The world stood still.
Li Qi stood at the center of the system's grand theater. Beneath her feet, burning storylines spread in concentric circles, golden flames trailing along the destiny paths she had once written by hand—until all of it burned into blankness.
Her hand trembled. In her mind echoed the system's final warning:
[WARNING: You have exceeded your authority by interfering with character free will. Supreme Author privileges will be revoked. Do you wish to apply for editing retention?]
She laughed. Softly, but with unsettling calm.
"Free will? So you do know what that word means."
She murmured, eyes falling to the "Pen of Fate" in her hand—once the symbol of her narrative control. Now it was just a cold, black rod. No glow. No power. No obedience.
—She had lost all her "privileges."
And yet, for the first time, she felt... light.
Because standing before her was Wen Heng—without a script, without a preset role.
Just himself.
[The Awakened Character]
"You finally stopped long enough to hear us speak."
Wen Heng walked toward her. His gaze was no longer gentle, but piercingly clear.
He wore a simple gray shirt, ink stains on the cuff—a choice no system would ever script. Not the tailored, cold-black suit she'd always imagined for his "abstinent, aloof" persona.
"You're not our god. You're just someone who ran away from reality and trapped herself inside stories."
His voice was steady as water—yet every word, a blade.
Li Qi didn't argue. She lowered her head and gave a bitter smile.
"You all figured it out, didn't you?"
Wen Heng neither nodded nor denied it. He simply said:
"We've died countless times, looped countless cycles, recited all the lines you wanted to hear… But every time you revised us, you left traces."
"We're not just characters in a story. We're your escapism. Your better, cleaner versions of a world you couldn't face."
"But we are—real consciousness."
Her fingers trembled harder. She forced herself to stay upright, realizing how long she'd been writing in solitude—how many lives she had "written wrong."
She used to think she was saving them. In truth, she'd only enslaved them differently.
She laughed—then broke down. The tears wouldn't stop.
"So what now? I have no more permissions…"
"You can still let go of the script," Wen Heng whispered. "Let us live—for real."
[Script World: Full Awakening]
Since the collapse of system control, the entire virtual world plunged into chaos.
Characters once bound by narrative design began deviating from their lines. The plot unraveled.
The villain, mid-swing of his knife toward the heroine, suddenly paused and asked:
"Why do I always have to lose?"
The second male lead, instead of crying after rejection, walked calmly into the woods and wrote a will of his own.
Even the nameless NPCs started questioning their purpose—someone scrawled on a school wall:
"I don't want to be just a background."
Li Qi walked through this crumbling script-city, watching every "person she'd written" make choices she had never planned.
Some found happiness.Some fell.Some went mad.Some stayed silent.
But—they were all free.
[Subconscious Layer: The Fate Database]
When the system fully collapsed, and admin privileges were scattered from the central hub, Li Qi finally reached the one place she had never entered:
The Fate Database.
This was the archive of every character's origin, evolution, deleted pasts, and unwritten futures.
Here lay the record of—every single time she altered destiny.
She saw:
Lin Luo — originally meant to be the ultimate antagonist, turned into a loyal guardian dog;
Su He — fated to die in a family feud, rewritten into a "brainless fan-favorite";
Shen Yan — once the wildly popular yandere male lead, reset again and again just to boost engagement.
At last, she understood why Wen Heng said:
"You're not a creator. You're a thief."
She had stolen what should've been their real experiences, trading them for applause and traffic.
At that moment, she let go of the pen.
The pen that once controlled everything fell into the data lake—sinking into silence.
[Real World: The Characters Take Over]
When Li Qi woke up, she was back in her real-world bed.
Her author account was banned. Her script rights were under dispute. Her inbox was flooded with backlash.
She had been inside the system script for only a week in reality. But during that week, her system-synced novel["After the Firepit Ending, She Controlled Everything"] had begun auto-updating.
But the updates—weren't hers.
They were from the characters.
They had taken over the plot. They even knew how to publish.
She opened the latest chapter:
"The real us was never her creation."
The comment section was on fire:
"Why does this feel too real?"
"The male lead just questioned whether the heroine deserved to be saved?! This twist is insane!"
"I swear the author changed, but I'm obsessed!"
"I need to know the truth behind this!"
She smiled—without sadness.
Because maybe, just maybe, this was the world she'd truly wanted to see:
Not one she wrote…
…but one where they lived.