Epic Fail - Page 12

Chapter 8: The Last Glitch—Ram.exe vs Ravn

So this was it. The final boss level. The showdown to end all simulations. The last two standing: Ravn—the last broken mirror of the house of my blood—and Ram.exe—the golden boy whose entire existence smelled like freshly laundered propaganda.

 

I sat on what remained of the blackened ramparts of Lank.OS, my face sticky with soot and memory, watching it unfold like some cheap, overproduced blockbuster. And let me tell you: it was not noble. It was not poetic. It was... marketing.

 

The first thing you need to know: Ravn wasn’t himself anymore. Of his ten heads, nine had already glitched out, like malfunctioning VR filters peeling off to reveal the exhausted, terrified human beneath. The Scholar head? Gone. The Ascetic head? Gone. The Warrior head? Gone. All that remained was him—the soft, sweaty, breathing man who once just wanted to win one war to prove his life wasn't meaningless.

 

Across from him stood Ram.exe. You know the type. Impossibly clean. Impossibly untouched. The kind of hero who never gets dirt under his nails because someone else dies for him first. His face—algorithmically symmetrical. His weapons—shining like influencer ring lights. His war? Sanitised.

 

The world held its breath.

 

And me? I lit a cigarette.

 

‘They're gonna call this righteous,’ I muttered to no one. ‘They’ll write songs. They'll put it on T-shirts.’

 

I was right.

 

The first move came not with words but with a mechanical, almost polite calculation. Ram.exe launched the first volley—arrows lit like code, cutting through the air in a perfect arc. Ravn blocked, barely, his old reflexes struggling under the weight of too much legend, too much myth.

 

You see, this was never going to be a fair fight. Because Ram.exe wasn’t fighting alone. He had the entire operating system of morality behind him: the armies, the animals, the air itself. The scripting had already decided the outcome. All Ravn had was rage. And rage, as I well knew, doesn’t win wars. It only burns you alive from the inside.

 

But he tried. Oh gods, he tried.

 

With each swing of his blade, Ravn roared not just for himself, but for everything we were: the asuras, the rakshasas, the misfits, the outcasts, the unloved. Every blow he struck was a middle finger raised to the smug face of the universe.

 

‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ I whispered, eyes fixed on the chaos. ‘Heroes aren’t heroes. They're PR campaigns with abs.’

 

The two circled—swords clashing, arrows flying, their shadows huge against the burning skyline. Every hit was a headline. Every injury, a hashtag.

 

And then the monologue. There’s always a monologue.

 

‘Your arrogance ends here,’ Ram.exe said, voice rich and metallic, like Siri got an upgrade. ‘Release her. End this.’

 

I actually laughed. I couldn't help it. Even at the edge of annihilation, Ravn still managed to smirk. ‘I’m not the villain you think I am,’ he spat. ‘I took what I wanted because this world only respects theft. That’s how kings are made. That’s how gods are born.’

 

They don’t put that in the bedtime versions, do they?

 

The duel went on, longer than it should’ve. Flesh tore. Blood splashed. The air itself seemed to tremble under the weight of it. But it wasn’t a battle of equals. It was ritual slaughter, and everyone knew it.

 

And then came the end.

 

The moment that would be carved into every temple wall for millennia. The one frame they’d freeze for eternity.

 

The arrow—simple, sharp, inevitable—left Ram.exe’s bow. It sliced through the sky like destiny on rails. And it struck.

 

Right in the chest.

Straight through what was left of Ravn's last real head.

 

He staggered. Collapsed to his knees. His hands scrabbled at the wound like a man trying to hold his soul inside his ribs. And as he fell—face pale, eyes wide—he wasn’t a king. He wasn’t a demon. He wasn’t a monster.

 

He was just a man.

 

‘All this for her,’ he whispered. I don’t even think anyone else heard it but me.

 

He fell. Hard. Final.

 

And the Ram.exe army—the monkeys, the bears, the bots—erupted in cheers, in slogans, in pre-packaged jubilation.

 

I sat there.

Didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

 

‘Congratulations,’ I muttered. ‘Another empire burned. Another story written by the winners. Another corpse for the bonfire.’

 

The smoke curled around me. The flames lit the sky. And somewhere beneath the noise, I felt it—the yawning, cosmic truth none of them could see:

 

That none of it mattered.

 

That no matter how many wars they fought, how many kings they crowned, how many idols they built—the void would swallow them all.

 

And me?

 

I smiled.

Lit another cigarette.

And waited for the next simulation to begin.