yessleep

Have you ever tried to do a ritual?

You know, the ones that you can find on websites like this one. Those rituals that promise you mountains of gold, any wish your heart desires or the return of your loved one. Those rituals that ask you to do some random stuff in a random order and if you don’t follow the rules, your soul is doomed to eternal damnation or something like that. Yeah, those rituals.

Written like this, I know it looks kind of silly, but some of you probably tried them out at one point. You reunited all the components to make the most perfect ritual possible, read the rules again and again to be absolutely sure that you know them by heart to not screw up the parts where your life is in danger. And then, when you followed all the steps, prepared all the settings and tried it out…nothing happened. Yes, you probably felt like a fool, and asked yourself “What was I thinking?”. And perhaps, out of shame, you destroyed your ritual’s preparation in an excess of anger. But don’t worry, I’m not here to judge. After all, I was one of those fools too.

There are multiple reasons to conduct a ritual. The most common, of course, is the fantastic reward that is promised. Speaking to your dead relatives in the case of a Ouija board séance, or having your wish come true you if can summon the Devil itself, or… You get the idea. So, let’s start with the essentials. The more the reward is important, the more likely it is that the ritual is fake. Yeah, sorry, you won’t get the power to control the laws of physique or read minds just by lighting up three candles and running in an abandoned building for an entire night in hope of not getting caught by a hypothetical infernal creature. Trust me, I’ve been there. And when you really think about it, what would the world look like if any wish could be fulfilled? The fact that we don’t have an immortal emperor of mankind is a strong indicator, I think.

The second reason to perform a ritual is the thrill of it. After all, what could make you feel emotions more than an activity that put your life in danger? The appeal of a hazardous ritual with a lot of hardship can be a way to experience fear in a pretty crafty way, even more maybe than visiting a haunted house, or telling scary stories sitting near a fire. I met a lot of people that invited me to do some rituals with them, they could only get a kick out of this particular activity. Which was strange, because they never work out in the end. Nothing ever happened, and yet, they all rolled with it anyway. I guess there is people more interested in the journey than the destination, and they rather do that than throwing themselves from a plane with a parachute but still, it always bothered me how they would make such a ruckus over the smallest little nothingness happening during the ritual.

So, you might ask, what was I searching for? What was my core motivation? Well, let’s talk a little about me, shall we?

I always felt a deep void inside of me, like something was missing. I never really got along with people, and I could not find any interest in anything really. Sure, there are always some activities that I enjoy, like browsing the internet, or playing video games, but for some reasons, I could not for the life of me get really excited about something. When I pondered my life, the only thing I could see was the vacuity of my existence. I would look at people around me performing at basketball, getting accepted in a huge university, succeeding in their career, finding love and getting married, and even though I obtained some of those achievements, I could not find any happiness out of it. I was feeling…numb, to everything.

Is this what life is all about? Reproducing a scheme that had been done millions of times by millions of people? I thought of the possibility that money could actually buy happiness for a while, but I realized that if I had some, I wouldn’t even know what to do with it. I was not interested in rich man activities like traveling or, I don’t know, golf? Is this even a sport to begin with? Anyway, my life has just been a succession of uneventful days. I found a job without responsibility, something to pay the rent and sustain myself. As I had no ambition, I could not picture myself in the future. And that maybe, I had no future. Maybe I was just a mistake, an error that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

I thought a lot about killing myself. I pondered the options that I had before me. Getting a gun in the US is not that hard, and it could be the most swift and efficient way to end it all. A rope was cheaper, not that money would be an issue after my death, but it was a more convoluted way and probably more unpleasant. Drugs were an option too, if I knew exactly what dosage I could use to make sure my organ failure was as painless as possible. But even with those kinds of thought, I could not bring myself to do it. There is always that sliver of hope remaining. Or is it fear? I cannot tell, honestly. So I just continued to live, and things never changed.

