It began with a laugh.
Too loud.
Too long.
Too wrong.
I turned.
Everyone in the gym froze. The sound came from the back — the shadows near the shattered vending machines, where the glass still crunched faintly beneath our steps.
Min Sera was laughing.
The same girl I'd saved two nights ago.
The one who was supposed to die.
Now she stood in the flickering torchlight, arms hanging loose, head tilted slightly to the left like her neck couldn't hold its weight, and her eyes — glassy, distant, wrong.
"Sera…?" Arien stepped toward her carefully.
Like approaching a wounded dog. Or a trap pretending to be human.
Min Sera smiled.
But it wasn't her smile.
---
> [Narrative Distortion Detected]
NPC Rewriter Active
Target: Min Sera
Role Rewritten:
[Background Civilian → Apostle of the Hollow Flame]
Trait: Parasite Memory (Infectious)
Alignment: Corrupted
Objective: Break the Story's Spine
---
My stomach twisted.
This wasn't in the novel.
This wasn't even in the author's deleted notes.
The system wasn't just punishing me for saving her.
It was correcting the story by weaponizing her.
Like white blood cells turning into knives.
"You should've let me die," she whispered.
Then she lunged.
Not at me — at Arien.
The flame wielder barely reacted in time. Her reforged sword, still glowing faintly from yesterday's Trait awakening, intercepted the strike in a burst of sparks.
But Sera didn't stop.
She twisted, reversed her grip, drew a hidden dagger with her left hand and slashed upward.
Arien fell back, the blade missing her throat by inches.
"She's fast!" someone shouted. "Faster than yesterday!"
Too fast.
Sera dropped low, swept her leg under another student, then hurled a folding chair into a third. Blood sprayed against the gym floor as screams filled the air again.
We were back in Day One.
Except this time, the enemy wore a familiar face.
And she moved like a shadow wrapped in flame.
---
I didn't move.
Not yet.
Because I was watching her eyes.
They were glowing.
Orange.
But not like fire.
Like a dying star.
---
> [System Message: Hidden Mechanic Unlocked – World Threads]
You changed fate. Fate rewrote something else.
Min Sera now carries a piece of the Demon God's soul — your future self.
---
No.
No, no, no.
That wasn't supposed to happen until Chapter 117.
The fragments of the Demon God — they came later. Long after the Tower Arcs. After the War of Faith. After the Protagonist had already ascended.
This was too early.
Too unstable.
I looked at her — and she looked at me. Just for a second.
And she smiled.
> "Reader…"
She knew.
She knew what I was.
What I would become.
What I had already broken by existing.
And then she turned and stabbed Han Woojin.
The boy had tried to grapple her from behind. A dumb move. A brave one. The dagger slipped beneath his ribs and upward — expertly angled.
He didn't scream. He just dropped.
> Named Character 'Han Woojin' has died.
Trait Unlocked: Puppet Fire – Passive (Min Sera)
Each death strengthens the flame.
The temperature spiked.
The torches sputtered. The mist outside thickened. A shadow flickered across the gym wall — too large to be hers.
I felt it.
Something ancient stirring.
"Sera!" Arien yelled. "Stop! You're not—"
But she didn't finish.
Because Min Sera turned again, her body twitching, her jaw unhinging for half a second like her bones had forgotten how to human. The flame from Han Woojin's corpse crawled across the floor and into her.
I moved.
Not because I wanted to.
But because I was supposed to.
The torch in my hand cracked against her wrist. The dagger dropped with a metallic clatter.
I grabbed her by the collar and slammed her back into the gym wall.
"Wake. Up." I hissed.
Her eyes — bright orange — stared into mine.
"You're already changing," she whispered. "You just don't see it yet."
---
> [Narrative Conflict Reached]
Do you wish to seal or kill the Rewritten?
[Option: Kill – Unlock Fragment of Demon God]
[Option: Seal – Delay Fragment Awakening]
---
The words floated in front of me, glowing.
Time slowed.
Behind me, someone sobbed. Another screamed. Somewhere, someone prayed.
In the story, the protagonist never had to make this kind of choice.
Not this early.
But I wasn't the protagonist.
I was the mistake.
I chose—
> [Seal]
---
Black light shimmered from my palm.
Ink — thick, swirling, living — erupted from the floor like serpents of a forgotten author's curse.
They coiled around Min Sera's limbs, around her neck, around her voice.
She shrieked.
Not just once.
But twice.
One voice screamed like a girl.
The other — like me.
The flame around her body died.
And she collapsed.
---
Silence.
Min Sera lay unconscious at my feet, wrapped in living chains of ink. The gym floor stank of ash and blood and melted steel.
No one moved.
They didn't look at her.
They looked at me.
---
> Deviation: +12%
You have delayed the Demon God's arrival.
But the seed is already growing.
---
Arien didn't speak to me that night.
Neither did the others.
Not openly.
But I saw them whisper.
I felt their eyes follow me when I walked, when I breathed.
Even the ones I had saved now looked at me like I was part of the problem.
Because I was.
Min Sera was supposed to die.
I saved her.
And now one of us was dead anyway.
Only the wrong one.
---
That night, while the others huddled near the unbroken gym windows, barricading them with desks and metal bars, I sat alone.
Not because I wanted to.
But because I had to.
The system hadn't just rewritten Sera.
It had shown me the next piece of the truth.
The Demon God wasn't a thing waiting far away in the late-game.
It was already here.
In pieces.
And I was one of them.
---
Except… I wasn't the only one who knew.
"Hey."
The voice came from behind the stacked chairs.
A boy.
Thin. Quiet. Hoodie too big for him. The kind of kid teachers forgot during roll call.
He stepped forward slowly.
He looked at me and said:
"I know you."
I didn't answer.
"You're not one of us," he said. "You've read this, haven't you?"
I froze.
He smiled. Not kindly. Not cruelly.
Just knowingly.
"So have I."