The kiss tasted like ashes.
Lucien's lips were cold, his grip bruising, the Storyweaver's curse sanding down edges they'd never asked to keep—bit down hard. The general recoiled, blood blooming on his perfect mouth.
"Darling," Lucien purred, wiping crimson onto his sleeve, "you always did love teeth."
Alex's cybernetic arm, now a skeletal gauntlet of glowing runes (fantasy's answer to sci-fi), crackled with unstable magic. The romance arc was collapsing, the ballroom fracturing into a storm of rose petals and shrapnel. Lucien's ex, the swordswoman, lunged from a nearby portal—her blade singing with the same glitched static as the slasher's knife.
"You stole him!" she screamed.
"He's yours," Alex spat, ducking as her sword cleaved a chandelier. Glass rained down, each shard reflecting a different Alex: horror-survivor, smirking lover, hollow-eyed soldier.
The Storyweaver's voice boomed:
TROPE GOAL FAILED: TRUE LOVE'S KISS INCOMPLETE
PENALTY: GENRE COLLISION INITIATED
The floor dropped.
Alex fell through layers of worlds—a mecha cockpit (sci-fi), a zombie horde (horror), a high school locker room (rom-com)—before crash-landing in mud. The stench of iron and dragonfire hit them first.
CHAPTER 3: THE DARK LORD'S TWINK
GENRE: FANTASY // TROPE COMPLETION GOAL: KILL THE DEMON KING
"Oh, you've got to be joking," Alex groaned.
They lay chained in a war camp, their outfit replaced by a sheer silk tunic that left nothing to the orcish warlords leering nearby. Their cybernetic arm had morphed into a vine-twined prosthetic, thorns biting their skin. The sword? A cursed dagger strapped to their thigh, its hilt shaped like a lover's clasped hands.
"The half-elf tribute awakes," rumbled a shadow.
The Demon King was… Lucien. Again. But taller, horned, his military uniform swapped for obsidian armor. His smile was a predator's. "You'll make a fine bride for the court."
Alex's laugh was jagged. "Let me guess. I'm the 'chosen one' sent to seduce and slay?"
"You're the expendable one," the Demon King corrected, gripping Alex's chin. "But fret not. Your screams will be poetic."
Mid-sneer, Alex's dagger moved on its own—the horror genre's "Final Girl" reflexes, repurposed. The blade sank into the Demon King's thigh. Not lethal, but symbolic.
"Rule one of storytelling," Alex hissed, "never monologue."
The camp erupted. Alex bolted, silk tunic tearing, as fireballs lit the night. Their dagger's hilt whispered:
Achievement Unlocked: [F*** Around & Find Out]
Reward: "The Fourth Wall" (Tier 2)
—Summon a weapon/ally from a prior genre (1x per chapter).
They skidded to a halt at a cliff's edge. Below, a siege raged—elves vs. demons vs. a battalion of WWII-era tanks (genre collision's doing). Above, the Storyweaver's constellations mocked them: DRAGON TROPE 78% COMPLETE.
Alex raised their thorned arm. "You want a story? Fine."
They slammed their fist into the ground. The world glitched—and the slasher's pixelated knife erupted from the soil, hilt-first.
"Let's draft."