But then, as I was scouring the internet to put my mind out of the endless cycle of depression, I found a website of strange stories, just like this subreddit. I don’t need to describe them to you, as you know what I am talking about, but some of them were describing some kind of games, or ceremony that could potentially grant you rewards if you accomplish them successfully. Of course, at first, I was a bit skeptical about it. Who wouldn’t? But as I was reading more and more, curiosity grew in me. After all, if it happened to be true, the risk would outweigh the reward.

The first ritual I tried was a ritual to summon the devil. I don’t really remember the details, it was so long ago, but it had to be midnight, and I had to use some salt and 2 chairs, one for it, and one for me. I waited a long time sitting on that chair, hoping someone would show on the other one. I was perfectly sure to have followed the instructions, but nothing came out of it, except maybe a waste of salt. After that failure, I tried another one. This one was supposed to convoke the spirit of a dead person, to ask them a question. I remember this one to have a lot of condition to it, and if you did not follow the rules properly, you could be the one found dead the next morning. As you can imagine, it didn’t work. Out of frustration, I even transgressed a rule just to reassure myself that this ritual was bullshit.

At that point, I just tried everything that I could find, not expecting much. I started with the most famous ones, you know, the Bloody Mary kind. Of course, I was unsuccessful, but I don’t know why, I did not despair and kept going, even though my attempts only resulted in failures. In hindsight, I think it was another way to distract myself from my existential dread.

After a while, I decided to share my experience with others. I spoke to people on forums doing the same thing as me, trying out multiple rituals to separate the real ones from the fake ones. We would debate a lot whenever we found another ritual, on whether it was worth the shot or not, and sometimes, we would even contact each other for those which needed more than one person. And then, it happened. My first successful ritual! It wasn’t anything crazy, a ritual that a woman gave me on a witch website. I tried to make a book speak its content, which was probably useful before the creation of the mp3 but not of any relevance now. And it worked. I could not tell you how I felt at that moment. A mix of wonder and fear, but mostly, the shock of the realization. It was real. And I could do it. For the first time in my life, I felt I was a part of something.

Now, I think I need to explain to you some things about rituals. Yes, some of them are true, and yes, the reward can be extremely generous. But to find those rituals, and then to accomplish them, oh boy, you are on for a ride. Let’s make things clear first, almost all the rituals that you can find on the clear web are: 1) totally fake or 2) they are a deformed re-tale of an actual ritual, but either time took care of modifying it to the point that it is unusable, or the person that shared it took care of changing it just enough to not make it work. You might be surprised by the number of people who know a good ritual, but who are giving the wrong instruction out of malice. The consequences can vary from the ritual not working at all or you breaking one of the most fundamental rules and getting in deep shit. What I want to say is: be careful! I was very lucky not to run into the dangerous ones. You don’t want to end like the poor souls that I came across during my investigations. Some of them lost a lot with those rituals, sometimes even their life. I think the worst thing I saw was a demon summoning where the guys fucked up so bad that the demon painted the walls with their blood and entrails. In general, I would advise not to meddle with demonic powers, as I have never heard any good stories coming out of it.

So, where do you find good rituals, you might ask. It is not an easy answer. Some obscure books from some centuries ago can be a good start, but good luck finding one if you have no idea what you are searching for. On my forums, it only happened once or twice, and in those books, only one ritual or two could actually be used. Nothing fancy anyway, it was mostly to make some physical changes, like growing your hair if you were bold, or curing your acne. This is the second rule that I learned searching for rituals: the more the reward is good, the more likely the ritual doesn’t work. I alluded to it earlier, but from my experience, there is absolutely no way that a ritual can fulfill any of your wishes of grandeur or grant you power beyond your imagination. Well, that is not entirely true. You see, the only rituals that worked for us were the ones that gave some small things in exchange for another. Sometimes, you had to make a small sacrifice, like one of your belongings that you had a strong attachment towards, or sometimes, the time you had to practice the ritual was the thing exchanged, and it generally resulted in a ritual that could lasted for hours, even days. Honestly, these are the worst. So, in theory, there could be some rituals that could grant you your biggest wish, but you would have to trade something so big that it would not be worth it in the end.

