"Listen to my story. This may be our last chance..."

  Andrew Slayn sat in the dim light of his bedroom, fingers gripping the controller tightly as the familiar opening narration filled the room. The lines never failed to send a chill down his spine, even on what must have been his twentieth playthrough.

  His eyes were fixed on the screen as the final cutscene of Final Fantasy X unfolded. Tidus, fading away as the dream of the fayth dissipated, jumping from the airship to embrace Yuna one last time, passing right through her. He mouthed the words along with Tidus: "I love you."

  "Damn it," Andrew muttered, blinking back the tears that always threatened to form at this moment. No matter how many times he watched it, the ending hit him just as hard.

  As the credits rolled, he set the controller down and glanced around his room, a shrine to his gaming passions. Posters from various Final Fantasy titles covered his walls, with FFX and FFVII given places of honor. Figurines from the Trails of Cold Steel series lined his shelves, with Rean Schwarzer and Fie Claussell at the center of his collection. Their combat styles had always fascinated him—Fie's agility and dual blades, Rean's determination and strength.

  But it was the detailed Bahamut statue on his desk that drew his attention now. He picked it up, turning it in his hands.

  "You're a real piece of work, you know that?" he told the figure of the draconic aeon, focusing on the child-like fayth that floated beside it. "All that power, and you just... toy with them."

  Andrew ran his fingers through his black hair, the distinctive silver streaks on either side—which had earned him the nickname "Lightning" at school—catching the light from his screen. At seventeen, he'd invested countless hours in these worlds, these stories. But none had captured his heart quite like the tale of Tidus and Yuna.

  He reached for his other controller and powered up his second console. "Let's see if X-2 makes me feel any better this time."

  Hours later, as the perfect ending of FFX-2 concluded with Tidus returning to Yuna, Andrew leaned back in his chair with mixed emotions.

  "They really had to make us work for it," he muttered. "And even then... making him disappear in the first place? For what? Some cosmic rule that didn't even make sense?" He glared at the Bahamut figure again. "You could have found another way."

  He stood and stretched, his tall frame—1.79 meters, just shy of what he'd hoped to reach by seventeen—casting a long shadow in the room. School tomorrow would come all too early, but he never regretted these gaming marathons. The worlds of Final Fantasy and Trails had shaped him, given him an escape when reality felt too harsh or boring.

  "What I wouldn't give to tell Bahamut exactly what I think of him," Andrew yawned as he collapsed onto his bed, not bothering to change. His mind drifted to fantasies of wielding dual shortswords like Fie, of combining techniques from his favorite games, of standing beside these characters he'd grown to love and changing their fates.

  "If I were there..." he mumbled as sleep began to claim him, "I'd find a better way."

  Andrew found himself standing in a vast, star-filled space. Mist swirled around his feet, and crystalline structures floated in the distance. The Farplane? No—something different. Somewhere between.

  "You have strong opinions about matters you do not fully understand."

  The voice was young yet ancient, innocent yet weighted with knowledge. Andrew turned to find a small, hooded figure hovering before him—a child with blue markings on his face, draped in purple fabric.

  "Bahamut," Andrew breathed, recognizing the fayth immediately.

  The child-like entity tilted his head, seeming faintly amused. "You know me, yet I do not know you. Curious."

  "I know all about you," Andrew said, finding courage in the knowledge that this was just a dream. "I know what you do to Tidus and Yuna. How you use them, manipulate them. How you make Tidus disappear even after all he sacrifices."

  The fayth circled him slowly, studying him with ancient eyes. "You speak of events as if they have already occurred, are occurring, and will occur." The fayth's voice carried an undercurrent of amusement. "Time is not as you perceive it."

  "They're stories where I come from," Andrew explained, feeling a strange compulsion to be honest in this dream. "Games. But they feel real to me. The pain you cause feels real."

  "For you, these events are fixed tales. For me, they exist simultaneously—past, present, and future are one endless circle," Bahamut said, gesturing with small hands. "I have witnessed Tidus fade a thousand times, yet also watched him return. I have seen Yuna both perish and triumph. All possibilities exist for the fayth—we dream across time itself."

  The child-like entity paused, studying Andrew with renewed interest. "And yet... this is curious. In all the turns of the wheel, across all the branches of possibility, this exact moment—you and I conversing in this way—has never occurred before. A true anomaly."

  Andrew blinked in surprise. "So even you can experience something new? Something unexpected?"

  "Rarity is not impossibility," Bahamut replied, a hint of intrigue in his ancient voice. "Perhaps that is why I find you... interesting."

  The fayth drifted closer, circling Andrew slowly. "You question our methods, our choices. You see cruelty where we see necessity."

