The Tower cracked open.
Not with sound.
But with intent.
Reality bent. Folded inward. Light tore sideways, and time tripped over itself.
Kael clutched her head, stumbling.
I stood still.
Because I recognized it.
The same presence I'd felt since the beginning.
The one behind the system.
Behind the rules.
The one that gave me a class with no power and watched to see what I'd do.
Now, it stepped through the breach.
The Narrator.
Not a figure. Not exactly.
A silhouette made of ink and static. Head constantly shifting — sometimes mine, sometimes Kael's, sometimes no one at all. Voice like a god clearing its throat in an empty library.
It didn't walk. It happened.
"You've gone off script."
"You were meant to die in the first chapter."
"A tragic genius. A quiet failure. The system gave you a final problem, and you solved it."
"So why are you still here?"
I stepped forward.
"Because I'm the answer you didn't account for."
The Tower flickered behind me. The floor beneath us became pages. Floating words. Chapters unspooled like entrails.
"You are not a protagonist," the Narrator said.
"You are not chosen."
"You are a misprint."
"And misprints get corrected."
It raised a hand.
And the world rewound.
Suddenly I was back in the mud.
Chains on my wrists.
Smoke in the sky.
Screams in the air.
"Let's try again," it said.
"But this time, no theatrics. No glitches. No system errors. You die as you were meant to: irrelevant."
The wyvern screamed in the sky.
But I didn't move.
Didn't scream.
Didn't buy the lie.
Because this wasn't the past.
This was a page.
A story being re-inked.
And I had the pen now.
🧾 [Last Echo: Fully Synced]🧾 [Permission Override: Manual Edit Enabled]🧾 [Writing Mode: Active]
"You want a story?" I said.
"Then let me tell you how this ends."
The chains shattered.
The sky split open.
Kael's voice rang through the cracks — not in the past, but the present.
"Itsuki! Wake up!"
"We're still in the Tower!"
"FIGHT IT!"
I stood in both timelines.
Both versions of myself.
One: Drudge. Weak. Doomed.
One: Unbound. Writer. Rebel.
I reached into the memory of the first and rewrote it.
[New Opening: "I didn't die solving a math problem. I solved the world."][New Trait: AUTHOR OF ERROR]You are no longer part of the narrative. You write over it in real time.
The false past burned away.
And the Tower shook.
The Narrator screamed—not in pain, but in loss. Words peeled off its form. Its face split into conflicting arcs. Romance. Tragedy. Villain origin. Comedic relief.
None of them fit anymore.
"You… you're not playing fair…"
"No," I said. "I'm not playing your game."
Kael pulled herself up beside me.
The Tower was collapsing.
The worlds were glitching.
Trial Realms flickered in and out of existence above us — fragments of hells, false gods, looping deaths.
I pointed at the Narrator.
"You've been editing everyone's endings for too long."
"I'm taking the quill."
The sky split.
And in my hand appeared something impossible.
A pen.
Made of error messages and rewrite commands.
Dripping with deleted scenes and corrupted dreams.
The Pen of the Unwritten.
The final weapon.
[Narrative Control: TRANSFERRED][Warning: Ending will no longer be system-approved][Proceed with Unauthorized Conclusion?]
Y/N
I didn't just press Y.
I wrote it in blood.