I woke up from a dream that felt too scripted to be real.
Not the kind of dream where you're falling endlessly into an abyss, or chased by shadows that your mind never fully renders. No.This was more like —watching yourself from the outside,like reading your own death scene in a book, already published, already read by everyone but you.
[Error: System Integrity Compromised.][User "Ethan Kael" detected anomaly in primary narrative thread.]
The text flickered at the corner of my vision, disappearing the moment I tried to focus on it.It wasn't the first time.
My name is Ethan Kael.Age: 27.Occupation: Systems security consultant.Status: Narratively irrelevant.
At least, I thought so.Until last night.
Until I watched the world end for the first time.
No one else seemed to notice. The coffee shop still smelled of burnt beans and broken dreams. The city skyline still pierced the smog-heavy clouds like crooked teeth. People still scrolled through their feeds, blind to the countdown ticking in their peripheral vision.
[System Warning: Causality Loop Detected.]
I'd thought it was a glitch in my retinal HUD. Maybe stress-induced hallucination.But then I saw her.
She moved through the crowd like a phantom threaded into the seams of reality itself — a glitched frame in an otherwise smooth simulation. Her eyes were too sharp, too aware, scanning lines of unseen code hanging in the air between us.
And when her gaze met mine, something snapped.
The noise — unbearable, like every firewall I'd ever breached screaming at once.
"You can see it, can't you?" Her voice was a whisper beneath the sirens of the waking world. "The scaffold holding the world together."
I should've run. Should've told myself this was a psychotic break.
But instead, I asked, "What the hell is this?"
"A story," she replied, tilting her head like she was studying a chess piece just before removing it from the board. "A story that doesn't want you to wake up."
That's when the ground beneath us fractured.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
Hairline cracks spiderwebbed across the street, pixelated at the edges, like corrupted data. Civilians — or NPCs — froze mid-motion, eyes glazed over as if a switch had flipped in their programming.
[Narrative Threat Level: Critical.][Main Protagonist Confirmed.]
My chest tightened. Main protagonist? That wasn't right. I was never meant to be the protagonist. My life was supposed to be background noise.
"You weren't supposed to read the script," she said, a shadow of a smile playing at her lips. "But now you have. And they'll come for you."
"Who's they?" I demanded, though deep down, part of me already knew.
She raised her hand, fingers splayed, as though pulling back the curtain of reality itself.
And I saw them.
Figures draped in vestments of war, faces hidden behind porcelain masks carved with ancient runes. Knights of apocalyptic opera, marching in perfect synchrony toward the collapse of everything.
"The Thrones of Regression," she answered. "Antagonists of every failed narrative. Executioners of runaway protagonists."
I staggered back, breath hitching in my throat.
"But why me?" I choked out. "I didn't do anything."
"You existed," she said simply. "And you noticed."
Before I could respond, a blinding white text scrawled itself across the sky like a divine decree:
[Commencing Narrative Purge: 00:04:59]
The countdown had started.
I had five minutes to survive.