It became clear to me that finding a good ritual was almost impossible, as the ones working were really unimpressive. But somehow, I could not stop searching. I discussed on forum about fake rituals that could possibly be good if we changed some parameters. I searched for hours and hours on the deep web for satanic and paranormal websites, one after the other, always alert for anything that could potentially be of sustenance for me. I was addicted, even more so than I was willing to admit, and I replaced a routine for another, behind my computer screen or around people that shared the same interest.

But one day, after succeeding a ritual that turned a green bean from green to blue, I started to doubt. Is this really all? All those shitty rituals that accomplish nothing? Near me, a girl was crying before the bean and the “beauty of what we had done”. Golgoth2 (we would not give our real names and only call ourselves by our pseudonym) came to me and said:

- “That was good! I’m sure the next one will be even more incredible!”

I stayed silent for a second. I just looked at all that assembly that was in ecstasy before the meaninglessness of what we had done.

- “We can only hope,” I replied. “I’m sure someday we will find a ritual that could really affect our lives.”

But that was a lie. My hopes were getting lower and lower, and I started to lose faith in our venture. I kept going every day on the forums, but my interest was not as high as it used to be. My research was not as thorough, and after some time, I just stopped. I was still browsing the forums by habit, but not posting anymore. Ah, why would I? They were all so satisfied with themselves for absolutely nothing! I passed on a lot of rituals that were organized, and no, sorry xxChantraxx, I’m not interested in transforming a button color from black to brown! Excuse me NuniAMA, there is no point in making the glue on a rubber band disappear! And of course, KHTJ45, no, I won’t sit and sing in Latin for 3 hours so that you can make this banana rot at extreme speed! And the best part is all those rituals were fake anyway! No, really, I was getting pissed off by their stupid excitement for things that were so insignificant! So yeah, I stopped, and I saw that I wasn’t the only one. Less and less people posted messages on the forum, and the one that kept doing it were either annoyed of getting no results, or too much excited for their own good.

But then, something happened. After almost two weeks without connecting to forum, I saw that I received a private message. That was pretty unusual, as most messages are posted directly on the boards, and PMs were only used for private information, like our addresses and such. It was from a certain Alex647, and it was as followed:

“Hey man. I hope you’re good. It’s been a while since you came to a séance with us. Are you ok? Did something happen?”

I was a little unsettled by this message. Alex647 was a regular from the forum, he even became a moderator at some point. He was there at every ritual that I participated in, and from what I could see from his posts, in every one that was organized. That is to say the dedication of that guy for this. And I have to confess that he is rather handsome: long hair, square chin, blue eyes, and that ridiculous cowboy hat that he seemed to always wear. But apart from his physical qualities, he didn’t really stand out from the group. He was discreet and rather calm, and he was never the instigator of any decision that was taken. Hell, I almost never spoke to him, so you can imagine my surprise to receive a PM from this man.

I made a measured reply:

“Hey! I’m good, thanks! I’m sorry I could not be there for the last ones, it’s just that I am not really in the mood at the moment. But don’t worry, I’m ok! I’ll guess we’ll see each other next time!”

I didn’t want to go into details on why I was losing interest, or that they probably won’t be a next time. I was about to leave the webpage, when I heard the specific sound of a new private message popping up. It was him.

“Yes, I can understand. After all, we didn’t do much, did we? We all started this journey because we thought we could all change our lives, and we ended up spending time debunking fake information on the internet and testing random rituals with no meaningful rewards. I’m just like you, I am not really a fan of the way things were going.

But what if I told you that I know a ritual that could actually be of use?”

I was a little perplexed reading that last message. A ritual that could be of use? That sounded sketchy. If he knew such ritual, why wouldn’t he share it on the forum? That’s what I replied, and he immediately answered:

“That ritual can be dangerous. I don’t really want it to be known by a lot. But you seem like a guy that knows his stuff. I saw your posts on the forum, the way you did your research and that you analyzed every piece of information you came across, your seriousness when we attended our rituals and your rigor when it came to follow all the rules. I think I can trust you to not mess up. The reason why I am on this board in the first place is to find someone to accomplish this ritual with me, and I think you are the prime candidate for that”

This felt like a compliment, so I considered it. What were the chances that the ritual he was talking about was legit? Very slim I thought. But I saw that as an opportunity to finally put all this masquerade behind me. If the ritual was fake, I would definitively walk away from this and never try it again, and if it worked, well, my determination would completely be renewed.

