Checkpoint (Isekai)

It was the middle of the night when I stumbled upon it. It was at the bottom of the app store, among hundreds of nameless covers. The title promised a lot: A checkpoint guard in a world of swords, magic, and castles. The screenshots were blurry, there were three reviews, and all of them were raunchy. Bugs, glitches, and a difficulty that made you want to throw your phone at the wall. That's why no one played it. That's why I couldn't pass it up.

An hour later, I was cursing everything under the sun. Another loss, and again that mocking window with a single button: "Restart." I yawned so hard my jaw cracked. Sleep. Definitely sleep. But my finger was already reaching for the screen out of sheer stubbornness. This game was impossible to beat, which meant I couldn't just quit. I pressed it.

A flash. Not white, but golden, cutting into my eyes even through my eyelids, and then a female voice speaking of a key and a room. I opened my eyes and the first thing I felt was heaviness. Real heaviness: armor on my shoulders, belts on my chest, a sword in a sheath at my hip. My heart pounded in my throat. I was sitting at a rough wooden table in a spacious hall with a high vaulted ceiling, from which hung chains with lamps. The stone walls were lost in the gloom, and on either side were dark openings to adjoining rooms: an archive with shelves of scrolls was hinted at on the left, a narrow corridor with doors stretched to the right. Behind me stood a counter piled high with documents, and in front of me, behind a low barrier, a wide passage opened up, where a visitor could stand upright. There stood an elf. Pointed ears, silver hair, and a face like I'd ruined her entire morning.

I looked up. She looked back. Her fingers gripped the edge of the table, her breath hitched. My thoughts raced: where am I, what's going on, why are there so many doors around me. And then, above the panic, a realization dawned: this was the very point I'd just been trying to get past. Only now I'm not a player behind a screen, I'm the Overseer. And judging by her gaze, she's waiting for an answer.