In a perfectly unremarkable corner of the world — a storage room that had somehow not collapsed like the rest — there lay a single velvet pillow, untouched by time or entropy.
On it, he reclined.
A cat. Though calling him that would be a disservice to cats everywhere — because this one wore a custom-stitched cravat, had golden eyes that blinked in six directions of sarcasm, and was in the middle of writing a complaint letter with his tail.
"Dear universe," he muttered, "I explicitly requested no memory loops before breakfast."
The pen fell. The inkwell tipped. He didn't care.
He was above this. Above all of it.
And yet — below the surface — his ears twitched.
Something had shifted. The smell of the story was different now. Less scripted. More… permanent. He stood, fur immaculate, and walked to the corner where a broken screen flickered.
It showed Rin.
She was bleeding again. Why was she always bleeding?
"You soft-hearted protagonist types," he sighed. "You get all the screen time and none of the nuance."
His tail lashed once.
Then he sneezed — a catastrophic, magical sneeze — and a dozen alternate timelines briefly spawned and collapsed in the air above him.
"Oops. My bad."
The cat walked over to a stack of books he'd definitely not stolen from the developers and pushed the top one off with a paw. It was titled:
"How to Subtly Hijack the Plot Without Anyone Noticing."
He had underlined Chapter 7: Let the Humans Think It Was Their Idea.
Outside, a faint tremor passed through the floor.
"Well," the cat said, stretching. "If the Threadwriter's finally decided to finish his knitting, I suppose someone needs to maintain genre stability."
He leapt to a floating panel, typing something in a language only genre systems understood.
Then he paused.
Looked directly into the unseen camera.
"Tell Aro I liked him better when he was delusional. Tell Rin she owes me tuna."
And with that, he vanished.