The last thing I remembered was the stale, cheap smell of burnt coffee filling my nose, and the sensation of my fingertips resting against the hard plastic of the keyboard. The familiar disappointment I felt as I hovered over the Delete key—the loathing a writer feels toward his own creation—was like a slow poison gnawing at my soul.
My name… what was my name again?
Ah, right. It didn't matter. I was just a failed writer.
For three years, I had been trying to write that cursed novel titled The Sovereign of Aether. The same novel readers had torn apart as "cliché," "boring," and "trash." And that night, I had finally decided they were right. I was moments away from erasing the entire file—three years of my life—forever.
Then, a sharp pain stabbed into my chest.
It felt as if an invisible hand had wrapped itself around my heart and begun to squeeze. A heart attack? Caffeine overdose? Or was this the universe's way of telling me, Enough. End this miserable farce?
My vision darkened. My consciousness sank into static-filled blackness, like the screen of an old television losing signal.
Beep… Beep… Beep…
A rhythmic, metallic, irritating sound. My head was splitting open—no, that was too mild. It felt like someone had shoved a rusted blender into my skull and cranked it to maximum speed. My temples throbbed as my thoughts collided into one another.
Where am I? I thought, but the words never left my lips. My throat was painfully dry, as if I hadn't had a drop of water in days.
My eyelids weighed a ton. Opening them required inhuman effort. I expected to see the sterile white ceiling of a hospital room—or the yellowed, damp ceiling of the basement apartment I could barely afford.
Instead, I saw smooth metallic-gray panels streaked with faintly humming blue neon lines. The light was artificial, cold, and harsh enough to burn my pupils.
I tried to sit up.
And that was when the first shock hit me.
My body… wasn't mine.
The center of gravity felt wrong. My arms were lighter, my legs longer. The familiar ache in my lower back—earned from years of sitting hunched over a desk—was gone. In its place flowed a strange, tingling current of energy.
With trembling hands, I threw the blanket aside.
This wasn't a room—it was a futuristic capsule. Semi-transparent holographic screens drifted along the walls, stock market data and weather reports suspended in midair.
"This has to be a dream," I whispered.
The moment I heard my voice, I froze.
This wasn't my voice. Mine had been rough, deep, frayed by cigarettes and exhaustion. This one was smooth, young… and weak.
I stood up. My knees trembled as I staggered toward the sink in the corner, as if gravity itself had shifted. I gripped the wide mirror above it, afraid to lift my head. A primal instinct screamed at me to run—to flee from what I was about to see.
I took a deep breath.
And looked up.
The reflection stared back at me.
But it wasn't me.
The face in the mirror wasn't that weary man in his thirties, hair unkempt, beard grown wild.
It was a boy—sixteen, maybe seventeen at most. Messy coal-black hair. Pale, almost sickly skin. Dark violet circles carved beneath his eyes from chronic exhaustion. His features were actually handsome: a sharp, noble jawline and a straight nose. But the air of defeat clinging to him dulled everything.
This was the face of a victim.
I raised a hand and touched my cheek. The boy in the mirror did the same. I tugged at my lower lip. Blinked.
Every movement was instantaneous.
This wasn't a hallucination.
This flesh, these bones, this reflection… were real.
"This… this is impossible…"
That was when it appeared.
In the lower-right corner of my vision, floating over the mirror's reflection, a translucent blue window flickered into existence—like the interface of a video game.
[System Synchronization Complete]
[Soul Integration: 98%]
[Welcome, Student Arthur Knox]
Arthur Knox.
The name struck my mind like lightning.
I knew that name.
I had created it.
My blood ran cold. Panic cascaded over me like ice water. Acid burned its way up my throat. Arthur Knox—the orphaned son of a bankrupt family. Talentless. F-Rank. A disposable background character from the earliest drafts of The Sovereign of Aether, written solely to show how cruel the world was before being abandoned as narratively useless.
Academy punching bag.
I searched my mind in desperation.
The plot. The timeline. Arthur Knox's role.
Two lives collided inside my head. On one side, the outlines of the novel I had written. On the other, the memories of this boy's life—days filled with humiliation, scorn, and quiet suffering.
And then, I remembered the truth.
Arthur Knox's story was short.
He was the nameless student who died during the very first real mission after the Apex Academy entrance exam—the Dungeon Exploration. The weakest link. The bait. The one who had to be torn apart by a monster so the protagonist, Lucas Sol, could shine as a hero and leader.
With a trembling finger, I touched the holographic calendar floating in the air.
Date: September 12, 2145
My eyes widened. My breath caught in my chest. The reflection in the mirror grew even paler.
The Dungeon Exploration.
The Whispering Caves.
It began tomorrow morning.
According to the script, tomorrow afternoon—around 2:30 PM—I would die with my throat ripped open by a Shadow Wolf.
That meant I had less than twenty-four hours to live.
I sprang from the bed.
My legs trembled—not from fear, but from pure, searing rage.
Was I really going to die in a world I had created? Killed by a scenario I had written? Reduced to an F-Rank piece of trash, a nameless extra—murdered by my own pen?
"No," I said.
This time, my voice was firm.
Something ignited in the eyes of the weak boy staring back at me—something that had never been there before.
If I had written this world, then no one understood its rules better than I did. I was its god.
And gods could change fate.
From the deepest recesses of my memory, a forbidden place surfaced—one never used in the published version of the novel. A concept my editor had forced me to cut, calling it "too dark." A secret buried only in my world-building notes.
A place even Lucas Sol never knew about.
The Reflection Lake.
According to legend, anyone who entered it would either be erased from existence… or be reborn.
Lucas could never take that risk. He was the Son of Light, destined for greatness, with everything to lose.
But me?
My name was Arthur Knox.
Ranked 1997th out of 2000 students.
Dead by tomorrow.
I had nothing to lose.
I looked at my reflection one last time. The cowardly fear in that boy's eyes was gone—replaced by the desperate madness of a gambler cornered with everything on the line.
"I'm all in," I whispered to the empty room. My voice no longer shook.
"Take my eyes, my arms, this cursed weak body—take it all.
Just give me one chance."
As I stepped out of the room, the digital clock above the door read 04:00.
The Academy was still asleep.
Before dawn broke, I had to reach the forbidden zone.
I had to reach the lake.