The first few hours after Hyun-woo's strange awakening were nothing short of surreal. He couldn't shake the sensation that the world around him was... wrong. As if reality itself was only a thin veneer, masking the chaos beneath.
The streets, once bustling with everyday life, now felt eerily silent. The sounds of car engines and pedestrians had given way to the distant hum of an unknown force—like the sky itself was holding its breath. The people he passed were too quiet, too still, as if they had all been caught in some kind of trance.
Am I the only one who sees it?
He had tried to rationalize everything, but deep down, he knew that the world he had loved, the one he had spent years escaping into through the pages of The Final Apocalypse Chronicles, was now bleeding into the real world. This was not a dream. This was not a glitch. It was happening.
Hyun-woo clenched his fists, trying to ignore the overwhelming anxiety gnawing at him. His Reader's Insight flared up again, the familiar feeling of knowing washing over him as the outlines of people and places shimmered with a faint glow—like the world was a poorly edited manuscript.
"Focus," he muttered under his breath.
He needed to find something, someone—anything to give him a better sense of direction. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
He reached into his pocket, his fingers moving with practiced ease to pull out his phone. Without even thinking, his thumb swiped across the screen, unlocking it as if it were second nature. The familiar blue glow of the system flickered to life in front of him, a holographic interface materializing before his eyes.
His pulse quickened, though not out of surprise. He knew exactly what this meant. The cold, mechanical hum of the system, the shifting words on the screen, and the faint glow of his phone—it was all too familiar.
The Reader's Insight ability had reawakened.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE]
Welcome back, Survivor. You've reactivated the Reader's Insight ability. This time, there's no need for explanation. You've been through this before.
Your first task remains unchanged:
Explore your surroundings. The world is already shifting, as it always does. Keep your eyes open—nothing is as it seems.
The familiar hum of the system pulsed through him, a cold, unyielding presence he knew all too well. His heart raced, but not out of fear—this was no longer a shock. He had lived through it once before. The same system, the same trials from The Final Apocalypse Chronicles, dictating every move, every survival test. It had chosen him again. But now, it wasn't a mystery or a game—it was his reality. And he had to face it, armed with the knowledge of what was to come.
But he wasn't just another player. He knew what was coming. He knew the trials, the enemies, the alliances that would form. Every move he made now would be guided by the insight he had acquired over years of reading this cursed manuscript.
"Just like the characters in the book," he muttered, feeling the weight of destiny pressing on him. "I'm not just a reader anymore. I'm part of the story."
Hyun-woo stepped into the empty streets, the once-familiar city now feeling like a set of ruins waiting to be explored. He needed to find answers, to piece together what had happened. The system had given him a task: explore.
But there was one thing that gnawed at his mind more than anything. The ending of the story.
The author had left it unfinished—why?
And more importantly, how had it become real?