Synopsis

The heart of Save: Me revolves around the brutal Crucible, an extravagant gladiatorial event that sees armies, known as Legions doing battle in cities, dungeons, and anywhere else that will draw a crowd. Beyond its economic impact and the creation of heroes, this grimdark sport is essential for satisfying the deepest, darkest entities from the void. It is within this chaotic, cosmic brawl that one reluctant fighter from a small, blue, insignificant planet becomes the eye of a much older storm.

​

After an apocalyptic event leaves Earth potentially destroyed, Ryo Laene, a young African American man struggling with his own identity and crushed beneath the weight of loss and cowardice, crawls into a fantasy world where people worship a mystical force known as the Light, a divine power that has replaced technology and progress.

​

His only remaining anchor is Sara, his close friend, left soulless in the wake of the catastrophe.

Determined to retrieve her spirit, Ryo must survive a brutal landscape shaped by living miracles while the Wretch’s incessant whispers gnaw at the edges of his mind.

But unlike those glittery fantasy stories of fairies and indignant, though welcoming, sharp-eared elves, Ryo is instead met with scorn and nearly executed upon arrival. After narrowly dodging exile, he receives his first assignment:

​

Voluntary Enslavement.

​

Forced into the service of a gruff blacksmith, he is given impossible tasks that wear on his psyche, and later mentored by Haven, a spectral mage haunted, like Ryo, by the Wretch. Through her, Ryo learns the art of war and how to utilize the divine Light, even though he is highly skeptical of its cultish following. Constantly, comically reminded of his lacking strength, Ryo joins the Crucible in hopes of growing strong enough to rescue Sara's soul, or at the very least overcoming the fear that shamed him into inaction.​ 

Within his Legion, Ryo finds both disastrous but endearing companions: Ruby, a sardonic, lovely assassin; Hayle, a stoic knight of frost; and Axel, a sadistic, lightning-born natural disaster who delights in beating as much skill into Ryo as he can. Together, they fight, bleed, and sleep their way through the carnage as our main character begins to unravel the truth of his connection to the Light. His emerging power marks him as a Tainted, a being infused with twisted, dimensional energies from the Hollow, so volatile it corrodes both mind and matter. The more he attempts to uncover, the closer a new, unknown entity from the darkness creeps. When his instability is exposed within the Crucible, the fragile reality he's worked so painstakingly to construct, slowly begins to crumble, opening a path for his ever-watching Wretch to crawl through.

​

Haunted by the faceless, hunted by guilt, teetering on the brink of madness and questioning his existence, Ryo faces two paths: abandon hope and accept that mortality is gray, or embrace the darkness that destroyed his home and become a monster.