“Ok, I’m interested. Where do we meet?”

“I will send you the address. We can do it tomorrow night if you are available.”

And so, it was settled. He later sent me the address of an old, abandoned church where the ritual would take place. It was not unusual to do rituals in those kinds of buildings, but that didn’t reassure me, as those ones are always the most prompt to be a waste of time.

I met Alex647 that night. He was already waiting for me, sitting on the stairs before the entrance of the church, in the penumbra induced by a faraway post light. Of course, he was still wearing his cowboy hat that seemed to be glued to his head.

- “Hey mate, how are you?” he asked.

- “Good. This is quite the spot to make some incantation, I must say.”

He laughed.

- “Ha ha. Yes, typical, ain’t it?”

- “So, Alex647, will you tell me what it is all about?”

To answer my question, he got up from his makeshift seat and started to walk around the church.

- “Please, just call me Alex. Follow me. We will enter through the back door.”

I did not question him, I didn’t want anyone to see us enter a church by night, even more so that I thought that what we were about to do there would be particularly suspicious. We found a backdoor that had been forced in the past. The place had probably been visited and plundered multiple times from what I could see. Benches were broken, windows were shattered, and the moonlight made this place look more eerie than it should be. Or maybe I was on edge because of what we were about to do.

- “So, will you tell me what we are doing here?”

As a way to answer my question, Alex647 started to take items from his backpack.

- “We are about to engage in a ritual that can potentially make our lives better. Tell me, have you ever heard of the Soul Link Game?”

That name didn’t ring a bell.

- “No, I haven’t. What is it about?”

- “Well, it is a way for you to improve on of your… particularities. Listen, it is hard to describe, and the game does it for you when you start.”

What he said felt funny to me.

- “Wait, what do you mean it does it for you? And how did you come across that game in the first place?”

He looked at me with an unreadable face. He tried to reassure me:

- “You don’t have to worry, mate. Nothing bad will happen as long as we follow the instructions.”

He took a binder from his bag and started to search through the pages.

- “This is a ritual that I found on the net. People were claiming that it worked and that it changed their lives for the better, and from what I saw, it doesn’t seem that difficult to do. All we need is some candles, a deck of 52 cards and a place to do it. Oh, and a rope and a sheet of paper. Apparently, the rules of the game will appear on it when we start.”

- “Okay, let’s just admit for a second that all of it is true. How will it change our lives exactly?

He put a row of 5 candles in front of him.

- “I have no idea. According to them, it changes from person to person. But hey, we won’t know if we don’t try, right?”

The more things were going, the less I was feeling comfortable with the situation. How many rituals like that had I tried in the past? I could not even count. All of them were a dud of course. And even so, something did not seem right, a lot of information was missing. But I took that as a sign that this ritual would be my last, as it looked a lot like a vain attempt to make something work.

- “Whatever, just tell me what I need to do and let’s get it over with.”

He beamed and gave me the instructions. We drew a circle with chalk and put ourselves inside it. We both had 5 lighted up candles in front of us, two unlit candles were on my right and Alex647’s left. He distributed 5 cards to each of us and put the deck near the unlit candles.

- “Now, he said, we need to link ourselves.”

- “Link ourselves?”

- “Yes, with this rope”

He showed me a small red rope he had in his bag.

- “This is really important. Whatever you do, the link between us must never be broken, otherwise our souls will be forever trapped. I suggest we tie the rope to my right arm and your left arm. This way the rope won’t go near the candles. We don’t want it to catch fire.”

I almost laugh at the absurdity of that statement. But I did as he said, after all, we wouldn’t want our souls to be “trapped forever”, right?

He distributed 5 cards face down to each of us.

