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Clutching the love letter he'd written to himself, Faust stepped into the final chamber, where all he saw was darkness and all he heard was howling wind. The crisp air made him shiver. He could just about make out a shape in the gloom, pulsing in and out like a gigantic pair of bellows; rumbling the structure with heavy breaths.

He didn’t light up the communication tile, choosing instead to sit at the creature's foot in the pitch black for modesty’s sake. He sat cross-legged, hands on scraped knees. Dying, after all, is a modest affair.

"Greetings and good tidings, etc," Faust mumbled.

Half of him had the impression of sheltering under the aura of a being full of life, while the other half felt comfortably alone, like the times he sang to himself in the antechamber. As the creature breathed, hot waves of air rolled onto him. The smell was less than flattering.

He said, "Thanks for your letter."

Already he was fingering the phone in his shorts pocket, expecting it to ring at any second. It didn't. So he watched the word count tick up, musing idly that he'd have chosen a better font for it, or at least a nicer colour like purple, and he tried to find the right words to say. He fiddled with his beard.

It had got above 70,000, and somehow he was still alive. At the start, he never thought he'd get to the final, and if he did, he thought the popularity would be enough reason to stop hating himself. But now he no longer cared about an audience's affirmation.

"It's stupid," he said. "But I think this game's the best thing that's ever happened to me."

The creature didn't react, other than to keep on breathing those steady, heavy breaths. It was like listening to the tide go in and out, the kind of white noise Connie probably listened to as a sleeping aid. Was this thing even paying attention?

"And thanks for showing me my own wake. As an undertaker, I couldn't have wished for a better funeral. The guys really spared no expense."

In. Out. In. Out.

"I never realised how important the people around me were... or how important I was to them."

The rhythm was ceaseless. Hypnotic. For all intents and purposes, he felt as stupid as people who genuinely tried to have conversations with themselves in the mirror.

"Alright. I guess you want me to stop laying waste to the area around the bush, that is, beating it. I didn't come here for explanations, or eleventh-hour plot twists. I came here for you to absorb me."

Faust stood up and took some deep breaths of his own. Fear gripped him. Of course it did. But he also felt a kind of courage that wrestled his self-doubt to the ground, and he'd never been so sure that killing himself was the right thing to do.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

For his friends back in the real world, well, he was already dead to them on account of food poisoning, and while it was a shame he'd never get a chance to thank them in person for all that they'd done, he would just have to wait a century or so to greet them with all his gratitude. It wouldn't be right to get a second chance when so many other people died left and right for similarly unfair reasons like terrorist attacks and allergies. To rob someone of their life in exchange for a second chance — well, he agreed with his dead counterpart. It wasn't even on the table.

As for Connie, she'd cry for a bit. She'd mourn him. But she'd pick herself back up and get her life on track, and maybe, just maybe, she'd start living up to her ideal of happiness. He'd already felt happiness coursing through his body when he helped her come to terms, and it had felt better than anything — his life was a small price to pay to help her finally reach that.

Faust stretched out his arm, reaching for the creature in the darkness. What would it feel like? Peaceful? He found himself shutting his eyes, tight, and he trembled, waiting for his fingertips to stop trailing through the air and finally land upon something.

His phone rang.

Faust sighed and picked it up.

"Yeah?" he said. "I'm trying for a dramatic suicide here."

"Dramatic? You look like you’re reaching down a clogged pipe. I didn't want to say anything to you because the audience is peeping, even though I JUST burned through all your word count!"

"Those bastards. Wait, is Connie..."

"Alive. Saheel is too, despite being on the chopping block, so you could have voted for some time-travel bonanza in the future. But technically, it's just you and your very friendly teammate left. There are things I need to explain, but since the audience is looking on, my hands are tied tighter than a gimp!"

"That does it," Faust cried, "With that remark, you've robbed my death of any of its dignity! No longer will I make any top ten lists, or be compared to Shakespearean tragedies... away with your modesty, sir!"

Faust bathed the creature in light. It was a giant version of him, naked, lying down and fused to the floor so that it couldn't roll over or even so much as lift his arm. Its mouth was stitched over, and again Faust blushed furiously at the gimp remark.

"Pathetic," he cried. "This game's the worst thing that's ever happened to me! Perhaps I shall leap into you now and be done with it all, sans fanfare!"

"Don't," buzzed the phone. "Or there won't even be a you to be sorry about it."

"I'm ready! I'm limbering up for quite the leap, you heavy-breathing gulliver, you strapped-down titan, you fleshy sex dungeon! How’s that for last words, eh?"

"Jesus wept. If you're so desperate for us to lay bare our weakness before the audience, then I shall do so!"

"Weakness, or strength? If Connie wins, then you get to live again, don't you? If not, me and her will meet up in the afterlife! In terms of game theory, it's the right thing to do."

"The problem, my love, is that by nominating myself we’re playing double or nothing! That is, if we don't come first place, we'll vanish from existence forever! No afterlife about it! No consciousness, no thought, no nothing! Emptiness that won’t even realise it’s emptiness!"

Faust fell back onto his butt, shocked. His mouth hung agape.

The creature said, "There's your eleventh-hour plot twist… the secret I worked so hard to keep from the audience! How will they vote now, I wonder?"

For a while, Faust sat there, completely stunned, as thoughts flew around his head in a whirlwind. But soon enough, he shook his head, wiped his brow, and stood up.

He said, "That doesn't change a thing. Just because the price is steeper, doesn't mean she's not worth saving. All my life I've never thought myself capable of anything, and here it is, before me — my way to make a difference."

"How melodramatic," said the creature. "Of all the turns our conversation would take, I never thought I'd have to fight you."

Faust threw back his head and laughed.

"Fight you? What do you think I've been doing all my life?"

He brandished the double-edged sword, still inert, while the creature drew the walls of the chamber closer, as if to press him in. But nobody won that particular battle, because at that moment a super-visual rock blasted through and evaporated them.