I Made a Game Featuring Constellations-Chapter 102

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

The deafening blare of alarms shattered the silence.

Beydia bolted upright from her bed, her body drenched in cold sweat.

Her vision was blurred, her thoughts sluggish—but as her surroundings came into focus, she felt her blood run ice-cold.

This place...

This room.

A place she had sworn she would never return to.

A place she thought had vanished along with the fall of the Empire.

A cursed place.

Am I dreaming?

Beydia hesitantly pinched her own cheek.

A sharp sting.

The pain was real.

This wasn’t a dream.

This wasn’t an illusion.

This was—

“Bang!”

The door to her small, filthy room was kicked open.

A looming figure cast a shadow over her.

"Subject 485. Why are you still in bed?"

A sharp voice—authoritative, vile.

A man with cold, piercing eyes stared down at her.

Beydia's breath caught in her throat.

This bastard—

“T-Tractus...?”

A senior officer of the organization.

The man who had made her childhood a living hell.

Tractus scoffed, his brows furrowing.

"Tractus? What nonsense is this mutt spouting?"

His expression twisted with irritation.

He glanced to the side and snapped his fingers.

Two figures stepped forward from the shadows.

"Take her to the Chamber of Repentance."

Without hesitation, the two shadowy figures grabbed Beydia’s arms, twisting them behind her back.

She was forcibly dragged out of the room.

The Chamber of Repentance.

Her stomach twisted.

She never thought she would hear those words again.

Her mind raced, analyzing the situation.

At first, she thought she had somehow been pulled into the game Akashic Archive.

She tried calling out a status window.

Tried to log out.

No response.

Nothing worked.

If this wasn’t the game...

Was someone toying with her?

A powerful illusion, perhaps?

She reached inward, attempting to tap into her true strength—

Nothing.

She had the body of a mere trainee, just as she had in her past.

This isn’t just a nightmare.

She was back.

Back in the organization.

Back in the days before the fall of Beydos.

They dragged her through dimly lit hallways, each shadowed corner thick with oppressive memories.

Before long, they arrived at their destination—

A vast, gaping abyss.

A pit so deep that even the bottom was shrouded in darkness.

Tractus stood at the edge, his arms crossed.

“In you go, 485.”

The two figures shoved her forward.

Beydia plummeted.

She had no idea how far she fell.

When she finally hit the ground, pain exploded across her body.

Dizzy, disoriented, she struggled to lift her head.

Then she saw it.

A massive, flaming eye.

Glowing deep within the darkness, filled with an overwhelming, malevolent presence.

The sheer pressure of its gaze made her body tremble uncontrollably.

["485. How... unexpected."]

A deep voice resonated from the darkness.

The moment it spoke, her breath caught in her throat.

Her instincts screamed.

["I once considered you useful. But are you broken?"]

A voice she hadn’t heard since she was a child.

A presence she had once feared before she even understood what it was.

She knew who the owner of this eye was.

Even now, even as she clenched her teeth, as she reminded herself that she was no longer a child—

Her body shook.

["Repent."]

The eye flashed.

A tide of crimson-black flames surged forward—

And swallowed her whole.

***

I was in the middle of crafting the next story for the upcoming deity in the cycle when a thought occurred to me—I should check on Thystina’s finale.

...Did I make it too intense?

Since it was still in the testing phase, I had transferred Thystina’s past into the game exactly as it was.

Every dark, horrific moment she had endured from childhood was implemented with brutal accuracy.

Compared to the other deities’ stories, hers wasn’t even in the same league.

If I released it like this, players might get so horrified that they’d abandon the game entirely.

That can’t happen.

The highlight scene—meant to be experienced by as many players as possible—couldn’t become an insurmountable entry barrier.

That would ruin everything I’d built up until now.

Should I implement multiple modes?

One mode for the hardcore players who wanted the unfiltered, raw version.

