Level Up Scholarship

A lonely vessel wanders across a desolate land, rusted nail in hand. Its kingdom has fallen to corruption— deteriorated long before its eyes opened. This vessel carries out a sacred mission, journeying into the kingdom’s heart to battle against the infection. Never does the vessel speak, but conviction oozes from every motion— the will of a knight in a dying world. Hollow Knight, a video game set in the kingdom of Hallownest, designates the player as the Knight, one vessel birthed among hundreds identical, designed as weapons to seal away an infection. The King cast these vessels— his children— into an abyss; the first to resurface was named the chosen vessel and raised to contain the infection. Proving impure, however, the King’s vessel failed. Eventually, a discarded vessel, the Knight, crawled out of the abyss, emerging from a sea of its siblings’ corpses to discover a kingdom overtaken. The Knight thus embarked to set its world right. Hollow Knight resonated tragedies I understood well. I saw my own face reflected back at me— my own knight, born from the void and struggling for the light. Ruthless bosses challenged me to confront my ghosts. Hallownest’s King, the father who abandoned his progeny— he was my father, I realized, as I ascended a pale tower and stood before his throne. My father, a veteran of war, cares for me, I am sure, but through his drinking, he has produced a lonely existence. Meanwhile, my mother is still a fearful child. She could not undo his teachings or seize her own control. Like the Knight, I was failed and thrust into a bleak, rotten world. But I stand resilient. I wield my pen— a rusted nail— and I craft stories and worlds. I dream such wild dreams, even though I'm told not to dream at all. If the King’s palace is not home, then I'll forge my own. In miniature ways, I sustain hope. I take neighborhood walks, gazing in wonder as cirrus clouds float along and coral shimmers frame the Texas sky. I bake blueberry muffins and apple pies. I read physics books and write about birds and butterflies. I channel my ghosts into my art, so that when I stand on-stage and read my work, I may be haunted but I will always be truthful. I hold my head high, looking ever-forward because the future is the direction of dreams, and their magnitude is hope. In Hollow Knight’s true ending, the Knight prevails, banishing the infection. Even for the darkest souls, there is always hope. Always another chance to try— another solution to a problem, another day to fight. Hollow Knight spurred my interest in game design. Games have healed me and transformed me. No medium resonates more deeply or blends art and technology to the same degree. In the present I live in, when I put plays to the stage or numbers to the page, I do so from ambition, so that I may someday reach someone in the way this game reached me. In the future I envision, my life will consist of far more than hopes and dreams— I will prevail.