I dreamed of drowning in silence.
No water. No sky. Just stillness—soundless and cold—pressing in on me like the world had stopped breathing. I reached up. Something tugged back.
A thread.
Thin, silver. Familiar.
I followed it through the dark.
Then I woke up screaming.
Ren was there.
He didn't flinch when I grabbed him like a lifeline.
"You're back," he said quietly, brushing damp hair from my forehead. "You were gone longer this time."
"I blacked out?"
"No. You walked." His gaze was unreadable. "For nearly two hours. Through corridors that weren't there before. Talking to people who weren't real."
My pulse spiked. "What did I say?"
Ren hesitated. "You asked me to let you go."
We were in a theater now.
One that didn't exist a few minutes ago.
Behind the torn red curtains, rows of faceless mannequins sat stiffly in velvet chairs. The spotlight flickered overhead. The air smelled like old dust and moldy paper.
A script sat on the center stage.
Just one line on the cover:
"The Death of the Unwritten"
I stared. "It's about me."
Ren didn't reply.
He was pacing near the broken orchestra pit, hand to his temple. "This arc is rewriting itself. Faster than the system can stabilize it. It's not just reacting to you—it's obsessing."
I walked toward the script.
The moment I touched it, the lights flared on.
A bell rang.
And then the mannequins moved.
They stood one by one, jerking like badly-controlled puppets. Their masks—identical to the ones from the ballroom—began to crack.
A single spotlight focused on me.
A stage voice boomed overhead:
"Rehearsal begins. Cue: Betrayal."
The script flipped open by itself.
Scene One.
A foggy forest. Ren pointing a knife at me.
Lines appeared as if written by a furious hand:
REN: You were never supposed to exist.
YUSHENG: I don't care what the System wrote.
REN: Then die outside the script.
I dropped the book.
This scene—this moment—had never happened. But the memory was pressing into my skull like it had. Like I'd lived it, again and again.
I looked at Ren.
He was frozen.
"Ren?" I asked.
No response.
Then he moved—but not of his own will.
Like a string was yanking him into position.
He stood across the stage, eyes distant, lips moving against his will.
"You were never supposed to exist."
My heart slammed against my ribs.
"No. That's not your voice. That's—"
"REN: Then die outside the script."
He pulled a blade from his coat.
It shimmered like static.
I stumbled back, mind spinning. This wasn't Ren. Not my Ren. The script was hijacking his body, rewriting his role to match a system-designed narrative of betrayal.
"Fight it," I said, voice shaking.
Ren's body lunged. The knife slashed through the air, just missing my shoulder.
"REN!"
The coin burned in my pocket.
I yanked it free and held it out between us.
"Remember who you are!"
The coin glowed white-hot. A thread shot forward, latching onto his chest. Ren jerked—hard—like a puppet breaking its strings.
Then he dropped the blade and collapsed.
The lights snapped off.
The mannequins fell backward, twitching, spasming.
The script caught fire on its own.
Ren gasped on the floor, his hand clutching the coin-thread. "What the hell was that?"
"The rehearsal," I said bitterly. "The System wants us to act out its story. It's rewriting your body like code."
"And you?"
I looked at the fire. "It's trying to write me in. But it doesn't know what I am. So it's improvising."
We left the theater behind.
More corridors sprawled ahead, shifting like intestines.
Every hallway had mirrors again—but this time they didn't show reflections. They showed moments.
Frozen images from other loops.
In one, Ren stood over my corpse, covered in blood.
In another, I was alone in the cathedral from the first arc, speaking to an invisible presence.
In another still, Ren and I held hands, wearing matching masks: THE LOVER. Both of us.
"Is this real?" I asked.
Ren's voice was hoarse. "I don't know anymore."
He pressed a hand to the glass. "I do know I've seen that image before. Not in a loop. In a dream. Or maybe… a bleedover."
"What's a bleedover?"
"When two arcs overlap. When memory leaks between timelines."
We kept walking.
I passed a mirror where I was smiling—genuinely smiling, surrounded by people I didn't know. No blood. No horror. Just light.
I stopped.
"I think that's my real life."
Ren turned. "You remember?"
"No. But I feel it."
He looked at me for a long moment. Then said, "What's your name?"
"What?"
He stepped closer. "Your full name. Tell me."
I opened my mouth.
And nothing came out.
I froze.
"I… don't remember."
A system ping rang faintly in the air.
"IDENTITY DEGRADATION: 12%"
Ren grabbed my shoulders. "Listen to me. You're Yusheng. You are not a character. You came here from outside. You're not written. Say it."
"Yusheng," I whispered.
IDENTITY DEGRADATION: 9%
"Again!"
"Yusheng!"
IDENTITY DEGRADATION: 0%
The mirrors cracked in unison.
We reached a final chamber.
A circular space lined with seats, like a trial room.
At the center: a Podium of Roles—a spinning pillar holding every mask from before. They spun like a roulette wheel.
"Final Trial: Choose your ending."
Above us, two masks hovered—THE LOVER and THE TRAITOR.
One for each of us.
Ren turned to me, jaw tense. "It wants us to pick."
"Again?"
"This is the end of the arc. It can't transition us forward unless we confirm our 'roles.'"
I stared at the masks.
Ren whispered, "You don't have to pick the Lover. You don't have to pick anything."
I didn't move.
He added, "If you do pick it, make sure it's not for the System."
I looked up at him.
The boy who had once been my killer.
The man who had now saved me—twice.
I reached out.
And knocked both masks off the pedestal.
They shattered.
"ERROR: FINAL TRIAL INCOMPLETE."
"ESCALATION DETECTED."
"UNWRITTEN ENTITY HAS BROKEN ROLE PARAMETERS."
The chamber howled as the ground began to split.
Ren grabbed me as the walls collapsed around us.
We fell through ink.
Through mirrors.
Through screaming voices.
And landed—
—in a hallway of spiraling glass and echoing whispers.
Arc 3: The Glass Spiral had begun.