Prologue

We all make decisions. It's a part of life we can't escape or skip; you have to face each day and decide what is wrong and what is right. In the perfect world, that would be easy. There would never be regret. There would never be the doubt that consumes you after you've made your judgment.

But there isn't a perfect world. Earth isn't. Minecraftia isn't. Whatever worlds lay hidden among the spiraling galaxies and blankets of stars aren't the utopia we wish for deep down inside.

And so we hurt. Our insides twist and turn and our hearts stop when things turn out in a way we never intended because we know it's all our fault. That we should have seen an unpredictable future before it arrived.

The darkness grows.

In the perfect world, every action we made would belong to us and us alone. Then the regret would be justified, and the doubt we feel wouldn't be directed towards another.

But the reality is that our actions are heavily influenced by others. Questions make us hesitate before every decision because we know we could never blame the others. We only blame ourselves for the choices others push up on us.

The darkness bursts free when we realize how helpless we are to control our own fates. When we realize that everything we do is because we don't want to be left alone or hurt. Because we don't want to lose the ones we hold close. We wear our masks and play our games because we know that's all we can do if we want to survive.

But then, one day, we understand.

We understand that it's our lives and not theirs. That we decide what paths to follow. We shape our own destinies with our shaking, hesitant hands, and no matter what destinies they are, we will get through them. Every single living creature has that ability.

All that we have to do is find it.

Why should you believe the words of a complete stranger, one that you've never heard utter a single word before today? Because I've been through this all. I know the power we all have deep inside because I've discovered it. I've seen the truth of every single world in existence.

We all wish we could turn back time and change how things played out. We may not be able to return to the past, but we are in control of the future. It's up to us to choose our sides in the battle known as life; it's up to us to save or destroy the future our past has shaped. Whether you be a god, player, or mob, you can be a savior of the future.

Author's Note: Hello, reader of this fanfiction. I put this story to rest back in December of last year. I did so because of a dwindling amount of readers, but also because I was working on the draft of a novel. Roughly nine months later, I can gladly say that I finished my first draft.

And that's the reason I'm here right now. I needed something to write, and I realized just how close I was to finishing a story that meant so much to me. I'll always consider this to be one of my finest fanfictions. It deserves to be finished the proper way. So here we are, with a chapter of a fanfiction that I never really thought I would write more of.

If you're here now, thanks for checking out this work. It might be able to stand on it's own. I'm not sure. I'd suggest checking out its predecessor, A Hero's Destiny. I've improved a lot since I published the first chapter of that story, but I'd like to think that the tale I try to tell makes up for the less desirable parts. And if you've read through that or just don't feel like reading it, I hope you enjoy this fanfiction. It has its flaws, but it's a story that needs to be told.

So I'd like to present to you a story about the love between friends and family, and a story about all of the wonderful things that can blossom from loss.

September 17th, 2017

-Sae-