Chapter 7: N0_FACE

Chapter 7: N0_FACE

The blue light of the monitor was the only sun in Leo’s world. It had been for twenty-four hours. He hadn’t slept. He hadn’t eaten. He had simply sat on the floor of his wrecked bedroom, a prisoner watching his own surveillance feed. On the screen, the impossible, top-down view of his room showed his own pathetic figure, unmoving, staring back at the source of its torment. The whispers were a constant companion now, a low, sibilant tide flowing from his speakers, just loud enough to be an unending torment, too quiet to decipher. It was the sound of his own sanity fraying.

His desire had been boiled down to its most basic, primal element: he just wanted to understand. The hope of escape, of finding a logical flaw, had been systematically dismantled and burned. Maya was gone. He’d tried calling her twice, but the calls went straight to a robotic voicemail. The entity had likely blocked his number, or worse, sent her more fabricated, cruel messages from his phone. The guilt was a physical weight in his chest, a constant ache that was almost as bad as the fear. He had led this thing to her door. He had infected her life with his own private horror.

He was truly, utterly alone, just as the entity had promised. The game—the feed—was no longer something he ran; it was just on. When he’d tried to close the program, the mouse cursor had frozen. When he’d tried to shut down the PC through the start menu, the button had grayed out, becoming unclickable. He was locked out of his own machine, forced to watch himself being watched.

The obstacle was absolute. How do you fight something that isn't bound by rules? How do you ask for help when the only evidence makes you sound like a lunatic? His world had shrunk to this single, illuminated room, and the invisible creature that shared it with him. He was trapped in a feedback loop of terror. He would sit, petrified, and the whispers would grow a fraction louder. He would flinch at a creak in the floorboards, and the feed on screen would glitch with what felt like satisfaction. It was observing him. Studying him.

It was in this pit of absolute despair that a memory sparked, a faint glimmer in the suffocating darkness. An origin point. He hadn't found this curse in a haunted attic or a cursed antique shop. He had downloaded it. From a specific place. From a specific person.

A username, typed in a blocky, retro font, surfaced in his mind: N0_FACE.

The thought was a jolt of pure adrenaline. It was a desperate, insane long shot. The Discord server was an obscure archive for lost media enthusiasts and digital archeologists. N0_FACE was likely just some bored troll who had stumbled upon a weird file and posted it for kicks, with no idea what it truly was. They were probably long gone.

But it was the only thread he had left to pull.

He took action. The simple act of moving felt monumental. His limbs were stiff, his joints protesting as he leaned forward, his hands hovering over the keyboard and mouse. He could feel the entity’s attention on him, a palpable pressure in the air. The whispers from the speakers seemed to swell slightly, filled with a curious, expectant hiss.

He tried to Alt-Tab, to switch programs. The command didn’t work. The live feed of his own room remained locked in place. He was a passenger in his own computer.

"No," he whispered, his voice a dry rasp. "You're not locking me out."

He tried again, this time with a system command he hadn't used in years: Ctrl+Alt+Delete.

The screen flickered. The live feed vanished, replaced by the stark blue of the security options menu. He had a choice: Lock, Switch user, Sign out, Task Manager. He clicked Task Manager, and a wave of relief washed over him as the familiar window of running processes appeared. He could see final.exe at the top of the list, consuming an absurd amount of CPU. He could end the task. He could kill it.

But he didn't. Not yet. He had control, for a moment. That was enough. He clicked ‘More details’ and launched a new task: his web browser.

The browser window opened, overlaying the Task Manager. His hands trembled as he typed the Discord URL. Every keystroke felt like a defiance, a tiny rebellion. He was using the entity's window into his world to look back out. The whispers from the speakers were getting louder now, more agitated. He ignored them.

He logged in. The familiar interface of the server loaded, a strange island of normalcy in his sea of terror. He scrolled through the channels, his eyes scanning for the post. It was weeks old, buried under dozens of other conversations about forgotten shareware and corrupted floppy disks.

There it was. A post from N0_FACE. A single sentence: Found something weird. No idea what it is. Run in sandbox. Below it, the file attachment: final.zip.

His heart hammered against his ribs. N0_FACE. Their profile picture was a simple, stark image: the default gray Discord avatar, the faceless, egg-shaped silhouette. It felt chillingly appropriate. With a shaking finger, he clicked on their name and opened a direct message window.

What could he even say? 'Your haunted video game is real and it's in my apartment'? He settled for something direct, something that sounded urgent, not insane.

LeoVance: I need to talk to you about final.exe. It's important.

He hit enter. The message appeared in the chat log, marked as sent.

The result was an agonizing, deafening silence. He stared at the screen, waiting. A minute passed. Then five. Then thirty. Hope began to curdle back into despair. It was useless. The user was offline, or ignoring him. The whispers from the speakers seemed to mock him, a low, constant chuckle. On the screen behind the browser, the Task Manager still showed final.exe churning away, waiting. The entity was letting him have his little moment, confident that it would lead nowhere.

He slumped back against the bed, the brief surge of adrenaline leaving him hollowed out. He was a fool. There was no one else. No other victim. No one who understood. Just him and the invisible thing in the corner of the room.

Ding.

The sound was so clean, so sharp and unexpected, that he physically jumped. It cut through the monotonous whispers like a scalpel. A red notification bubble appeared on the Discord icon in his taskbar.

A reply.

His breath hitched. He lunged forward, his hand snapping to the mouse. He clicked, and the DM window maximized. A new message was there, sent just a second ago.

From N0_FACE.

It was three short, brutal lines of text.

N0_FACE: It's not a game. N0_FACE: You don't play it. It plays you.

Leo stared at the words, his blood turning to ice. It was a confirmation. A validation of his every fear. He was not the first. This had happened before. He quickly typed a reply, his fingers fumbling on the keys.

LeoVance: What is it? How do I stop it?

He hit enter, his plea echoing in the digital void. The '...' icon appeared immediately, indicating N0_FACE was typing. The seconds stretched into an eternity. Then, the final message appeared. The turning point that twisted his entire understanding of the nightmare on its axis.

N0_FACE: Stop feeding it.

Stop feeding it? What did that mean? He hadn't fed it anything. He hadn't given it any data, any files...

And then, the horrifying surprise landed, a blow of pure comprehension that knocked the wind out of him. He looked from the cryptic message to the live feed still visible behind the browser window, at his own pale, terrified face staring back.

He had been searching for it. He had been running from it. He had tried to outsmart it, to fight it, to understand it. He had been giving it his undivided attention. His panic. His adrenaline. His raw, unfiltered fear.

He remembered the whispers growing louder when he got scared, the feed glitching with satisfaction when he despaired. Every action he had taken to survive, every desperate attempt to escape, had been a meal. He wasn't the player in peril. He was the power source.

He had been ringing the dinner bell for a parasite, and his own terror was the feast.