  "Because it is cruel," Andrew insisted. "If you know all possible outcomes, why choose the one that causes so much pain? Why make Tidus disappear? Why force Yuna to sacrifice everything?"

  Bahamut stopped directly in front of Andrew. "The answer may not satisfy you. But perhaps you should discover it yourself."

  Without warning, the fayth reached forward, his small, translucent hand pressing against Andrew's chest, directly over his heart. A pale, ethereal light flowed from Bahamut's fingers, seeping into Andrew's body. It was neither hot nor cold, but it resonated through him like a struck bell, vibrating in his very bones.

  Andrew gasped, unable to move as the light spread through his chest. "What—what are you doing to me?"

  "Giving you what you need," Bahamut said softly, "to find your better way."

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

  "Pain and sacrifice are the nature of existence," Bahamut replied simply. "Would you have wisdom without loss? Growth without struggle? The cycle demands balance."

  "I'd have honesty," Andrew shot back. "I'd have choices made freely, not manipulated by beings who think they know best."

  The fayth stopped before him, and for a moment, Andrew thought he saw a smile beneath the hood. "Such passion. Such certainty." The space around them seemed to pulse with energy. "Perhaps you should have the opportunity to test your convictions."

  The mist began to rise, swirling faster around Andrew's body. A weight settled on his back—the phantom sensation of twin blades.

  "What's happening?" Andrew asked, alarm rising as the dream suddenly felt too real, too tactile.

  "You wished to tell me what you think of me," Bahamut said, his form beginning to fade into the mist. "Now you shall have your chance. But remember, young dreamer—I have already seen your arrival in Spira a thousand times, in a thousand ways. I have watched you succeed and fail. I have witnessed the ripples of your choices across the dream."

  His voice became a whisper, both ancient and childlike. "I know the price you will pay before you even choose to pay it. For me, your story has already been told, is being told, and will be told eternally. Such is the nature of the fayth's dream."

  The mist engulfed Andrew completely now, and he felt himself falling, the star-filled void giving way beneath him.

  "Wait!" he called out, reaching toward where Bahamut had been. "I didn't mean—"

  But the fayth was gone, and the falling sensation intensified. Through the mist, Andrew caught glimpses of water below—an endless ocean.

  This couldn't still be a dream. It felt too real, too terrifying.

  As he plummeted toward the water, one last whisper reached him, carried on winds that shouldn't exist in a dream:

  "Tell me then, Andrew Slayn... can you find a better way?"

  In a realm between dreams and reality, where the fayth existed beyond the constraints of mortal time, Bahamut was approached by another presence—colder, yet no less ancient.

  "You have taken quite the risk, brother," came a voice like crystalline wind. Shiva materialized beside the child-fayth, her blue-tinged form shimmering with frost at the edges. Her eyes, ageless and piercing, fixed on the point where Andrew had vanished from their realm. "A mortal from beyond the dream? One who knows our designs before they unfold?"

  Bahamut seemed unperturbed. "He is an anomaly. A curiosity."

  "He is a threat," Shiva countered, ice crystals forming and dissolving around her as she moved. "You have granted him power. You have given him knowledge. If he succeeds in changing what must be—"

  "Must it be?" Bahamut interrupted, his childlike form belying the weight of his question. "We have maintained this cycle for a millennium. Sin dies, is reborn. Summoners sacrifice, dreams fade. The spiral of death continues."

  "It is the balance we struck," Shiva reminded him. "The price of our continued existence."

  "Perhaps." Bahamut turned his gaze to the endless tapestry of time that only the fayth could perceive. "But I grow weary of the same story told a thousand times. This mortal may bring doom upon us all—or he may find the path we have been too afraid to seek."

  Shiva was silent for a long moment, frost creeping across the void between them. "Yu Yevon will sense the disruption. The dream may become... unstable."

  "Let it," Bahamut said with the simple conviction of a child. "Either we will all be finally released, or a new dream will take shape. Either outcome is preferable to eternity trapped in this cycle."

  "You always were the most rebellious of us," Shiva said, a reluctant fondness in her voice. "The others will not be pleased."

  "The others need not know. Not yet." Bahamut's form began to fade. "Let us watch our new player change the game. In a thousand years, is it not worth seeing something truly new unfold?"

  Shiva's sigh manifested as a swirl of snowflakes. "I shall watch with you, then. But if his presence threatens the dream itself—"

  "Then you may act as you see fit," Bahamut conceded. "But give him time, sister. He carries more than just his own convictions now. He carries a piece of me."

