The world lurched sideways as consciousness dragged me up through layers of thick, suffocating fog. Everything hurt; my head pounded like someone had used it as a drum, my mouth tasted like something had died in it, then decomposed, then died again. Worse, my eyelids refused to cooperate, sealed shut with what felt like industrial-grade crust.

  I groaned. The sound scraped out of my throat raw and unfamiliar.

  My joints protested as I shifted, each movement accompanied by disturbing pops and cracks. When had my body gotten so stiff? This wasn't the usual post-gaming-marathon soreness. This felt like I'd been hit by a truck, then the truck backed up and hit me again for good measure.

  After what felt like an eternity of crusty-eye hell, I managed to pry one lid open, then the other. Blurry shapes gradually resolved into... definitely not my bedroom.

  No collectors' edition Dark Souls statue. No limited-run anime posters. No shelf of carefully posed action figures representing years of careful curation and absolutely zero regrets, no matter what my friends said.

  Instead, bare wooden walls stared back at me. Not like, cool reclaimed wood aesthetic either, just rough, unfinished planks that looked like they'd give you splinters if you breathed on them wrong. The ceiling above was thatched. Actual thatch. Straw and dried grass woven together like some medieval textbook illustration.

  The bed beneath me felt like lying on a sack of rocks. I shifted and heard the distinct crinkle of straw. Because of course the mattress was stuffed with straw. Why would it be anything else in this Renaissance Faire nightmare?

  My gaze landed on the nightstand, if you could call the rickety wooden table next to the bed a nightstand. Three bottles stood there like silent witnesses to terrible decisions. All empty. All open. The kind of empty that suggested someone had been very thorough about consuming their contents.

  The sledgehammer currently demolishing my skull from the inside confirmed that someone had been me.

  Which made zero sense because I definitely hadn't been drinking. The last thing I remembered was standing in my kitchen, holding that block of cheese, thinking about how hungry I was and how the expiration date was more of a suggestion anyway, and…

  Oh no.

  Oh no.

  Did I seriously die from eating expired cheese? Was that how my story ended? Not in some epic way, not even in a stupid but at least interesting way, but from dairy products?

  I sat up. The room immediately started spinning like it was auditioning for a carnival ride. My stomach lurched.

  "Whoa..." The word fell out of my mouth unbidden, and even that sounded wrong. My voice was raspier than usual, rougher around the edges.

  I waited, breathing slowly through my nose, until the world stopped doing barrel rolls. When I finally trusted myself to move without immediately vomiting, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood.

  That's when I noticed the clothes.

  These were definitely not my Super Mario pajamas. You know, the good ones with the pixel art from the original NES game. Instead, I wore a black shirt made of some coarse material that felt scratchy against my skin. The buttons were made of what looked like bone or horn. My pants were brown wool, rough and uncomfortable.

  I lifted my hands to inspect the offending garments, and that's when my brain short-circuited.

  Those weren't my hands.

  My hands were small, almost delicate, something my friends loved to mock me about whenever we had to do anything physical. "Let the dainty scholar handle it," they'd say, because apparently having hands suited for dexterity and precise controller manipulation was somehow embarrassing.

  These hands were massive. Thick fingers, broad palms, callouses built up across the knuckles and fingertips like armor. Scars crisscrossed the knuckles; deep, old scars that spoke of repeated impacts against hard surfaces. Or faces. Probably faces.

  I turned them over, examining every detail. The lines were different. The nails were short, ragged. There was a particular scar across the left thumb that formed a perfect crescent.

  "What the hell?"

  The voice that came out was still wrong. Too deep. Too rough. Not mine.

  My eyes snapped to the door where a small mirror hung on a bent nail. The glass was tarnished, the silver backing flaking away in places, but it was reflective enough.

  I crossed the room in three strides (when had my legs gotten so long?) and looked.

  The face staring back at me wasn't human. Couldn't be human. No human face could look like that and still function.

  Completely bald. No hair, no eyebrows, not even the suggestion of where hair might have once grown. The skin stretched across the skull was pale and mottled, like parchment that had been burned, then healed wrong. So wrong. Bones pressed against the surface - cheekbones, jaw, brow ridge - all prominent enough to cast shadows in the weak morning light filtering through the grimy window.

