When did this discomfort first take hold?
I can't remember. Perhaps it was always there.
At the beginning, everything appeared ordinary... deceptively so.
I was born in an orphanage. Life there was brutal, born in a place of poverty, hence survival was only possible if one learned to endure quietly.
I lived alongside other abandoned children, not that all of us were connected through affection though, but rather by necessity.
After all, this world functioned on hierarchy.
Rank was truth.
Power was virtue.
People like us, having nothing else but each other.
The number of arts one wielded determined their value—wealth, reputation, even the right to breathe.
I possessed none of it.
Born without a bloodline, I inherited nothing. The very idea that someone like me could touch make arts was laughable.
Yes, this is what should define normal.
Hunger, Fatigue and Fear.
Those were constants and nothing felt out of place.
Until the fire came.
Flames consumed my sight. Screams fractured the air.
My siblings, those who had shared the same filth and cold orphanage were slaughtered before me, their bodies torn apart by a woman in white that existed only to kill.
In that moment, something inside me collapsed.
It's not my heart nor my sanity.
But my reality.
Because I understood then, my life had never been real.
This world was nothing more than a story in a novel called "The last rite". And I, Reol Luniven, was written to be its protagonist.
What was I supposed to feel, knowing their deaths were merely a narrative device for me?
Disgust? Terror? Or perhaps rage?
All of them felt artificial, as if emotions were pre-selected for me.
How could I feel anything genuine, when I realized there was an author looming above, scripting every thought I had ever believed to be my own?
Perhaps from the start, my choices, my grief and my despair was written by Him.
So no… I didn't feel anger.
I felt pity.
Pity for those still struggling, still hoping, unaware they were nothing but expendable sentences.
I often wonder, if they learned the truth as I did, would they scream? Or would they simply break?
That is why...
"Kek… kekek… HAHAHAHA! Rejoice! You've won!"
A white-haired woman lay crumpled on the floor, blood slick across her face, laughter bubbled from her throat like some insane patient.
"How does it feel?" she shrieked. "Knowing I killed every one of your siblings?!"
Reol merely looked down at her.
His face showed fury, though merely because it was expected to. But inside he felt nothing but a dull, hollow pity.
For Reol knew this woman was meant to be a villain. But not a kind of great evil, nor a lasting threat to him.
She was just a corpse-in-waiting to seal the main character's so called revenge. A sacrifice carved out for the sake of his growth.
He should have despised her. She had murdered those he once called family in the orphanage.
But she was as false as they were.
As false as he was.
Another puppet, who carried the same strings tangled with his own.
A character from a novel.
"Why—" she whispered but was cut off.
The question was meaningless.
Reol raised his scythe and severed her head in a single, practiced motion before she could even say another word.
Not that he can control his body anyways, it was bounded to follow the said script.
As blood soaked into the floor, a translucent crimson system emerged before his eyes.
[Chapter 102 — End.]
"How envious for you are finally out of the script" Reol whispered through his mind, as his body slowly blicker out the reality.
****