  Shiva's eyes widened as the full implications suddenly became clear. "You've given him the potential to bond with all of us, haven't you? Not just to summon, but to channel our essence directly." Frost crackled around her in agitation. "You intend for him to become a vessel for all our powers combined."

  "A possibility," Bahamut admitted, his childlike voice tinged with something ancient and calculating. "One of many paths he might walk."

  "Such power in a mortal..." Shiva's voice trailed off, somewhere between awe and concern. "It has never been done. The strain could destroy him—or elevate him beyond anything Spira has known."

  "Which is precisely why we must watch," Bahamut replied simply. "Even I cannot foresee which outcome awaits."

  As both fayth vanished back into the eternal dream, the ripples of Andrew Slayn's arrival in Spira had already begun to spread, like cracks in ice that had remained frozen for too long.

  The impact with the water knocked the breath from his lungs. Salt water rushed into his mouth and nose as he sank beneath the waves, disoriented and panicking. His lungs burned as he fought to find the surface, kicking desperately against the weight of the water.

  Just as his vision began to darken at the edges, strong hands grabbed him, pulling him upward. He broke the surface with a desperate gasp, coughing and sputtering as he gulped down air.

  "Whoa there! I gotcha!" a cheerful, oddly familiar voice said. "That was some entrance, ya?"

  Andrew blinked water from his eyes and found himself staring into the face of a man with bright orange hair styled in an impossible gravity-defying coif.

  "W-Wakka?" he choked out, unable to believe what he was seeing.

  The blitzball player's eyebrows shot up. "You know me? Huh, don't think I've seen you around Besaid before."

  Andrew's mind reeled as Wakka helped him swim toward a nearby shore. The crystal-clear waters, the lush tropical island ahead, the outfit Wakka wore—it was all exactly as it appeared in the game.

  "This can't be real," Andrew muttered as they reached shallow water and he staggered to his feet. "I'm dreaming. I have to be dreaming."

  "You hit your head when you fell?" Wakka asked, concerned. "Where'd you come from anyway? Didn't see no boats."

  Andrew turned in a slow circle, taking in the familiar beaches of Besaid Island. In the distance, he could see the path that led to the village. Everything was so much more vibrant, more real than the game had depicted, yet instantly recognizable.

  "I'm... not sure how I got here," Andrew said truthfully, deciding that explaining he came from another world where Wakka was a character in a video game probably wouldn't go over well.

  Wakka clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, you look like you could use some food and rest, ya? Come to the village. The summoner's about to begin her pilgrimage—it's an exciting day!"

  Andrew froze. "The summoner? You mean... Yuna?"

  "Ya, you know her too? Man, for someone who fell from the sky, you sure know a lot about us!" Wakka laughed, but there was a hint of suspicion in his eyes.

  "I've... heard stories," Andrew said quickly. His mind was racing. If Yuna was just beginning her pilgrimage, that meant he'd arrived at the very start of the game's events. Before Tidus arrived, even.

  As they walked toward the village, Andrew noticed something heavy on his back. Reaching over his shoulder, his hand closed around the hilt of a sword. He pulled it free and stared in amazement. It was a beautifully crafted shortsword, slightly broader than standard with intricate symbols etched along the blade. A matching sword hung on his other shoulder.

  "Those are some interesting weapons," Wakka commented. "You a fighter?"

  Andrew sheathed the sword, his heart pounding. "I guess I am now."

  His mind whirled with possibilities. Somehow, impossibly, he was in Spira. At the beginning of Yuna's journey. With knowledge of everything that was to come.

  And perhaps, with the power to change it.

  As they crested the hill and the village of Besaid came into view, Andrew made a silent promise to himself. If this was real—and it felt more real with every passing moment—he wouldn't just stand by and watch the story unfold as it had in the game. Tidus wouldn't have to die. Yuna wouldn't have to sacrifice herself.

  And Bahamut and the other fayth would have a lot to answer for.

  A whisper seemed to brush against his consciousness, almost inaudible: "I have seen this moment before, Andrew Slayn. I have witnessed all your potential choices. The circle turns..."

  Andrew shivered, unsure if he'd actually heard the voice or merely imagined it. Was Bahamut watching him even now, across time itself? Did the fayth already know what choices he would make, what outcomes awaited?

  "By the way," Wakka said, interrupting his thoughts, "I didn't catch your name."

  Andrew straightened his shoulders, feeling the weight of the twin swords on his back. "I'm Andrew. Andrew Slayn."

  And for the first time since arriving in this impossible world, he smiled. The fayth had challenged him to find a better way. He intended to do exactly that—even if Bahamut had already seen how his story would end. Perhaps especially because of that.

  "Time to break the cycle," he whispered to himself.