  The nose was just... gone. Not missing in the way of "broken and healed flat," but gone. Just two slits in the center of the face where a nose should be, like someone had carved it away and let the wounds scar over.

  The eyes were the worst. Pale white irises surrounded by a network of bloodshot vessels, giving them a sickly, diseased appearance. They looked like the eyes of something dead that hadn't gotten the memo yet.

  Lips, if you could call them that, were thin strips of scar tissue. The upper lip had a tear on the left side, creating a permanent snarl that exposed a sharp canine. The tooth looked too white against the ruined flesh, too prominent.

  I reached up with those foreign hands and touched the face. The reflection mimicked me. The scarred tissue felt rough under my fingertips, the texture all wrong, like touching leather that had been left in the sun too long.

  This face looked like a skull. Like someone had flash-fried the flesh down to the bone, burned away everything that made it human, then slapped the barest minimum of skin back on just to keep everything from falling apart.

  I knew this face.

  I'd seen it hundreds of times: in cutscenes, in dialogue sequences, in that one particular boss fight that was an absolute pain in the ass if you didn't spec into pierce resistance.

  This was Skullface Roxam.

  Act 1 villain of Path of Exemplar. Leader of the Venom Syndicate. The guy with the tragic backstory about being a commoner student at Allstone Academy who got his face literally melted off by Gallan vel Sarcova's hired mages because some noble prick couldn't handle being shown up by someone of "lesser birth."

  The guy who, in every single playthrough, attacked the Academy during the tournament arc to get revenge on Gallan's children. The guy who I'd defeated eleven times, once for each ending. The guy who, depending on your choices, either died, got imprisoned, or in one particularly wild route, became your reluctant ally.

  The guy whose body I was apparently now inhabiting.

  "No." I stepped back from the mirror. "No, no, no. This is… this is insane. This is insane."

  But the reflection moved when I moved. The scarred face twisted into an expression of horror when I made the same expression. Those dead eyes widened when mine did.

  I pressed my palms against my face, against his face, feeling the texture of the scars, the absence of the nose, the sharp angles of the bones beneath.

  This was real. This was happening.

  I was in Path of Exemplar.

  I was Skullface Roxam.

  "Okay." I lowered my hands, staring at the stranger-not-stranger in the mirror. "Okay. Think. There has to be a logical explanation for this."

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Except there wasn't. Logic had left the building. Logic had packed its bags, caught a flight, and was currently sipping margaritas on a beach somewhere far away from this situation.

  I'd died. That much seemed certain, unless eating two-and-a-half-year-old cheese gave you vivid hallucinations, which, honestly, was probably more likely than actual death, but let's go with death for now. And somehow, instead of whatever came after death, I'd ended up here. In a video game. In the body of a villain.

  My mind raced through everything I knew about Roxam's timeline. In the game, the story started sixteen years after he'd left the Academy. By that point, he'd already built up the Venom Syndicate, already gathered his forces, already put his revenge plan into motion.

  But looking around this shabby room with its empty bottles and complete lack of criminal empire aesthetic, I had a sinking suspicion about when exactly I'd arrived in his body.

  This looked like rock bottom. This looked like the beginning of rock bottom.

  Which meant I had time. Time before the game's actual events kicked off. Time before Roxam became the skull-faced menace that players had to deal with.

  Time to potentially not die horribly, if I played this right.

  "Alright." I turned away from the mirror, unable to look at that face any longer. "Alright. I've played this game eleven times. I know every quest line, every character, every possible outcome. I've gotten all the endings, even the secret super-evil one. If anyone can navigate this situation, it's me."

  My stomach chose that moment to remind me that it existed and was very unhappy with whatever Roxam had put in it the night before.

  I needed water. Food. Information. And probably a better plan than "wing it and hope my meta knowledge carries me through."

  But first, I needed to stop the room from spinning again.

  I sat back down on the straw mattress, putting my head in my hands (those big, scarred, completely wrong hands) and tried very hard not to panic.

  I was Skullface Roxam now.

  The game had begun.

  I continued staring at the hands that now belonged to me. The reality crashed over me in waves: I'd died. That should have devastated me. I should've been mourning my life, my friends, my unfinished degree, the apartment I'd never have to clean again, the student loans I'd cleverly avoided by ceasing to exist.

