There are moments that feel like they don't belong to you. Moments where time slows—not for drama, but because something bigger is watching. When I raised the Forgotten Pen, the Tower didn't stop me.
It waited.
Like it was daring me to try.
---
The Corrupted Draft lunged.
A mass of sentences turned into claws, slashing across the clearing. It moved with the force of a rewritten climax, fast and wide, impossible to dodge.
I didn't dodge.
I didn't even move.
Because I had the Pen.
And a single thought burned through me:
This isn't how it's supposed to go.
---
> [The Forgotten Pen has activated.]
You may overwrite one moment of reality per floor.
Input: "The Guardian's attack fails to land."
Reality jolted. Like a record scratch in my spine.
The air rippled like a page flipping in reverse. The claws that should have torn me apart simply... passed through. The Guardian's half-burnt manuscript face twitched. Pages curled at its edges like it couldn't process what just happened.
Jiwoon gasped from behind me. "How did you—?!"
I didn't answer.
Because Ereze was already moving.
No Pen. No skill activation. Just brutal instinct.
She slid beneath the Guardian's arm, her inkstone blade flashing once across its knee. Letters spilled out like blood. Not red. Not black. But white-hot characters that hissed when they hit the ground.
The Guardian screamed.
It was a sound made from torn narration and corrupted voiceovers.
---
> [Corrupted Draft is destabilizing.]
Weakness revealed: Contradictions.
---
Contradictions.
Not power. Not stats.
Choices the Tower didn't expect.
I understood now. If the Tower followed a script, then the only way to win was to break it.
"Split up!" I yelled. "Do something that doesn't make sense! Anything!"
Arien stared. "Like what?!"
"I don't know! Hug it! Kiss the dirt! Dance the macarena! Just don't act like you're in a damn fantasy novel!"
They scattered.
Jiwoon threw his sword into a bush and grabbed a stick, waving it like a mage staff. "Behold! My branch of doom!"
Arien burst out laughing. It was manic. Raw. Beautifully disruptive. She spun in place and sang off-key. One of the newer kids charged the Guardian while screaming, "Pineapple belongs on pizza!"
Even the Tower glitched.
The sky flickered.
A line of broken text hovered above us, unreadable.
And me?
I ran straight toward the Guardian.
No weapon.
No plan.
Just one sentence echoing in my head:
> "The protagonist was never meant to survive this chapter."
So I did what that version of me never could.
I tried to rewrite it again.
---
> [You've attempted to invoke a second Rewrite.]
Warning: This exceeds system limitations.
Risk: Unleashing Narrative Collapse.
Proceed?
Yes.
Yes, damn it.
I clicked yes.
The Forgotten Pen screamed in my hand.
Then it shattered.
Ink exploded across my skin, crawling up my veins, burning with liquid paragraphs.
The world cracked.
Not a quake. A break.
Like a book spine torn too far.
The trees turned into paper. Wind whispered in lines of code. Pages fell from the sky like dead leaves.
And the Guardian—
—screamed again.
Not in anger.
In fear.
It unraveled. Words ripped from its body. Sentences flew into the wind, lost forever. Its cracked spine collapsed into the dirt, and the last thing it said, in a dozen broken narrators' voices was:
> "The Reader must… obey…"
Then silence.
---
The sky above us tore.
Not cracked. Tore.
A vertical rip, bleeding static.
And through it, something looked back.
Not a person.
Not a god.
Something worse.
Eyes like full stops.
A mouth stitched with quotation marks.
It didn't blink. Didn't move.
It just watched.
> [Narrative Disturbance Detected.]
The Author is now aware of your presence.
My knees buckled. I dropped to the ground, gasping.
The Pen was gone.
The Guardian was gone.
But something older, colder, sharper had just noticed me.
I looked at Ereze. She didn't speak at first.
Just stared at the sky.
Then she whispered, barely audible over the falling static:
"You woke Him up too early."
Her voice shook.
And that scared me more than anything else.
---
> To be continued.