The game didn't crash. There was no "Match Terminated" screen. Instead, the screen simply went black. A single line of white text appeared in the center of his monitor:

He looked back at the forum thread to find the "Simple Valorant Triggerbot" post. It had been deleted. In its place was a new thread with hundreds of comments from users realizing the "simple" hack was actually a honeypot—a trap set by developers to catch anyone looking for an easy way out.

Elias stared, frozen. He tried to restart the game, but the launcher wouldn't even open. He tried to log into his account on his phone, only to see the words: Account Permanently Suspended.

The flickering glow of the monitor was the only light in Elias’s room as he stared at the forum post:

All the skins, the rank, the thousands of hours—gone in an afternoon.