"Wake up."
The voice was sharp. Impatient.
I gasped, sucking in a breath that tasted of stone dust and... ozone? No. Rain. Clean rain.
I opened my eyes.
I wasn't on a floating platform anymore. I was lying on the cobblestones of the Capital Plaza. The sky above wasn't a flickering hex-code nightmare; it was a deep, bruised purple of a natural twilight.
I sat up. My body screamed. My ribs ached, my head pounded, and my chest felt like it had been stitched together with rusty wire.
I looked down.
My hoodie was gone. I was wearing a rough tunic, like a common NPC. I pulled the collar down. The hole in my chest was gone. In its place was a scar—ugly, pink, and jagged.
I looked for the UI. I squinted, trying to summon the [Status Window].
Nothing happened.
I waved my hand in the air. "System? Console? Pause Menu?"
Nothing. No blue boxes. No floating numbers.
The world was silent. But it was a heavy, dense silence. The wind felt real against my skin. The stone under my hands felt cold and solid, not like a texture map.
"It’s gone," a voice said.
I looked up.
Seraphina was sitting on a fallen pillar nearby.
She looked different. The glowing "bloom" effect was gone from her skin. Her hair was messy and matted with mud. Her armor was dull, scratched, and dented. She looked smaller.
She looked human.
She was holding Star-Caller. The sword didn't hum with holy energy anymore. It was just a sharp piece of steel.
"The floating letters," she said, looking at the sky. " The red monster. The voice that told me where to go. It is all gone."
"Yeah," I croaked. My voice was raspy. "I... I patched it. I gave the world its own physics. No more Admin. No more script."
I tried to stand, but my knees wobbled. "Which means... I'm stuck here. And I'm just a guy. A level nothing guy."
Seraphina stood up. She walked toward me. Her boots clicked on the stones. It was a terrifyingly grounded sound.
She stopped in front of me. She smelled like sweat, blood, and rain.
"You gave up your power," she stated.
"It was the only way to kill the Editor," I said, leaning against a wall for support. "It couldn't delete a world that wasn't a file anymore."
She nodded slowly. Her hand tightened on the hilt of her sword.
This was it. The Echo. The moment from Chapter 2, reversed. Back then, I was the Admin, and she was the helpless character. Now, I was the helpless human, and she was the one with the weapon.
She raised the sword. The tip hovered inches from my throat.
I didn't flinch. I was too tired to run. And honestly? I probably deserved it.
"Do it," I whispered. "I wrote a tragedy, remember? This is the only way it makes sense."
Seraphina looked at me. Her eyes were blue—just blue. Not neon. Not electric. A deep, cold ocean blue. She searched my face, looking for the arrogance I used to have. She didn't find it.
She lowered the sword.
With a sharp shing, she slid it back into the scabbard at her hip.
"No," she said.
I blinked. "No?"
"You controlled my life for twenty years, Arthur," she said, her voice hard as iron. "You decided when I fought. You decided when I cried. You decided when I bled."
She stepped closer, invading my personal space.
"If I kill you now, because of what you wrote... then I am still following your plot. I am still the 'Vengeful Heroine' you created."
She turned away from me, looking out over the ruins of the Capital. The sun was beginning to rise—a real, optical sunrise, painting the clouds in gold and pink.
"I am not a character anymore," she said. "I do not do things for 'poetic justice' or 'thematic resonance.' I do them because I choose to."
She looked back over her shoulder. A small, grim smile touched her lips.
"Besides. Death is too easy for you. You created this broken, messy world? Fine. Now you have to live in it."
She started walking toward the city gates.
"Coming?" she called out, not waiting for me. "I need a drink. And you have no money, no skills, and no stamina. You will die within the hour without me."
I stood there for a moment, stunned. I touched the scar on my chest.
My heart was beating. Fast. Irregular. Human.
"Hey!" I shouted, pushing myself off the wall and limping after her. "Wait up! I know where the secret treasury is! I think!"
"You think?" she scoffed, not slowing down.
"I wrote it! It should be under the cathedral!"
"Then you better hope you didn't delete the cathedral in a fit of laziness, Author."
"My name is Arthur!"
"We'll see," she said.
I caught up to her, struggling to match her stride. The sun hit my face, warm and blinding. The UI was gone. The plot was gone. The ending was gone.
For the first time in my life, I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next.
It was terrifying.
It was perfect.
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Closing Note：I’m stuck on a plot point! Help me decide the Heroine's next move on our Discord: https://discord.gg/M4nEZ7TzW7
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and then Add to home screen.