The soft glow of the monitor lit Nicholas’s face, but he wasn’t moving anymore. His fingers were frozen on the keyboard, trembling. The screen in front of him still showed it—Game Over. Hours. Days. Weeks of grinding, planning, building, all gone in a single moment. One wrong move. One stupid mistake.

He stared at the death screen like it was mocking him. He’d spent the last six months building this custom modpack, tweaking every line of code, shaping a story that was uniquely his. It wasn’t just a game. It was something he poured himself into—something that kept him grounded when the rest of life felt like it was slipping.

And now it was gone.

He tried to breathe through it. Tried to laugh it off like he always did. “Guess I just got Socks’d,” he muttered, voice cracking. But no one else was in the call. No Blaza to tease him. No TB to make a sarcastic comment. Just him.

His throat tightened. He reached up and covered his mouth with his palm, trying to silence the sudden sob that clawed up from his chest. It didn’t work.

The tears came fast, hot and raw. His other hand slammed the desk, then trembled as it fell limp. He wasn’t crying over code. He was crying because that world—the one he made, the one he controlled—was the only place he felt like he could breathe. And now even that was broken.

The helmet sat behind him, still and silent, like it didn’t recognize him anymore. Without the jokes, without the chaos, what was left? Just Nicholas. Hurt. Tired. Alone in the dark, crying into his hand as the pixels on the screen slowly faded to black.