  But if I stripped away all the expected emotional responses and got brutally honest with myself?

  Getting reborn into my favorite video game was kind of awesome.

  Actually, scratch that. It was extremely awesome.

  I mean, sure, the whole "looking like a skull with skin stretched over it" thing wasn't ideal, and the aching pain that radiated through my face was genuinely unpleasant, but come on. I was in Path of Exemplar. THE Path of Exemplar. The game I'd poured hundreds of hours into, the game I'd obsessed over, analyzed, min-maxed, and conquered in every possible way.

  And not only that, I'd become one of the most popular characters in the entire game.

  Skullface Roxam wasn't just some throwaway villain. Players loved him. The forums had been full of fan art, fan fiction, analysis threads about his motivations, debates about whether he deserved redemption or punishment. His character design was iconic: dark, brooding, tragic, with that skull-like face that somehow managed to be both horrifying and strangely compelling. The costume designers at the cosplay conventions went wild trying to replicate his look, though most of them chickened out and just used masks instead of attempting actual prosthetics.

  But beyond the aesthetics, people loved him because his backstory was genuinely sympathetic. What kind of heartless monster wouldn't feel sorry for a guy who'd gotten completely screwed over at Allstone Academy? Roxam had been a commoner, yeah, but he'd been talented. Skilled. He'd earned his place at that prestigious institution through merit and hard work, not family connections and inherited wealth.

  And then Gallan vel Sarcova, that noble punk, couldn't handle being shown up by someone of "lesser birth." Couldn't stand that a commoner might actually be better than him with a sword. So what did Gallan do? He gathered his little gang of sycophants, ambushed Roxam, held him down, and had his hired mages literally burn Roxam's face off with flame and acid magic.

  The memory of that cutscene still made me wince. The devs hadn't shown it directly (far too graphic for the rating they wanted) but the audio design had been nightmare fuel. The screaming. The sizzling. The begging that eventually dissolved into incoherent agony.

  And the Academy's response to this heinous assault? If my memory served correctly, and it always did when it came to this game, the faculty didn't even properly punish Gallan for his brutal attack. They gave him a slap on the wrist. A three-day suspension. Three days. For permanently disfiguring another student, for essentially ruining his life.

  The official explanation in the lore tablets you could find scattered around the Academy dungeon was that they couldn't afford to anger Marquis Sarcova, Gallan's father, who was one of the most powerful nobles in the kingdom. Politics over justice. Status over morality. The safety and future of one commoner student measured against the political influence of a marquis and found severely wanting.

  Roxam had quit the Academy immediately after that joke of a punishment was announced. Packed his things, walked out the gates, and never looked back. From there, he'd turned to crime, eventually winding up in the Venom Syndicate. His entire criminal empire existed for one purpose: revenge against Gallan and everything he represented.

  Players ate that backstory up. The forums had endless threads debating whether Roxam was truly evil or just a victim seeking justice in a corrupt system. Whether his methods were justified. Whether the player character should help him or stop him.

  In terms of villain popularity rankings, only the Duchess beat him out, and that was mostly because she was a hot pirate lady with big boobs. The devs had known exactly what they were doing with her character design. Form-fitting coat, plunging neckline, those ridiculous physics that made her practically bounce through every cutscene. She was fan service incarnate, though to be fair, she also had a pretty solid backstory involving betrayal and political intrigue on the high seas.

  The least favorite villain, ironically enough, was the final one. Marquis Vakke vel Sarcova - Gallan's father, the ultimate big bad of the entire game - was considered the lamest villain by the fanbase. I'd seen the poll results on multiple gaming sites. He consistently ranked at the bottom, sometimes even below minor antagonists who only appeared in side quests.

  The main complaint? He was just too one-note. Too cartoonishly evil. His entire personality could be summed up as "I am a noble, thus I am superior to literally everyone else." He was over-the-top in the worst way, willing to sacrifice his own family, his ancestral lands, the entire kingdom, everything, just to gain immortality from Maldeth, the Demon King of Inferno. No nuance. No complexity. No sympathetic motivations or tragic backstory. Just pure, distilled arrogance and evil.

