Raindrops fell hard on his window screen. The two cones of light cut through the night, trying to show as much as the road as they could for Marcel, but they were fighting a losing battle against the raging storm on the outside.

His attention slipped away periodically, he couldn’t even remember much from the night and only a few key pieces from the drive were still coming to mind.

There was some Hip Hop running on the Radio. Old school, as he always used to listen to. It was either Biggie or Nas, Marcel wasn’t sure. He had turned it as loud as he could.

He remembered how cold the steering wheel had felt under his touch. How he needed three attempts to unlock his car. Another two to put his key behind the wheel and start the engine.

By all accounts he shouldn’t have been driving anymore, but staying had been much less of an option. Not in the same house with her.

He hadn’t planned to go home that night, but he had been faced with no other option. There were no taxis where he lived, no buses or metros he could take.

His car was speeding along the countryside roads, passing through the forest surrounding the town. There was not a single soul outside.

The heating from the car sprang on. It warmed the driver's seat pleasantly. It drove away the sharp cold of the night, the same cold that kept Marcel awake, made him alert.

He kept driving through the storm. Only a few things outside were visible in the storm. An unchanging scenery of trees and darkness.

Slowly Marcel started drifting away. The warmth made him so comfortable, the alcohol made him sleepy. The music didn’t seem so loud anymore, the monotonous landscape nothing but a dream.

A sharp honk ripped him out of his daze. Suddenly there was light in front of him. His car was sliding. By instinct his foot hammered down on the brakes, but it was too late.

A crash rang out. It went through Marcel’s whole body, shaking him up from the inside, twisting and warping his reality. The world seemed to be on his head, or no, it was his car that was on its head. The seatbelt cut painfully into his flesh.

Somehow he had fought himself free of his car. He stood in front of what used to be a dark green Nissan. Thick fumes of smoke came out of its hood. The front was dented. It looked almost comically destroyed.

Marcel stared at the two people at the front seats. A woman and a girl. He had never seen them before, but for some reason he felt so connected to them. His perception was still blurry. His head was spinning. He puked on the floor.

Marcel had tried to cut them free out of the car. The woman seemed to be awake. She shouted something at Marcel. Words he was grateful he had forgotten. There was blood everywhere. So much blood.

Suddenly she didn’t speak to him anymore. The crying had stopped, as did the wailing. Only the bleeding continued.

It took minutes for Marcel to realize that not all of the blood was coming from them. He had a rather decently sized hole in his abdomen as well. He almost laughed when he saw it, but instead a wave of whiteness washed over him and he dropped to the floor. His body making a splash in the wet rainy road, tainting the puddles red.

Marcel woke up with a start. He was covered in sweat. It took a few moments for him to realize where he was and to make sense of the endless darkness around him. Even after taking out his lumistone and staring at the ragged stone walls his brain refused to catch up.

‘It was only a dream’, Marcel told himself. Although he knew that was a lie. A lie he had been telling himself for the better part of six months now.

Ever since he had woken up in this world Marcel had done everything to push those memories away. He tried to keep them under the surface of his brain, trying to drown them. As if by ignoring them he could make them unhappen.

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Sadly he knew that wasn’t true.

Those scenes had played over and over through his head the first few weeks he had arrived here. Only after embracing the ways of this world and throwing himself into work, even just the mundane sweeping of the stables, did the torment soften somewhat.

The sense of guilt stayed untouched though.

Marcel was grateful that he didn’t remember the pair's faces. It was luck he didn’t deserve. Still the whole scene haunted him. The smell of charred flesh and engine smoke, and the slow cold that had crept into him when he had fallen into the puddle.

Maybe the reason he had started embracing this world so wholeheartedly was simply because of the way his old life had ended. His motivation to keep his head down and grind quests stemming from a desperate attempt to escape the ghosts that haunted him from his old life.

Now that Marcel found himself nearly paralyzed, sitting gods knew where in utter darkness, those demons seemed to be coming back.

There was no way for him out of this dungeon. No way Marcel’s mind could even conceptualize himself beating the giant fire spitting dragon that ruled these caves. In his desperate attempt to flee from the shadows of his old life, he had led himself towards the abyss of this new world. And now he was too far gone to turn back.

Part of him believed it was karma that put him in this situation. A person like him didn’t deserve anything else. Marcel would be lying if he said he hadn’t entertained the thought of simply delivering himself to the dragon at least once. Just strolling up and sacrificing himself the same way those kobolds had. That way he would at least serve some higher purpose.

But those thoughts never held long. Most of the days he spent in his silent contemplation were plagued by despair. Deep, dark despair.

He didn’t eat, he didn’t drink, and he tried his best to avoid sleep, for now that the dragons seemed to have broken whatever dam Marcel had laboriously built, the dreams started coming back again and again. More than once he had woken up soaked in sweat in the middle of the night, relieving those scenes again and again.

Why should he continue to struggle? What purpose was he really serving in this world? He had tried talking himself into the adventuring excitement. Igniting his old spark for RPG’s, adventures and DnD. He had hoped that this was a new chance to him, that he, somehow, was presented a gift by the gods and was able to live out his fantasies here.

But the reality was different. Marcel had realized that quickly. He had struggled to become an adventurer, and a good one at that, just to have a way to live. After all he hadn’t said he was only after money to the guild admissioners committee in vain. He really had meant that.

All he had sought after was some sort of comfort. Hoping that excitement and money and fame would override the pain and guilt and shame that had branded itself into his brain.

Some obstacles were easy for him to scale. What was a lack of a party, or a structurally unjust system for adventurers? What was the poorness and starvation he saw directly juxtaposed to the luxuriousness of the aristocrats on the streets? It was nothing new to him, nothing he wasn’t used to in his old world.

He had ignored it as best as he could. Had tried playing the game to raise along the ladder, looking to prove his own worth to himself. But in the end, it had gotten him nowhere.

Somewhere, deep in his abyss of despair and self pity, a realization hit Marcel. In the beginning it was only a spark. Nothing but a quick flimmer. But over the next few days that flimmer came back again and again, slowly growing into something Marcel hadn’t dared to look at since he arrived in this world.

This wasn’t just a gift for him. Not some rare blessing by the gods. Much less was it punishment for him. No, it was a chance. It was the opportunity to do better, and to do what he should*ve done in his old world already.

Taking responsibility.

Over the next few days Marcel started eating again. He ventured out, running into small kobold patrols and killing them mercilessly. Slowly, and in arduous fashion, meaning sprang up in Marcel's head.

He found a reason to keep going. A reason to continue his struggle.

Marcel couldn’t undo what he had done in the past. He could neither change the incident that had sent him to this new world, nor could he change all the other smaller things he regretted about his old life. There was one terrifyingly hot fire inside of him, one that threatened to burn him completely with guilt, but alongside it were countless smaller fires.

He could see now how they were slowly feeding on his life force, and if he wanted that to stop, he needed to give them something else to fuel.

Marcel couldn’t bring back that woman and her daughter to life, but he could try to make this world a little better. Maybe he couldn’t change the whole world at once, but he could definitely try to make the world a better place for the people around him.

He would shake the adventurers guild to the ground. He would follow his plan to get strong enough and regain his title. Then he would slowly but surely remold the rotting manifestation that the aristocracy presented not just for his friends, but for all the people in the town.

He would tear the guild to its foundations if needed.