- “We will look at those cards when the ritual begins,” he said. “I think we are good to go.”

- “Very well then,” I said impatiently. “What shall we do now?”

- “Now,” he replied, taking a sheet of paper “we both says at the same time “Our souls are now linked, and so is our fate” while holding the sheet.”

I took a corner of the paper sheet and looked at Alex647. He looked nervous, much more than I was. At the time, I thought it was because he didn’t know what was going to happen, but in retrospect, I think it was because he knew of my skepticism and was afraid that I would just quit.

We both looked each other in the eyes for some long seconds. He was the first to talk:

- “Are you ready?”

- “Let’s get this over with.”

We both pronounced the sacred words.

“Our souls are now linked, and so is our fate”

The answer was immediate. The candle flames grew in a wall, obstructing my view from Alex. The heat made me close my eyes, but as I tried to fall back and move away from the flames, my left hand pulled me back. My fingers were stuck on the sheet of paper. As I realized that, the flames took back their normal form, and I could see Alex again. To my surprise, he seemed unfazed by what had just happened.

- “Holy shit!” I shouted. “What… How?”

Words were escaping me. Alex just smiled.

- “Hey, you should look at the rules now”

- “Wha..What rules?”

He moved his head to indicate his right. And I couldn’t believe my eyes. On the sheet of paper, there were words that never were there before. My fingers were still stuck, and even with my best efforts, I couldn’t open them to let the sheet go. So I did as Alex asked me, I read the rules:

Thin souls are now linked, and so is thy fate

The game begins and thou can’t abdicate

For part of thy life thou shall now relinquish

If the flames before thee ever extinguish

To smother the fire, cards thou will need

Turn by turn, to the cost thou will accede

To draw, play and kill without forgiveness

As no loss art too great for thy greatness

Eventually one shall triumph with a blare

While the other shall only weep in despair

Reaped is the gift from the loser before thee

And that no matter the nature of their plea

I had no time to process the silly poem as my fingers let it go while it set ablaze. I was afraid and confused by what just happened, but the scariest part was that I realized that the ritual was actually legit. Could it be? Alex647 look at his side and said:

- “Look at the candle, it’s your turn.”

I followed his gaze and… the candle on my right was lightened up.

- “Well then,” he continued. “Let’s play now.”

――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――

After reading my story again, I think I need to take a step back so that I can explain to you exactly what the Soul Link Game is. You see, at that point in the story, I had not yet realized that everything was a setup from Alex647 to make me participate in the game while I had no clue what was going to happen. But I would soon discover that, contrary to what he told me, that wasn’t the first time that he played the game.

So, what is the Soul Link Game?

The Soul Link Game is a ritual where two people fight each other in a game of cards to gain something from the other. This “something” can be anything, literally. For example, if I fancied your eyes, I could ask, if I won, to gain your eyes. You would become blind, and I would get eyes more beautiful than what there were before. And that can be applied to everything. Hair, arms, intellect, you name it, it is yours. Well, mostly. But we will come back to this later.

But how do you play the game, you might ask. It is pretty unclear if you only have the poem from the beginning of the ritual, so I will teach you everything that I know so that if you ever want to play, you don’t have a bad surprise.

It is a turn-by-turn game where you need to destroy the cards your opponent puts into play. You will have 5 cards to begin with, but you can draw a card once per turn. The first thing you will notice is that the cards from the deck have all been replaced. This is the most interesting thing to me, because every time you play the game, the cards will never be the same. The way I understand it, the atmosphere around the game has a direct impact on what the cards represent. For example, in my game with Alex647, the cards were all about angels and religious scripture, but if you try to play on a college, you will have students and professors represented. The time when you are playing also has an impact on the card, but in a more insidious way.

