The Letter of Ruin

The wooden wheels groaned against the dirt road, their rhythmic creaks swallowed by the suffocating silence of the encroaching forest. A faint, distant rustle of leaves added to the unsettling stillness, like the quiet breath of something unseen. The dim, flickering glow of the tar-oil lantern hanging from the carriage swayed with every jolt, barely keeping the surrounding darkness at bay. The night pressed in from all sides, vast and smothering, threatening to consume the fragile sphere of light at any moment.

Inside the carriage, a man slumped forward, his knee bouncing with restless energy. His frame was lean, the subtle hollows of his cheeks contrasting with the pallor of his skin, bruises darkening around his eyes, as though his face had borne the brunt of a recent blow. His dark hair, unkempt and tangled, framed eyes that flickered between exhaustion and anxiety. Once fine clothing clung to his gaunt form, now worn and stained, the fabric creased and dirtied from long neglect.

Severin Hamlet. The name echoed in his mind, heavy with a sense of unfamiliarity, as if it had been carved into his memory, but did not quite belong. It was a name that felt like a stranger's, yet one that clung to him like a forgotten inheritance.

This was the name of the body's original owner.

Because in truth, he was not Severin Hamlet.

His name was Caedmic. A roguelike enthusiast, he had recently been engrossed in a game called Darkest Dungeon. Lately, he had spent much of his free time on it, carefully planning each expedition, making calculated decisions, and pushing his party forward with growing determination. Until tonight.

Frustration gnawed at him as he stared at the screen. Another failed run. His party of four had crumbled under the Ancestor's machinations, crushed by the weight of eldritch horrors. He had tried—calculated, strategized, fought tooth and nail—but it had not been enough.

Then, the screen changed.

A single line of text appeared:

"Would you like to start again?"

Two options below it: YES | NO.

Without hesitation, he clicked YES.

His vision darkened instantly. A strange weightlessness gripped him, as if the world had been pulled out from under his feet. His pulse pounded in his ears—then, something emerged from the void.

In the boundless darkness, a faint glow flickered—an emblem, half-circular, divided by five short lines. It exuded an air of solemnity and divinity, an undeniable authority that pressed against his very soul. 

Caedmic recognized it instantly.

The Iron Crown. The symbol of Virtue in Darkest Dungeon, a rare blessing that could lift a hero above despair, granting them strength and resolve when all seemed lost.

It pulsed with an ethereal radiance, exuding an air of solemnity and divine authority. The very sight of it filled him with a sense of reverence… and inevitability.

The radiant sigil surged forward, as if drawn to him. There was no time to resist. The moment it touched him, a searing heat lanced through his consciousness, branding itself into his being. A force, ancient and immutable, wrapped around him like unseen chains, and then—silence.

When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer sitting in front of the computer.

The creak of wooden wheels. The flicker of an oil lantern. The musty scent of aged leather and damp wood.

He was in a carriage!

His body felt wrong—unfamiliar, foreign. And yet, a name surfaced once more, as if pulled from the depths of a forgotten past.

Severin Hamlet.

The memories came slowly at first, bleeding through his thoughts like ink on aged parchment. Fragments of a life he had never lived, yet one that now belonged to him.

Severin was the heir to a once-successful merchant family in Valmond, born into wealth and privilege. A young man who had spent his days in idle pleasure, indulging in excess made possible by his parents' fortune. He could have lived his entire life in comfort, untouched by hardship, but fate had other plans.

Two years ago, his parents died in a carriage accident. With their passing, whatever structure remained in his life crumbled. He spiraled. The inheritance dwindled at an alarming rate, wasted on pleasures that dulled the ache of reality. When the gold ran dry, he turned to loans. At first, they sustained his lifestyle. Then they became his shackles.

When the debts could no longer be paid, the creditors came—not with warnings, but with fists.

Bruised, broken, and with nowhere left to turn, Severin had stumbled home days ago, expecting only the cold emptiness of his ruined estate. Instead, he found a letter, lying just beyond the threshold, as if placed there by unseen hands.

It bore an unfamiliar seal.

This letter arrived from Hamlet, a town he'd never even heard of. And the sender claimed to be his ancestor. 

"Ruin has come to our family..."

The letter spoke of a manor—his true inheritance. A place of grandeur and decay, where an ancestor's ambition had unearthed something unspeakable beneath the earth. Something that had twisted and consumed everything it touched.

Severin had never known of any such estate, nor did he believe in the horrors described in the letter. And yet, despite the unease curling in his gut, he hesitated only briefly before giving in to temptation.

Inheritance! A way out.

Desperation made the choice for him. With nowhere else to turn, he sold off his last remaining asset—his home—trading it to the very loan sharks who had once hounded him. The gold barely covered his debts, but it was enough. Enough to buy him a way out.

With what little remained, he sought help. He had no coin to hire a proper escort, no reputation left to call in favors, but he still had his name—or rather, the illusion of what it once stood for. So he spun a promise. He is the heir to a grand estate, returning to claim his inheritance. He needed swords at his side, men willing to see him safely to his ancestral home. He could not pay them now—but upon arrival, he would settle the dues and offer generous rewards.

Most scoffed at the offer. But two men took the gamble.

The first was Reynauld, a crusader weighed down by faith and past sins, his rusted armor still bearing the scars of old battles. The second was Dismas, a highwayman whose loyalty lasted only as long as the promise of coin.

The last of his money went to securing a carriage—an old, battered thing, drawn by a tired, aging horse. There was nothing left to hire a driver, so Dismas took the reins himself, grumbling curses under his breath as he guided them down the lonely road to Hamlet Town.

And then, sometime this afternoon, as the body's original owner lay in a deep, unguarded sleep— Caedmic took his place.

The flood of memories had been overwhelming. Faces, places, fleeting emotions, all bleeding into his own thoughts like ink spreading through water. He had tried to shake them off, to draw a clear line between what belonged to Severin Hamlet and what belonged to himself—but the line was already blurred. The past of this body clung to him like a lingering shadow.

Caedmic shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He forced himself to stop bouncing his leg, to steady his breathing, to snap himself out of it—but it didn't help. His skin still felt too tight, his body still felt restless, his mind still refused to fully accept the truth.

He had crossed over!

This was no longer a game!

The realization settled in his chest like a weight. He knew, this world, the Darkest Dungeon, was no longer a cruel but distant fiction—it was real. And that meant so was everything lurking within it. The horrors buried beneath forgotten ruins. The maddening whispers from things that should not be. The gods who answered prayers not with mercy, but with cruelty.

Here, a blade to the flesh meant pain. A dagger through the heart meant death.

There were no second chances. No resets.

He knew the story, knew the horrors that awaited him—but what he didn't know was whether he could survive. Whether he could ever return to his own world.

The carriage jolted violently, the wheels clattering over uneven cobblestone. Caedmic's breath caught as his thoughts scattered, the weight of reality crashing down all at once.

Outside, the world was growing darker. The trees loomed taller, their twisted branches clawing at the night sky.

Suddenly—

"Jump! Now!"

Dismas's voice, sharp with urgency, cut through the air.

His breath caught as a jolt of adrenaline shot through him. His drifting mind slammed back into focus.

Caedmic instantly realized—the first battle of the game, the Old Road encounter, was about to begin!