The dawn that should have ended Scenario 2 never came.The sky lightened for a breath, then glitched—sunlight replaced by a cold wash of gray, like the world had tried to render morning and forgotten how.
[Scenario 2 — Completed.][Reward pending.][Observer Activity: 1.02 %.][Story Divergence: 1.14 %.]
It was the first time the two numbers crossed.
Do-hyun stood a few meters ahead, pipe slung across his shoulder, eyes sweeping the horizon. He looked untouched by exhaustion, but there was something different about him—his movements, his silence, a faint lag between gesture and sound.Like reality needed an extra second to remember he existed.
I knew that symptom. It wasn't in the version I'd read.
We reached the outskirts of the city—fields of glass and twisted concrete where the system had wiped everything it no longer needed. The wind hummed across hollow metal, carrying the faint static whisper that had followed me since the night began.
It wasn't the wind.It was them.
[Observer Signal Detected.]
A ripple crossed the air. Shapes flickered in and out—fragments of people, half-transparent, caught mid-gesture. A woman sobbing against a wall that wasn't there. A man shouting names I didn't know. Buildings I'd never seen collapsing silently behind them.
Scenes from stories that never finished.
Do-hyun didn't react at first. Then he looked sideways at me, voice low."You see them too."
I hesitated. "…You do?"
He nodded once, slow. "For a moment. Then they vanish."His tone stayed cold, but there was the faintest shadow of unease in it.
We found an abandoned subway entrance and went below, the tunnels breathing with slow drafts of air. System text glowed faintly on the walls like graffiti—fragments of half-deleted commands.
I traced one with my fingers. The letters rearranged themselves under my touch.
[IMPORT FAILED – DRAFT 0.7][Re-stitching narrative thread.]
My pulse quickened. "Draft 0.7…"That meant there had been six versions before mine.
Do-hyun stopped beside me. "You're muttering again."
"It's nothing."
He studied the text, expression unreadable. "Nothing doesn't make the walls bleed code."
He was right. The tunnel shimmered faintly now, like it was reflecting some other place—the same tunnel, but flooded with light, blood-red letters scrawled across the ceiling.
And in that reflection, I saw myself.Older.Tired.Whispering the same words I was thinking now.
This isn't the first time.
The ground trembled. A chime rang through the tunnel, warped and distorted.
[New Scenario — Pending Load.][Narrative stability critical.][Initiating emergency thread merge.]
The walls around us rippled, fragments of two different worlds overlapping—one from the city above, another from a forest that didn't exist here.The smell of ozone filled my lungs.
Do-hyun's voice cut through the static. "What's happening?"
"The story's pulling from older versions," I said before I could stop myself. "Ones that were erased."
He turned to me sharply. "How would you know that?"
Because I had seen it—in dreams, in flickers between scenarios, in the way the world repeated lines I remembered reading.Because this wasn't the first time this story had tried to exist.
But I couldn't tell him that.Not yet.
Something stepped out of the rippling air.It looked like me.
Not exactly—older, thinner, the same scar across the eyebrow I didn't have yesterday.Its eyes glowed faint gold, like corrupted data.
[Observer Instance 03 — Echo of Reader.]
The duplicate looked at me with quiet recognition.Its voice was the sound of static filtered through breath."You shouldn't be here, Jiho."
Do-hyun raised his weapon, but I grabbed his wrist. "Don't."
"Why?"
"Because it's not real," I whispered. "It's a remnant."
The echo smiled—a tired, broken curve. "We were real once. Until you finished it."
Then it dissolved into dust, leaving behind a faint shimmer that sank into the tunnel floor.
[Observer Assimilation Complete.][Story Divergence: 1.87 %.]
Do-hyun looked at me for a long moment. "Every time you open your mouth, reality gets stranger."
"Maybe reality was already strange," I said quietly.
He studied me in silence.Then, colder: "If these… things are coming for you, you'd better start explaining why."
I met his eyes. "Because I think this world isn't the first one. And we're walking through the ruins of the others."
The tunnel flickered again, showing the same place—flooded, burning, endless repetitions layered over one another.
[Warning: Observer Activity Rising.][Next Scenario will be unstable.]
Do-hyun turned toward the far exit, voice clipped. "Then we'd better be ready."
He walked into the shifting light, his outline momentarily duplicating into three overlapping versions before merging back into one.
I stayed behind for a moment, staring at the message that had appeared on the wall where the echo had vanished.
[Welcome to Draft 0.8.]
And beneath it, faintly carved into the concrete, a line that no system should have written:
We all thought we were the main version once.