  Plus, his character design was pretty mid. Just a cranky-looking old man in a fancy suit with some medals pinned to it. Gray hair, permanent scowl, the kind of face that screamed "I yell at servants for breathing too loudly." Even his half-demon transformation, which should have been the coolest visual in the game, looked awful. The devs had somehow created a design that was an unholy fusion of a traditional devil and Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. All wrinkled red skin, scraggly horns, and hunched posture. The fanbase had memed it to death within a week of release.

  Rumor had it that the devs learned their lesson from the Marquis's poor reception. The forums had been buzzing about how the upcoming DLC would feature a truly spectacular villain, someone who combined the sympathetic backstory of Roxam with the style of the Duchess and none of the cringe of the Marquis. The teaser trailer had dropped about a month before I'd died, showing shadowy figures and cryptic dialogue that sent the speculation threads into overdrive.

  The DLC.

  The thought hit me like a punch to the gut, and I almost cried.

  I'd never get to play it now. I'd waited so patiently, refreshed the store page obsessively, planned to call in sick to work on release day so I could binge it properly. I'd been so close, just three months away. Three months, and I would've been able to dive into new storylines, new characters, new endings to discover and analyze and obsess over.

  And now it was gone. Ripped away from me by expired cheese and the cruel whims of whatever cosmic force had decided to yeet me into this situation.

  My throat tightened. My eyes (these strange, dead-looking white eyes) started to sting.

  But then I stopped.

  Wait.

  I sat up straighter on the straw mattress, ignoring the way it crinkled and poked through the threadbare blanket.

  I was IN Path of Exemplar.

  I didn't need to play the DLC. I would probably get to live through it. Whatever new storylines the devs had cooked up, whatever new villains and heroes and plot twists they'd planned, I'd get to experience them firsthand. Not through a screen, not through a controller, but as an actual participant in the events.

  That was incredible. That was beyond incredible. That was the kind of immersive gaming experience that people could only dream about, and here I was, actually living it.

  I grinned widely, feeling a surge of genuine excitement for the first time since I'd woken up in this body.

  Then immediately regretted it as pain lanced through my face.

  "Ow!" The word came out as more of a hiss through clenched teeth. My non-existent cheeks (or rather, the scarred remnants of where cheeks used to be) protested at the unfamiliar muscle movement. The damaged tissue pulled and strained, sending sharp stabs of discomfort radiating across my skull.

  Right. Better not do that too often. Smiling was apparently off the table for this character model.

  I touched my face gingerly, feeling the topography of scars and exposed bone structure beneath the thin layer of skin. This was going to take some getting used to. I couldn't make normal expressions without pain. Probably couldn't eat normally either, given the lack of proper nose and the extensive damage to the facial muscles.

  But still.

  Despite the pain, despite the horror-show appearance, despite waking up in what appeared to be the fantasy equivalent of a crack den, I felt something I hadn't felt in my old life for a long time:

  Genuine, unbridled excitement.

  I knew this world inside and out. I knew the quest lines, the character motivations, the hidden items, the secret dialogue options. I knew which choices led to which outcomes, which NPCs could be recruited, which plot threads connected to which endings. I'd achieved 100% completion. I'd found every Easter egg, unlocked (almost) every achievement, discovered every possible permutation of the branching narrative.

  And now I had the chance to use all that knowledge.

  I stood up from the mattress, steadying myself against the wave of dizziness that accompanied the movement. My body, Roxam's body, felt weak. Drunk. Malnourished. Probably dehydrated based on the pounding headache that was making itself known behind my eyes.

  First things first: I needed to figure out exactly when I'd arrived in the timeline. The game started sixteen years after Roxam left the Academy, but this clearly wasn't that point. This looked like the immediate aftermath of his expulsion, or maybe a few months after. The drinking, the squalor, the rock-bottom aesthetic; this was the "fallen from grace" phase, before he'd pulled himself together enough to start building up the Venom Syndicate.

  Which meant I had time. Lots of time.

  Time to change things. Time to maybe not end up as a boss fight that players defeated eleven different ways.

  Time to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with this second chance at life.

  I can do this!

  Then came the knock on the door.

  "Hey, Roxam! You up? Boss wants to see you."

  … Boss?