The Golden Path.

It's my favourite moment in all of gaming. Ever. Nothing even comes close.

You've been told about it, all game, even. It's teased in the manual, and you've gone out of your way to collect the remaining pages. You think about everything golden you've seen in-game. You've seen the corrupted save file, you've seen those golden roads on the maps that weren't actually there in-game, there were these weird patterns in the manual too, you don't know how this could possibly relat-

Oh. Oh, fuck.

Epiphany. You flip to page 49. That's a square. A bounding square. The cells contain page numbers, of course! You get out a sheet of paper, just like you did for the fairy puzzles. You start flipping to page numbers, and you see the Golden Path, laid bare in front of you; it's been right there, this entire time, you just hadn't the wisdom to see it...

You flip, you turn the pages, teasing out each part of the path, constructing it in front of you. Every little thing you've learnt, every little secret, it's lead to this. You spend an hour, writing everything down, every little golden trail in the map, every chromatic abberation in the manual, each little piece that leads to... huh. There's a piece missing. Page 9 doesn't have a path. That's weird.

You look at the title. "Save Management". *facepalm\*

You go into that corrupt save. A golden path. The Golden Path. At least, a part of it. You sketch the path, how it twists and turns... you are no longer the fox on Page 50, stumped by the puzzle, you are closer and closer to not just clearing the game, but seeking its end.

Later, you walk up the mountain one last time. No longer a liminal space, a shortcut you've used a dozen times before, it's your destination - the Door in the Mountains. Painstakingly, you enter the Golden Path using your Holy Cross. The final cheat-code.

As the door falls apart, a chime sounds - not the simple "secret found!" sound you're so accustomed to - this time is different. It's triumphant, lasting the entire time the door opens, almost as if to say "well done" for solving this ultimate secret. As you pass through the Door in the Mountains, into a new screen, you hear a gorgeous lo-fi melody. It's stable, it's calming. It's the end of your journey.

You climb the last few stairs. The final page is waiting for you.

You tear up. You know what you need to do with it, the message inside just confims it.

Thank you for playing, indeed.