Darkness. A silence so deep it felt alive.
When he opened his eyes, the world was not as he remembered it. Or had he ever truly remembered anything at all?
The streets stretched infinitely, lined with shadows of people who moved like echoes of the past. They spoke, they laughed, they suffered—yet none of them seemed aware of the cracks beneath their feet. Cracks that revealed a hidden path, one he had never noticed before.
"Something has changed… or maybe, I have."
He wasn't supposed to be here—not like this. He wasn't a player in this world, yet he could see it clearer than ever. Every choice, every pattern, every regret left behind like whispers in the air. The weight of knowledge pressed against him, but his hands remained empty. He could see the strings that controlled the world, but he couldn't touch them.
He was an observer, trapped inside a play where the actors never changed, yet their fates repeated endlessly. The system dictated their existence, their suffering, their choices—or the illusion of them.
"If you are not changing, you are choosing."
The thought echoed in his mind, not his own, but from something deeper.
And then, a voice—a whisper from the unseen:"Awaken."
The ground trembled. The system had noticed him.
The play had begun.