Now that you have your cards, you can play them. There are two types of cards, beings and spells. I didn’t find a better name to describe them, so let’s roll with it. Beings are cards that will stay in the game when you play them. It is the cards that you need to destroy so that you can take down a life from your opponents. You have to protect your beings while destroying the ones your opponent owns. On every being, there is a number; it generally goes from 1 to 10, although I saw an 11 once, but the cost was phenomenal. You can make your beings fight other beings, and the one with the greater number wins. The losing being is destroyed and a candle from your opponent is snuffed out. If the beings have the same number, they both die, and each player loses a life. When a player doesn’t have any candle lighted up left, they lose the game.

The other type of cards is spell. A spell is discarded when used, so you must be careful with those. Their effects can vary, from boosting a being, to making you draw cards, to destroying a being of your opponent… there are tons of different effects that can be very powerful. But there is a catch. Every card that you play, be it beings or spell, requires a cost. A real life cost. For example, a card could ask for your left eye to be sacrificed for it to be played. Or another one could require you to never speak again for the rest of your life. I think you get the idea. It is not a game where you will come out unscathed, as you MUST play cards in order to win. Looking at the rules as I describe them to you, you might think: “Well, if I don’t play any beings, there is no way that my opponent can destroy them, therefore, I cannot lose any life”. That’s what one of my opponents thought as well. Imagine the shock on his face when he discovered that every turn without a being in play resulted in him losing a life. Seeing a candle losing its flame is always daunting but seeing a candle losing its flame for nothing is just hilarious.

Now, I guess you understand why this game can be really dangerous. You have to be ready to sacrifice a part of yourself to win, and most important of all, to survive. Because, depending on your opponent’s ambition, you could die from losing the game. But beware, the more the cards you play are powerful, the more the price will be steep. It is not uncommon that you get out of the game with less than when you came in. And if your opponent thinks he has nothing to lose, you are in for a whole lot of trouble. And you have to know that there is no way to stop the game once it has started. If you try to get out of the circle, the game will consider that you forfeit, and you will be frozen as your opponent will choose what they will take from you. Yeah, you can’t run, even after the game is over. For some reason, you will not be able to move, nor to say anything as long as the winner hasn’t decided was their prize will be. Oh, and the link between you two, don’t break it. Ever. Nobody really knows what happens when you do, but what is left of people who did is not particularly enjoyable to see.

Something I want to emphasize is the maliciousness of the game itself. I told you about the depiction on the cards, but you have to understand that the game will try to make you as uncomfortable as it can be. Generally, cards will show you either events or people that went there, and you could learn a lot about that place just by playing. I once played in a hospital, and a card depicted a doctor killing his patient, making them overdose on morphine. He was arrested 2 months later for homicide. Another example? A teacher taking advantage of their students in a prestigious university, I remember the card being called “Sex for an A”. Good taste humor, isn’t it? I could go on and on and multiply the morbid examples, but I’d rather share with you some information that I gathered during those games. In addition to the place, the hour has also an impact on the cards you play. The more it is late, the more the game will be darker. Those last examples? They were around 1 AM. The worst that I saw was around 3 or 4 AM, and what I just described is nothing compared to it. The game will try to destabilize you in any way possible, and when you think you have seen it all, it always finds a way to get you.

I think the most disturbing thing was when I played on the campus where I used to go, and the game gave me cards depicting me and my friends in various situations. I saw the darkest secrets that they hid for so long and their intention in certain moments of our college life. There was no going back after this discovery, but in that moment, I was simply mortified. Even more so that at the time, and even now still, I was suspicious that the way that we play our cards could have an influence on the real world. Some people depicted on the cards met an unfortunate demise later, after their cards were discarded in a game. It could all be a coincidence. After all, people are dying all the time. But there is this lingering feeling that maybe, just maybe, the game is more than it looks like. After all, its effects on the player are definitely real, so why couldn’t it have an effect on the people it portrays?

