I woke up on the floor.
I stayed there longer than I should have. Not because I was scared. Because moving immediately felt like guessing, and I didn't want to guess yet.
The stone was cold against my back. Not painfully so. Just enough to register. Clean. Cheap. The kind of floor people chose when they didn't expect anyone to lie on it for long.
My mouth was dry. Uncomfortably dry. I swallowed and felt my throat hesitate, like it needed to remember how.
I tried again.That worked.
I opened my eyes.
The ceiling wasn't mine.
I stared at it anyway, waiting for recognition to kick in. It didn't. The cracks ran in the wrong directions. The light came from the side, muted and gray.
I closed my eyes once more.Opened them.
Nothing changed.
So. Not a dream.
I pushed myself up slowly. Pain flared along my ribs, deeper than surface pain, dull and persistent. It wasn't sharp enough to panic over. Just present enough to be annoying.
I adjusted my posture until it eased.
Pain meant feedback.Feedback meant reality.
That helped. A little.
My hands looked wrong. Not injured exactly. Just… used. Dirt under the nails. Small cuts I didn't remember earning. One shallow slice across my palm, already closing.
I stood. My balance lagged behind my intent for half a second. Long enough to notice. Then it corrected itself, like my body was apologizing for the delay.
Slightly under-conditioned.Still usable.
The room was small. Bare. A narrow metal bed pushed against the wall. A thin blanket folded too neatly. A cracked screen opposite it, dark but humming faintly.
Someone expected me to wake up.
Just not for long.
Outside the window, the city made noise. Engines. Horns. Distant movement. Life continuing without pause.
So this wasn't a fantasy world.
That simplified things more than it should have.
I crossed the room and caught my reflection in the screen. The face looking back at me wasn't mine. Not shocking. Just… inconvenient. Thinner. Sharper. Tired in a way sleep wouldn't fix.
I checked the pockets of my clothes.
Clean. Plain. Maintained just enough to avoid attention.
Then my fingers closed around something stiff.
A card.
Not an ID.
A crest.
Embossed. Old. Restrained.
I recognized it instantly.
And felt irritation rise before I could stop it.
Not surprise.Not fear.
Annoyance.
I knew that crest. I remembered approving its design. Remembered deciding it was dignified enough to survive into later arcs. Stable. Inoffensive. Useful.
I had put it into the world.
Which meant I shouldn't be holding it.
House Calderon existed.Its patriarch existed.Its heir existed.
I remembered them clearly.
I did not remember Elias Calderon.
That wasn't confusing.
It felt… rude. Like spotting a typo in something I'd already published.
Footsteps slowed outside the door.
Stopped.
The door opened without a knock.
The man standing there hesitated when he saw me upright. His eyes flicked to the crest in my hand, then away. The pause was short. Intentional.
"You're awake," he said.
No title.No name.
He didn't speak down to me.
He didn't speak up either.
That gap told me enough.
"How long?" I asked.
"Since yesterday," he said. "Doctors said you'd recover on your own."
Doctors meant I mattered.
Recover on my own meant I didn't matter much.
"And my condition?"
"Stable," he said, after a pause. "There was concern initially. Given… your situation."
I followed him down the corridor without asking what that meant.
The halls were clean. Modern. Cameras watched openly, without urgency. This wasn't confinement.
It was storage.
The medical wing smelled faintly of antiseptic and something older beneath it. The doctor looked up when he saw me. Then looked again, slower.
"You're walking," he said.
"Yes."
"That's… unexpected."
I waited.
"Your file was marked resolved," he said.
Resolved.
Not healed.Not discharged.
Resolved.
"I assume that was an error," I said.
He didn't answer immediately.
"No," he said finally. "It wasn't."
Something in my chest tightened. Not fear. Recognition.
"The confirmation assessment recorded a fatal outcome," he continued. "Internal collapse. Cardiac arrest. No intervention ordered."
I nodded.
That explained the pain. The delay. The strange calm in the room.
"And yet," I said, "Elias Calderon is standing here."
"Yes," he said quietly. "That's the inconsistency."
I looked at the screen.
My name had no status beside it.
No alerts.No recovery notes.No future.
Just a closed file.
"You never reopened it," I said.
"The succession had already progressed," he replied. "Revisions would've caused complications."
"Political," I said.
"Administrative."
I breathed out slowly.
So this wasn't about killing me.
It was about simplifying things.
A weak heir created problems.A dead one removed them.
"I assume my survival wasn't reported," I said.
"There was no category for it."
Of course there wasn't.
From the system's perspective, Elias Calderon was already finished.
"Then what am I now?" I asked.
The doctor hesitated. Not out of kindness. Out of accuracy.
"Unofficial," he said. "You exist. But you're no longer expected."
Expected.
That word stuck longer than it should have.
I left before I decided why.
The cameras followed me down the hall. Not alarmed. Not focused. Just recording movement that didn't belong anywhere.
That was when it settled fully.
Elias Calderon hadn't survived because he mattered.
He had survived because something small went wrong.
Shadow—whatever fragment of it existed—had delayed what was meant to be final. Not enough to save me. Just enough to miss confirmation.
In the version of the world I wrote—
Elias Calderon died before the story began.
That was why nothing reacted to me.That was why the narrative didn't bend.That was why the world kept moving.
I stopped by the window and looked out at the city.
Somewhere out there, the real story was unfolding exactly as planned.
If Elias Calderon disappeared now, nothing would change.
That thought didn't scare me.
It made things clearer than I wanted.
If the world didn't need Elias Calderon—
Then whatever came next wouldn't be bound by expectations.
Or mercy.