When I woke, the world wasn't mine anymore.
The sky was still gray, the city still broken — but the layout had shifted.The overpass where we'd fought the Observer was gone.In its place stood a hospital, pristine and intact, light humming in its windows like it had always been there.
[Scenario 4 — The Mirror Draft][Primary Protagonist: Do-hyun][Secondary Entity: Jiho — Status: Unregistered Variable]
My stomach dropped.The system had rewritten the hierarchy.
Do-hyun stood a few meters away, staring up at the building.He looked… different.His clothes weren't torn anymore. His expression had softened, almost human — the coldness tempered into resolve.
The system was polishing him.Recasting him as the main character.
[Welcome, Player Do-hyun.][Your survival determines the continuation of this world.]
And me?The text beneath my name flickered before fading out.
[Error — Data fragment not recognized.]
He turned toward me. "You okay?"
I forced a smile. "Yeah. Fine."
He nodded, then scanned the hospital. "The system says survivors are inside. There's supposed to be a doctor with a stabilizer chip — it's the key to ending this scenario."
That line.It was straight from Chapter 61 of Heaven Falls Twice.But Do-hyun was saying it like he remembered it.
"Since when did you know about scenarios?" I asked.
He hesitated. "It's strange. The system… explained it when I woke up."He frowned. "Feels like I've done this before."
I stayed silent. Because I had read this before.And I knew how it ended.
Inside the hospital, the lights flickered with that familiar, sickly hue — pale blue and humming with digital interference.Every hallway looked identical.Every shadow moved half a second out of sync with its source.
The further we went, the more I felt the story resisting me.Every step I took left a faint shimmer in the air, like I was walking through the script instead of inside it.
[Unregistered variable detected.][Adjusting parameters.]
The walls shifted, narrowing.Do-hyun didn't seem to notice.To him, the world was perfect — stable, linear, designed.
He had become what I once was: the system's chosen lens.And I had become its contamination.
We reached the emergency ward.Inside, monitors pulsed softly, connected to a figure lying on the table — a woman in a bloodstained lab coat.Her ID tag read Dr. Kang Hae-won.
In the novel, she was supposed to explain the stabilizer chip's function: a device meant to freeze a timeline mid-collapse.But before she could finish, she'd die — killed by the system itself to prevent exposure.
Do-hyun stepped forward, his tone low but steady."Doctor. We need the chip."
Her eyes opened slowly, glassy and unfocused. "You… you're not supposed to be here yet."
Do-hyun frowned. "What do you mean?"
Her gaze flicked to me — and her voice changed, trembling."No. No, not again. You weren't in this one."
The lights above us burst.
[Observer Activity: 4.02 %.][Warning: Nonlinear entity interacting with Anchor Event.]
She reached for the terminal beside her, fingers shaking."Run," she whispered. "He's not the protagonist here."
And then her body convulsed — her form glitching apart into static.
[Anchor Breach Detected.][Rewriting protocol: Initiated.]
The hospital warped.The walls folded inward, the windows blinked out, and every line of text on the monitors rearranged into a single phrase:
[Return the story to its proper host.]
Do-hyun staggered backward, clutching his head.The system was pouring information into him — entire chapters of memory, written directly into his mind.He gasped, staring at me through the flickering light.
"Jiho… what are you?"
I didn't answer.Because every possible answer would destroy whatever trust we had left.
[Unregistered Variable destabilizing narrative cohesion.][Elimination recommended.]
The text appeared between us, hovering in midair.Do-hyun saw it.His eyes darkened.
"Is it true?" he asked quietly. "If I kill you, does this stop?"
I smiled — small, tired, real."No. But it might finally make sense."
The floor cracked open beneath us, pulling the world apart.Half of the hospital slid upward into blinding light; the other half sank into shadow.The system couldn't decide which version was real.
Do-hyun reached for me as we fell, his voice sharp against the chaos."Then tell me how to end it, Jiho!"
I shouted over the roar of collapsing reality:"You can't end a story that hasn't decided who's writing it!"
[Warning: Narrative Thread Divergence Exceeds 5%.][Observer Class II Manifestation Incoming.]
We hit the ground.Everything went white.And through the static, I heard a whisper — calm, amused, and unbearably familiar.
"Draft 1.0 initiated. Let's try this again."