“Rise, Watcher.”

(…?)

“A duty, you must fulfill. A fate, you must accept. Whispers of taint, you must silence.”

(A voice? These words, I’ve heard this before…)

“This empty husk you shall reside. Live, bleed, die and live again. One crumbles into ash, another replaces.”

(It’s from a game. One I know really well about. The next few lines surely are… )

“You shall never rest as long as it still whispers, you shall never dream as long as it still wakes. Lone Watcher, abandon all hope until its words sing no longer.”

“For eternal rest shall be your only salvation.”

(Gasp!)

The voice resonated in my head, so loud it woke me up. My eyes are open, but somehow its still dark. Seconds passed, my eyes are starting to adjust to the darkness. It got a little bit brighter, enough for me to see a sight of a ceiling I don’t recognize at first.

(My body feels so heavy… I thought I was laying on my bed. Why is my back aching?)

I felt my surrondings with my hands. They feel a lot heavier than they used to. What’s going on? Why is my bed so firm yet it doesn’t feel like a bed? It feels like I’m pushing on… a body.

Sluggishly, I push myself up to see my surroundings. Everything feels cold. Unfocused, I looked down to see what I was pushing on.

(Hii!)

I snapped into focus upon sight of whatever’s underneath me. Bodies. One on top of each other. Another one over another, forming piles of bodies all around me. They all looked the same. I hurriedly looked around me, the darkness finally becoming dimly lit as my eyes completely adjusted. However, as more things my sights took in, more chills ran down my spine.

(This is… the ruins… the hall under the Watchtower. I-It’s not real, right?)

I try to make any form of voice, yet nothing vibrates from my throat. I try to say something, yet all I hear is the echoes of the wind seeping into the hall along with my shaky breaths through my nose. A longer view of my surroundings had me realize I was inside a place from a game. Panic starts to set in me as I feel goosebumps rising on my skin.

(I was just in my room… I just went to bed after my livestream’s over… How did I end up here!?)

Everything inside the hall is dark, degraded. It looked like an abandoned town hall, cracks formed along the walls and ceilings, moss grown along corners, edges and within those cracks. Past the piles of lifeless bodies are what look like statues arranged on platforms on stone flooring, in front of a flight of stairs, where its highest elevation lies a throne.

(I should move towards there… Don’t want to be with all these bodies…)

I crawled and climbed slowly over those piles, holding back any intention to throw up and looking away from them as much as I can. Reaching the end, I finally am able to stand on a pathway between the statues. Looking down at myself properly, I found myself dressed in clothes – not my own pajamas, but recognizable garments from the game ‘Tainted Whispers’. It was an overall coat that felt like leather, leather gloves that feel like cotton on the inside, a vest, shirt, trousers and leather boots. My face was covered by a scarf down to the base of my neck. I try to remove it by pulling it up or down but it’s stuck to me in some unknown way.

(These are all the starter equipments the Watcher wears. Does this mean I’m currently it… the Watcher?)

Trying to compose myself, I walked along the path and scanned my surroundings. I recognize that I am currently within the hall of the Watchtower, the place where I see the Watcher rise at the beginning of the game. Recollecting my thoughts, I realized that the entire scenario from the voices playing in my head, to waking up amongst an unsettling pile of lifeless bodies, to walking along a path amongst the statues leading up to a stone throne - they’re all part of the game’s starting scenes before you actually play the game as the Watcher.

(This feels so surreal. The whole place smells like an old castle. There’s so many bodies, yet they don’t really smell like anything. It feels cold, my body feels cold yet I don’t feel like I’m freezing. I’m wearing all these clothes yet I don’t feel warm at all. I know this place like the back of my hand – even played it in VR. Even with all my knowledge about this game after replaying it hundreds of times, to feel all of this… it’s still really unsettling.)

I walk up the stairs leading to the throne, and sure enough, what I found engraved on its back were the exact sentences at the very start of the game before the Watcher exits the hall. The words look like glyphs at first and when my eyes were focused onto them, they glowed and rewrote themselves to become legible and comprehensible.

“O’ Watcher, here lies your beginning and your end. Should you remain idle and turn to stagnation, its whispers shall taint your mind and your body. Should you succumb to it, another shall take your place. You will only live to see, hear and feel torture as seconds pass, never to die and live as if you have never lived.”

My body was already uncomfortable from the constant lack of warmth, now filled with shivers from what might happen if I were to not act as the Watcher just like the game. From the lore of the game, those "stagnant" Watchers that were tainted by the whispers will slowly be driven to insanity as they keep hearing voices in their head endlessly while not being able to scream or voice out any feelings of despair. The tainted Watchers also can never die and can never find their way back to the Watchtower until they are found by an untainted Watcher, forced to duel with it, and can only die after being slain repeatedly – allowing them to feel the pain of being killed numerous times before they truly die.

(I guess I have to kill the “last” boss if I really want myself out of this game, otherwise…)

I gulped inaudibly and reached for the sword sheathed in its scabbard resting on the throne – like a beginner’s weapon at the start of every game. The weight of a real weapon in my hands is unfamiliar to me. The sword, though I knew it was a typical steel sword that is chipped on some parts of its edge, felt weighty in my hands unlike a typical controller. My hands were still shaky from fear of what to come after exiting the Watchtower.

(At least I’m starting off at the Town of Beginning’s area right? Shouldn’t be too hard grinding a few levels there and getting used to fighting.)

Those words in my mind consoled myself as I step towards the exit door of the Watchtower. However, looking through the gaps of the wooden door upon reaching it filled me with unrest. Dark pink mist seeping through the door, faint shrieks and howls heard on the other side of them. The feeling of dread quickly crept onto me as I can feel my already cold face turning pale and my jaws going slack.

(Wait… no, no, no, no, n-no. Don’t tell me…!)

I slowly pushed the large door ajar. The sight before me as I peeked through the gap put me in a state of distress. The skies are painted red like blood. The trees are dead yet alive – their roots, barks and branches moving eerily. The howls and screams become increasingly audible. The paths littered with gore of the dead.

(Forest of Grief…)

My mind echoed these words, my body shuddering and my voice inaudible.

This is the beginning of one of the deadliest area of the game – its only exit lies at the end of this forest.