The last thing I remembered from my old life was a loading screen.
Not the dramatic kind.
No blinding light. No goddess. No voice asking if I accepted my fate.
Just a frozen laptop, a half-finished cup of instant noodles, and the realization that I had wasted another night doing nothing I actually cared about.
I had been twenty-one.
Undecided major. No ambitions worth naming. Good at following instructions. Great at being invisible.
When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I saw was text.
[Welcome to Everfall Online.]
[Assigning Role…]
[Tutorial NPC – Guidance Type]
I remember laughing.
"Wait," I said, staring at the words floating in front of me. "No. That's not funny."
My voice echoed in a small stone room. Sunlight through cracked stained glass. A chapel that smelled faintly of dust and old incense.
I tried to move—and a pressure pushed me back down.
[NPC Movement Restricted During Initialization.]
That was when I realized something was very wrong.
I wasn't a hero.
I wasn't even a background mob.
I was the character players skipped through.
The one who explained controls.
The one who pointed toward the first quest.
The one who died during the tutorial boss fight to show how dangerous the world was.
I learned that last part quickly.
The first hero arrived full of excitement, armor still clean, eyes shining like this was the beginning of something great.
I told him what the system told me to say.
He thanked me.
He ran ahead.
And when the monster appeared, it ignored him—and killed me instead.
Steel through my chest.
Pain. Shock. Darkness.
Then—
[Resetting World State…]
I woke up on the chapel floor.
Alive.
The hero walked in again.
Same smile. Same confidence. Same words.
That was when panic set in.
I tried screaming.
I tried running.
I tried refusing to speak.
The system corrected me every time.
So I learned.
I learned the timing of the boss's swing.
I learned how long it took for players to reach the chapel.
I learned that when the world reset, everyone forgot—
Everyone except me.
By the tenth reset, I stopped fighting it.
By the twentieth, I stopped hoping it would end.
By the forty-seventh, it was routine.
Steel passed through my chest exactly as the system intended—clean, efficient, merciful. The tutorial boss didn't hesitate. It never did. My vision dimmed, blue text flickered at the edge of my sight, and the world dissolved into white.
[Resetting World State…]
I woke up on the stone floor of the chapel.
Sunlight. Dust. The bell outside, ringing off-key.
And three seconds later, the door opened.
She stepped inside, robe brushing the floor, wooden staff held like she wasn't sure she deserved it.
"Oh!" she said. "You're awake already?"
Same words. Same smile.
Lira knelt beside me and began to heal my left hand first, like she always did.
I watched her and wondered—for the thousandth time—
if forgetting was a mercy.
"Nice to meet you," she said warmly. "I'm Lira. I'll be your healer while you're here."
While you're here.
I smiled back.
In a few minutes, I would die again.
In a few hours, the world would reset.
And tomorrow, she would smile at me like we were strangers.
But I would remember.
I always did.