Aren liked reading stories at night.
Not because they comforted him, but because they were predictable. Every world followed rules, even when it pretended not to. Cause, effect. Setup, payoff. Failure was usually foreshadowed long before it arrived.
He lay on his bed with a book resting open in one hand, the other idly turning pages. The story was medieval fantasy—magic, nobility, wars that reshaped maps every generation. He had already read it once. This was his second pass, slower, more critical.
The protagonist had just survived another crisis.
Aren noted the pattern. Timing was too convenient. The supporting characters behaved unnaturally, bending themselves around the main plot. Even the antagonists felt… restrained. As if the world itself refused to let the story end early.
He closed the book halfway through the chapter.
"Too forgiving," he thought.
If the world were real, the protagonist should have died three times already.
Aren was used to this kind of thinking. Since childhood, he had viewed problems the same way—systems to be dissected, assumptions to be tested. Teachers called him a genius. Classmates called him distant. Neither description mattered much to him.
What mattered was consistency.
He glanced at the time. Past midnight. Tomorrow's schedule was already memorized. Exams held no pressure anymore; they were checkpoints, not obstacles.
He placed the book aside and stood.
The apartment was quiet. Too quiet. His parents were away on a business trip, something that had become normal over the years. Independence had arrived early for him, not as rebellion, but as default.
Aren poured himself a glass of water. As he drank, he felt a sudden tightness in his chest.
It wasn't pain at first. More like resistance. As if his body hesitated.
He set the glass down.
Another step forward, then his vision dimmed slightly at the edges. His heartbeat stumbled, corrected itself, then stumbled again.
Interesting, he thought calmly. Symptoms don't align with fatigue.
He reached for the table to steady himself. His fingers missed.
The world tilted.
Aren collapsed to the floor, the sound dull against the carpet. His breathing turned shallow, uneven. The ceiling light above him blurred into a pale shape.
So this is happening, he realized.
There was no panic. Only assessment.
No prior conditions. No warning signs. Probability of sudden cardiac failure: low, but not zero. Genetic anomaly, perhaps. Or something undetected.
He tried to move his arm. It responded sluggishly.
His thoughts slowed, but they did not scatter.
The book lay on the bed, still open. He wondered absently if the protagonist would survive the next chapter as well. Most likely. The author wasn't the type to take risks.
Aren found that mildly disappointing.
His breathing became shallow enough that he stopped trying to regulate it. The effort no longer seemed efficient.
This is inefficient, he thought. Dying without conclusion.
There were no regrets in the dramatic sense. No unspoken confessions. No desperate wishes. Only unfinished ideas—concepts that would never be refined, questions that would remain unanswered.
Time stretched, then lost its shape.
His vision faded completely.
Aren Vale died quietly, in a room filled with books, before he could reach the ending of the story he was reading.