The Warden of the Grand Prison

!NOTICE! For the best reading experience, please use the Browser Version of Royal Road in your digital device. The mobile app version breaks the format and makes the intended experience hard to read. Please use The Browser Version for your sake. Adjust font size to 14 pt, reader width to 100%, paragraph spacing to 40, and use the "Lucida" font style. 25 years ago, one of the biggest internet mysteries began from one of the most popular games of the 2000’s Lethe. A game that defined the Western RPG genre, and also produced an entity displaying anomalous properties. This being is known as the Warden, a Lethe guard who has been known to aid those in dire need in the real world, and punish those who have committed severe transgressions. The latter disappear under unknown circumstances without a trace. And these disappearances have only sparked more curiosity, and fear among those who know him.  I’m John Bielik of Digital Investigations. Join me on a deep dive on possibly one of the most unusual NPC’s to be whispered on various forums of the internet. An NPC whose motives have long been kept a mystery, until now. Here on Digital Investigations, we ask the big questions regarding this anomalous entity: Why can an NPC interact with people from the real world? Why does he either help or harm others? What happened to those who disappeared as of a result of his intervention? With several witness testimonies and evidence, we are about to embark on a journey through the darkest recesses of the internet to uncover the answers to those questions…and more. For this is a journey of the digital mind, and of forbidden knowledge…Be prepared for a descent into the digital unknown. !NOTICE! At no point was AI used for the drafting and 3-Edit process. All writing and editing was done by me for the sake of human creativity. Weekly Releases: Thursdays at 5:33 PM (CST) and Saturdays at 9:17 AM (CST) Book 2, Act 1 completed. Book 2, Act 2 scheduled to release on September 3rd, 2026 at 5:33 PM CST The programs used while writing this story were: Google Docs: Writing the Story Pro Writing Aid: Consistency, Flow, and Grammatical Checks/Edits Krita: Cover Art and Typeart The Digital Breaths logo was done by me and no AI had a hand in its creation.