Anyway, what happens when the game is over? I told you earlier that the loser was bound as long as the winner hasn’t chosen its prize. And as the winner, you can choose anything. However, you will not receive what you choose in its entirety. Inexplicably, you will only get a part of that, and the rest will just disappear. It’s really hard to explain, so let’s just take an example. Let’s say you want all the money that the person in front of you had, have and will ever have in their life. That means that this person will be forever condemned to never get any cents for the rest of their existence. If they were to gain 100,000$ in their life, you would gain around 60,000-85,000$? It is not really clear how much you take for yourself, but you never get it full. It is as if the game was taking something for itself every time it was played. We already know that the tax on the cards was lost forever, but even part of the reward is lost too. You must take this into consideration whenever you play, because if you were to sacrifice your vision and then ask for your opponent’s eyes, you would probably lose in the change.

So, I have two pieces of advice for you: don’t cripple yourself, losing a day of life is acceptable, but not being able to use your legs for the rest of it is too much. And of course, choose your opponent wisely. You never know what a person can do when they have their back against the wall, but you can at least choose someone whose action can be anticipated a little.

There is one last thing that we need to talk about, and this is really important. You cannot gain something that you never had in the first place. Well, it’s more complicated than that. Everything can be yours if you put your mind to it, be it fame, money, men and women, anything really. It might ask you a lot of work, but theoretically, it is not in the domain of the impossible. The Soul Link Game is a way to cheat and steal from someone else something that you envy. But it cannot accomplish any miracles. For instance, if one of your arms were cut off, you could grow it back by demanding your opponent’s arm. You would say this is impossible, and I agree, but not for the game. In its logic, you had an arm at one point, and this arm can be regrown by getting another one. And this is where it is getting tricky, because the game cannot give you an arm if you were born without it. The game does not allow you to get something you never had, or maybe are not fated to have?… Sure, it can enhance your abilities and your overhaul physic, but some perks will forever be out of your reach. At least, that’s what I understood from my experience with the game. Again, it is difficult to grasp its extent, because you could ask for your opponent’s life and get like half of their lifespan, but things more trivial could just not work at all, like gaining all their emotions for yourself. This is actually something that you can do if you want to mess with them. I asked for their emotions multiple times and never got a surge of those as they transformed into an emotionless husk. Fun party trick, I would say.

And I think that wraps it up, folks. You are now ready to play the Soul Link Game! And I know, I know, I can already see the naysayers writing their angry comments on how this game is absolutely despicable, that no sane person would ever want to play it, that only a sociopath could ever consider it. And to that I want to answer: stop lying to yourself. You know very well that your life is miserable and that there is this little something that someone you know has, and that you don’t. We are creatures of envy and greed, and it is only natural to want things that you don’t have. Desire is what drives us all, because without it, we are only a human shell waiting for our inevitable demise. And sure, you might think that there are other ways, and I can agree with you. But now, you know that the Soul Link Game exists and that everything is only at a game away from you.

So, who knows, maybe one day we will play together?

I just can’t wait.

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As I looked at Alex647 lifeless body in front of me, I came to the realization of what just happened. I just took part in a ritual that could have been the end of me. I looked at my missing arm and at the cards that I was holding just mere seconds ago. They were all back to normal. No more demonic entities or disfigured angels were present on the inking.

I stood up and tried to collect my thoughts. Alex just tried to kill me with this game. That’s what I thought during it, but I only now realize that I may not be the first one. How many people have fallen victim to his atrocious manipulations? Now that he is dead, what am I supposed to do with his corpse? How will I ever explain that I don’t have an arm anymore?

All these questions were turning around in my head, and it took me a good hour to calm myself. Sitting on the floor, I could feel the phantom fingers on my missing arm typing on it. I didn’t know what to ask when I won, so I just took what I thought was valuable to me at the very moment: his life. I didn’t know what he was capable of if he had lost, and I didn’t want to find out.

But something bugged me after all of that. As the rays of sunlight entered the decrepit church, I wondered why he chose me in the first place. What do I have that he craved so much? As I understood it, the Soul Link Game was a way for you get anything from your opponent, so what was he about to ask if he won?

I finally decided to stand up. First, I had to get out of here. I took the material and erased the chalk circle as best as I could. There was no sign of aggression on Alex, so if his body is found, the cause of death pronounced will probably not be murder. And I had to do something for my arm, find an excuse first, then a way to, I don’t know, replace it?

I’ll figure something out.