That man’s anguish howled after us as I was carried from the room where her body lay. I was silent, unable to cry, haunted by the image of her pale, lifeless face.

  We moved down a long hallway lined by flickering candles, unable to hold back the thick, heavy malaise spreading before us. It seeped into the corridors where hushed whispers rose at the sight of me. Servants looked away with darkened faces. Some clutched one another for comfort. Sobs leaked from side exits.

  My mother was loved.

  The old woman carrying me pushed open a solid wood door, and entered a large, empty room.

  She wiped at the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. "Such a shame, child. Priscilla had spent so much time decorating this room for you."

  A sniffle. She dabbed her nose with her sleeve as her eyes roamed over my face. “Tsch. Those ill-omened eyes. Already so much trouble.”

  I stared back at her.

  Who is this woman?

  She was too well dressed to be a servant. Other than the wrinkles around her eyes, her face was smooth and pale, untouched by the sun. And the fingers touching my cheek were too soft to have known any kind of labor.

  “Alright, you must be hungry after all that crying,” she muttered as if in answer to my question.

  She then unbuttoned her top, and brought me up to her exposed breast.

  So she’s my wet nurse.

  A noblewoman for a wet nurse, and a room this large for just a newborn... my new family must be awfully important.

  After I was fed, she set me down in the crib, completely cocooned in a blanket. I laid there, unable to move as she fled from me, her footsteps fading into the distance.

  I contemplated the day’s events and came up lost.

  What happened? Am I really in the world of that dating sim?

  Ally had called it… Hearts of Flames?

  Am I really a demon sword now? I had looked out of its eye…

  That room… Those beings were certainly up to no good, and I was part of their plans…

  My poor mother…

  I stared up into the hollow emptiness above. Silence. No voices. Not even distant. I was all alone.

  For some reason, I was reminded of the first time I awoke as Joan. Maman was shaking me awake, her voice rumbling as she called me her petite marmotte—her little groundhog. I remembered being shell-shocked by the shift between worlds, and her homely voice holding on to me.

  I remembered the way my new father looked at me in that final moment, the raw anger and hate in his eyes.

  He was no Papa.

  Not a great start to my life in this world. Will I have to endure this on loop as well?

  The thought made me want to laugh, but when I opened my mouth I gurgled.

  Back in the other world, I had played the game so many times that I knew what would happen by instinct. Here, I had no idea.

  All I knew was that now:

  I’m Josephine.

  Glowing text flickered into existence, hovering in the air above just like the ‘siphoning’ label had. This never happened in the other world. Back there, my abilities were ingrained, a thought was all it took to activate them. There was no user interface.

  To see something so clearly digital after all this time stirred something within me that had been locked away for what felt like centuries.

  It was… nostalgic.

  The text scrolling by read a little strange.

  What does merging player and non-player entities even mean? And I guess my age is out of bounds, because I’m zero? I couldn’t recall anything like this from Steve’s time playing games.

  I might have seen this in some game before?

  A dialog popped up that turned my blood cold.

  No, no, No! Definitely not!

  I was sure that the previous save contained my memories—all my lifetimes as Joan. The joy, the suffering, the betrayals, the monochrome grey... all of it. Despite the agony...

  They're all I have left.

  I started breathing again.

  A distant memory came back to me, of the time when a save file got corrupted and I bit my nails watching the file repair progress bar.

  This time, it was me that’s on the line.

  Wait, it’s asking ME?!

  I desperately tried to reach back into the murky past, dredging up long forgotten memories of high school programming classes and discussions on gaming forums. Nothing.

  Um… if they’re aligned can’t you make them the same?

  Then lower them? Maybe do some kind of penalty.

  Then make them temporary! Have them decay over time as I... grow.

  An eternity seemed to pass in silence. Anxiety pricked at me, a helpless frustration building in my chest. I struggled against the layers of cloth swaddling me, a prisoner in my infant body.

  What's going on? What if it doesn't work?

  I couldn't pull up anything relevant from my foggy gaming memories.

  If the save is corrupted by the merge... will the game crash? Does my existence just... end?

  I suppose that wouldn't be so bad.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Just as that thought crossed my mind, a status screen filled my view.

  For so many lifetimes, I had harbored a desire to see this screen. I had a feeling it must exist because I could feel the stats at work whenever I trained or fought, a phantom limb that I could never touch. I thought it didn't appear for me because I was a general, a character that the player gave commands to instead of playing as.

  So what did that make Josephine? Or Cecilia? Was she a playable character?

  Are villainesses even playable in dating sims?

  What exactly is a villainess, anyway?

  In any case, it looked like both characters were now squished into one status screen. Josephine had no class, level, or stats yet, which made sense since I was a newborn.

  But seeing my race as [Human(Demon Sword)] was unsettling.

  I’m not even human anymore.

  Those 30 [Soul Points] stared back at me accusingly.

  For Joan, I was still a Divine Knight, but all my abilities were now crossed out, most likely because all my attributes were zero. Must be the [Sync Penalty].

  I focused on the [Willpower] attribute, and to my surprise an info box popped up.

  Hmm… what’s [Demon Insight]? I never saw that before. It must be a condition from this game. As I stared at it, another Info box appeared.

  That’s… really useful. No wonder I could understand the demon and the lich talking. And the language everyone spoke here wasn’t exactly English.

  Huh? When did…? Oh, no… that circle, the lich and the demon’s blood.

  No! Stop! Abort!

  Status! Open the status screen! The screen filled my vision once more.

  I focused on the [Dark Binding], dreading the result. But the info that showed up was a bit vague.

  Bound how? Would a voice call down and compel me to act, just like before? I'd always assumed the voice in The Hundred Years War was a feature of [God’s Chosen], but I couldn't remember any of the descriptions anymore. My mind focused, and the entry appeared.

  Inspired... not controlled. The realization jolted my tiny body. A memory came back to me: the help files for The Hundred Years War had said that [God’s Chosen] boosted attribute point gain and combat rolls, that was it.

  That voice... it wasn't divine. It was the player.

  Was the player... me? Had I been following myself that whole time?

  I tried to think back, all the commands the voice gave to me, all the directions it gave, all the strategies it used. They had all felt right to me, like those were things that should be done in the given situation, or…

  Did they feel right because I’d done them before… Those were my strategies and moves.

  Another realization shook me.

  Was I being controlled by my player self from the very beginning of each lifetime, even before the voice called for me?

  Vague, washed-out memories flickered—of me as Steve, controller in hand, fiddling with Joan's background settings, changing her from a farmer to a pickpocket to a nurse...

  All those times I decided to run away from home to escape my fate, were any of those choices mine?

  Bitterness rose up the back of my throat. The lifetimes that had ground my soul to dust... they were nothing more than my old playthroughs.

  255 runs. More, because the broken counter was definitely the cause of the exploit.

  Was that my punishment?

  Was I being punished for using a cheat to win the game?

  That must have been the catalyst.

  Over two hundred and fifty-five lifetimes of suffering... for one. Damn. Exploit.

  I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came. A single, hot tear rolled down my cheek.

  Karma is a bitch.