or we'll come and make you - H." He found the note both funny and irritating at the same time; he put it back in its place, like returning a book to a shelf that you know too well.
"Dawn of Okhema". He briefly googled the schedule - a reflex; he already knew it all. In his calendar, Friday was colored 'mandatory', a word he disliked, but it paid the bills. He would sit in the commentator's booth, count the pauses, maintain the tempo, analyze others' mistakes, highlight others' successes. And - maybe, if he allowed himself to look a little deeper than he was supposed to - he might see in some nickname not a collection of letters, but a hand that was still trembling with nerves. The thought seemed pretentious and a little ridiculous, like a postcard with a motivational quote - but he didn't push it away.
He returned to his desk and mechanically opened the recommended feed on the platform. The algorithm, like a reliable butler, served up what was 'to the master's taste': big streams, famous names, "titan duels", and "exclusive collabs". Alongside, almost unnoticed, was a column for "New and Small". Tiny windows with numbers: "3 viewers", "5 viewers", "12". Titles without clever hashtags, light from desk lamps, uneven sound. He had been scrolling past this column for months without stopping. Today, his finger paused - just for a second, like a glance at a window where the curtains aren't fully closed, and a sliver of light cuts through the darkness. He didn't click. He just acknowledged the fact: the muscle of curiosity was still there. Weak, atrophied - but alive.
On the wall hung a frame with the CRIMSON CASTRUM emblem, signed by his own hand in black ink. Next to it, a few more with magazine covers. And lower down, almost at the floor, in the shadows, stood a small, glassless frame - in it was a clumsy drawing, sent by mail once: a castle drawn with markers, with a little person in headphones flying above it, holding a sword that looked like a microphone. A small flag fluttered from the tower: "Don't forget that you are not only a fortress but also a light in the window." The glassless frame kept the drawing alive - you could touch it. Sometimes, he would lean down and actually touch the paper, stroking the rough texture of the marker, surprised at how warm letters could be.
He caught his reflection in the black screen again - and for the first time that evening, it had softened slightly. "Alive," Hephaestion had said. He made no promises. He simply reached for the dimmer and turned the dial: the light grew softer. In the dimness, the studio no longer looked like an operating room - it became the room of a man who loves his work so much that he sometimes forgets how not to love it.
His phone lit up - a photo from Hephaestion: the two of them, much younger, in the kitchen, cheap gamepads in their hands, a teapot on the table, a calendar on the wall with a star on a Friday. "A reminder that Fridays can be different," his friend had added.
"Stubborn," Mydei said into the emptiness, meaning both his friend and, probably, himself.
On Friday, he repeated in his mind. This time, he tried to think of it not as a sentence, but as a chance. He still didn't know how to thaw the stone. But he still had his hands. And old habits - of watching a little more closely than necessary. Friday could be different: not just a 'mandatory' day, but a day when the sound in his headphones might suddenly be warmer than it was supposed to be, and in the word 'commentator', the root 'mentor' might appear - the one that isn't about power, but about the gatehouse where lanterns are left for those coming out of the dark.
Before going to bed, he turned everything off completely: the monitors to black, the system unit to silence, the lighting to darkness. The room, deprived of light, for the first time that evening felt not cold, but simply tired. Like a person who has done too much and honestly wants to close their eyes.
And, as he turned off the light in the hallway, he caught himself on the thought that the word "spark", left behind by Hephaestion in the room, was still glowing - not brightly, but enough not to stumble in the dark.
The scariest part wasn't that he couldn't feel warmth. It was scarier to admit that one day, he had decided to live without it. And tonight, unexpectedly, he promised himself and the world nothing. He simply fell asleep with the thought that warmth, like Fridays, sometimes needs a little help - to have a chair moved closer to it, a window left ajar, a mug placed within reach.
And tomorrow - tomorrow he could afford one luxury: to look at more than just numbers and pixels. And, maybe, not right away, not loudly - to feel the stone under his skin take its first, barely perceptible step toward warmth.