Another for the more timid ones, where the horror and suffering were toned down.

And a third for the ultra-cautious, where all disturbing elements were erased, making for a bland but digestible experience.

If I divided it like that, everyone could enjoy it at their comfort level.

...But wait, what if the [Lady of the Night] hates that her story gets altered?

Her personality suggests she wouldn’t care much, but she is the game’s biggest investor. I should probably ask her first.

Speaking of which, Wisdom took the original version without edits. Will that be okay?

...Well, Wisdom’s been through her fair share of hell.

I doubt something like this would bother her.

She wouldn’t actually make someone else play through it, right?

***

"Kraaaaaahhh!"

Beydia thrashed in agony, her body engulfed in searing flames.

She woke up gasping, bolting upright from her bed.

"It’s... over."

She had no desire to endure that pain again.

The Chamber of Repentance...

That bastard Beydos...!

Ding! Ding! Ding!

The alarm blared again.

"Fine. I’ll play along for now."

Until she figured out what was happening, she had no choice but to act as if she had truly returned to the past.

Beydia swiftly dressed and stepped out.

A corridor lined with dozens of doors stretched before her.

As soon as she assumed the correct stance before her own door, others followed suit, emerging from their rooms and standing at attention.

Seconds later, an arrogant pair of eyes appeared—Tractus.

His gaze swept over them, assessing their discipline.

Then, with a smirk, he tapped Beydia’s shoulder.

"Not bad today. I see the Chamber of Repentance worked well on you."

...This bastard.

The lingering pain from that experience made her want to crush his skull with her bare hands.

But she swallowed her rage.

"Roll call # Nоvеlight # is complete. Proceed to your assigned duties."

At Tractus’s command, the shadows moved in perfect synchronization.

Beydia, reading the room, followed suit.

She had spent years as the supreme leader of Barrows, a secret organization that had formed after Beydos’s fall.

Now, she was back at rock bottom.

It was suffocating.

The Organization.

A wretched group of killers trained from childhood—orphans kidnapped and molded into assassins.

Nothing more than pawns for Beydos’s resurrection.

In the past, Beydia had been one of them.

Raised in ignorance, executing orders without question—murder, terrorism, anything demanded of her.

But now she knew the truth.

The sourc𝗲 of this content is freēwēbηovel.c૦m.

Every task she had carried out had been for Beydos’s revival.

And once that resurrection was complete...

Every last shadow in the Organization would be sacrificed to fuel his ascension.

Beydia carried out her missions as ordered, using every opportunity to gather intel.

She needed to understand her situation.

To find a way back to her original world.

"Wisdom said I was mistaken. That the truth was here."

Before sending her into this world, the Goddess of Wisdom had told her as much.

Which meant this wasn’t a mere accident—Wisdom had placed her here.

But why?

What ‘truth’ am I supposed to find?

Had she been wrong in assuming the game was being used to revive the Dark God?

Then what was she supposed to learn here?

What was the point of making her relive a past she had already endured once?

Beydia’s steps slowed.

A strange sensation tingled at the back of her mind.

She turned her head.

The underground facility bustled with activity as shadows moved through the corridors.

But her eyes locked onto one in particular.

A small girl.

No older than ten.

A young shadow trainee—nothing out of the ordinary in this facility.

And yet...

Beydia couldn’t look away.

That face.

She knew it.

She knew it too well.

Because it was her.

Her younger self.

Then...

What does that make me?

She had assumed she had returned to her past.

"485" had been her assigned number, after all.

But what if she was wrong?

What if she wasn’t 485?

What if she wasn’t herself?

What if she was...

Beydia rushed to the nearest sink and turned on the water.

She leaned forward.

And as her reflection came into view—

Her breath caught in her throat.

She was not herself.

The body she now inhabited belonged to...

Her savior.

Her enemy.

The woman she had loved and hated more than anyone else.

The [Lady of the Night].

Thystina.

Her sister.