The next door wasn't marked with a number.
It wasn't even a proper door—just a slit in the shifting walls, breathing faintly like lungs beneath skin. A sour, electric taste clung to the air. It reeked of something unfinished.
Ren stopped short, his hand instinctively falling to the knife strapped at his hip.
"This wasn't supposed to open yet."
I glanced at him. "But it's open now."
His jaw worked silently before he finally said, "It's called the Alignment Room. You're not meant to see it until your role is stable—until you've proven whether you're the protagonist or the antagonist."
I stared at the dark opening. "And if I haven't?"
"You're undefined. The System doesn't like undefined." He looked at me. "But it fears anomalies more."
That word again. Anomaly. I was starting to understand why this place hated me.
Before I could ask more, the System's voice rang out—low, metallic, cold:
"Alignment Clarity Trial Initiated.
Candidate: Lin Yusheng.
Status: Unstable.
Objective: Classify Narrative Function."
I stepped through before I could talk myself out of it.
The chamber closed behind me.
Everything inside was silent, the kind of silence that seemed aware—too full, too expectant. The walls were paneled in black glass, reflective and warped. It was like standing inside a fractured mirror.
A single screen hovered in the middle of the room. Lines of code flickered across it—then stopped.
Then my face appeared.
Older.
Hardened.
Blood smeared across my cheek, expression cold. I watched myself drag another player—someone injured—toward an approaching threat and throw them forward as bait.
The screen labeled it cleanly:
"Projected Role: Antagonist. Probability: 68%."
I stepped back. "That's not—"
The screen flickered again. New image.
Still me.
Now kneeling in front of a child, shielding them with my body while I bled out, smiling weakly despite the terror clawing at my face.
"Projected Role: Protagonist. Probability: 57%."
The numbers didn't line up. Neither added to 100%. It wasn't a math problem—it was a threat.
More flickers. More versions of me.
—laughing in a room full of corpses.
—leading survivors with quiet certainty.
—alone, muttering in the dark, eyes sunken, knife in hand.
The System wasn't offering choices. It was showing outcomes.
"Select Dominant Path: Elimination or Sacrifice."
I stared. "Why only those two?"
"Narrative requires balance. Roles must be filled. Your presence disrupts pattern integrity."
So that was it. The story needed me to fit. Hero or villain. Survivor or butcher. Hope or horror.
I clenched my fists. "I'm not one or the other."
"Then you are nothing."
My chest tightened.
"Or I'm something else," I said quietly.
Silence.
Then static screamed through the room—glitches tearing across the mirror walls. Images rippled across them: Ren, screaming. Ren, bleeding. Ren, holding my hand as a monster closed in.
Each time, my face changed—merciful, cruel, hollow, desperate.
"Your variable status jeopardizes arc cohesion. Choose."
I walked to the screen. Slowly. Calmly.
And I touched it.
"I won't play your game."
The chamber flickered like a dying bulb. The screen spasmed, then froze.
A single line appeared:
"Role: Refused."
Then another, slower:
"New Classification Detected: Flux Alignment."
The floor cracked open, revealing a small pedestal rising upward.
On it, an obsidian coin.
Perfectly smooth. Cold. A single symbol engraved on its surface:
∆
A delta. Change. Instability. Evolution.
"Narrative Fragment Granted."
"System Instability +14%. Threat Level Escalated."
"Warning: Arc Compression Imminent."
I picked up the coin.
And I felt it—warmth spreading through my fingers, a low hum in my bones. Like a sliver of power, stolen from something bigger than I could comprehend.
Something old.
Something angry.
The door opened.
Ren was waiting in the hall, leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed. But the tension in his shoulders gave him away.
When I stepped out, he looked me over—eyes stopping on the coin in my hand.
"…You refused the role, didn't you?"
I nodded. "It offered two paths. I made a third."
He exhaled through his nose. "Of course you did."
We began walking.
"The coin?" he asked.
"Something called a Narrative Fragment."
His jaw tightened. "You're not supposed to have that yet. That's for late-stage protagonists—or… or chaos players. Not someone in their third room."
"Guess I broke something."
"No," he said quietly. "You woke something."
The walls changed as we walked—once-smooth surfaces twitching, bleeding black oil from their seams. Lights blinked overhead. The very bones of the house groaned.
Then came the system's next message, scrawled in bloodred text across the wall:
"ERROR: ANOMALY UNCONTAINED."
"NEW FLOW DETECTED."
"ADJUSTING DIFFICULTY."
I looked at Ren. "What does that mean?"
He met my gaze, voice steady but grim. "It means the house doesn't know what story it's telling anymore."
That night, we didn't return to our rooms.
There were no rooms left.
Where the hallway should've ended, a stairwell spiraled downward—concrete steps slick with black mold and rust. Cold air rose from below. Wet, electric. Hungry.
Ren drew his blade.
I gripped the coin.
As we stepped onto the staircase, I felt the house shift again—like it had turned its head to watch me.
And this time, it wasn't just curious.
It was afraid.