The silence of the library shattered—not with sound, but with realization.
I blinked.
Once.
Twice.
And just like that, the illusion broke.
He was not Sebastian.
The moment my vision cleared, the man before me transformed—not physically, but perceptually. Gone was the dignified guardian, the composed sentinel of forgotten truths. In his place stood a boy—perhaps no older than twenty. His hands trembled around a simple kitchen knife, and despite his shaky resolve, he stood between me and the strange door I had nearly stepped toward.
A hallucination?A trap?Or had my mind, disoriented from dimension-warp and spiritual fracture, betrayed me?
The boy's eyes darted across the room, but always returned to me.Was he afraid? Or simply calculating?
As my thoughts raced, a more grounding concern pushed its way to the surface.
"Just moments ago, I was in the apartment," I murmured to myself. "I was meditating. Grounded. Flesh and blood."I looked down, lifted my hand, and pressed my fingers into my forearm. The sensation of pressure, of resistance, of pain—it was all real.This wasn't a vision.I was here. Physically. Somehow.
But why?
Before I could complete the thought, the boy spoke. His voice was uncertain, the cadence too casual to match the knife in his hand.
"Hey… kid. What's your name? I'm not gonna hurt you, you can come closer."
Kid?My eyes narrowed slightly.
Ah… right.This body—my original one. I must appear young. Human. Weak.
I took a breath and let my voice flow—deep, cold, weighted.
"Do you know where we are?"
He hesitated. His eyebrows lifted slightly in confusion before he tilted his head.
"You're… not here by accident? I figured you signed up for the test."
Test?
No such thing existed in my original timeline. My memories—vivid, vast, spanning millennia—held no record of a trial such as this. Yet this child spoke as if it were normal. Expected.
He continued, voice gaining confidence, though his hand still clutched the knife far too tightly.
"Every year they pick people. Some chosen, some not. You go through the door, take the test. You passed the first one, right? I mean… you did kill someone, didn't you?"
My gaze hardened.
Kill someone? In my first life?I searched the memory, the original me—fragile, mortal, idealistic. No... he had never drawn blood.
"You must kill to enter?" I asked, slowly.
He nodded. "Yeah. That's how it starts for everyone. Only the guilty are chosen."His tone was strange—somewhere between indoctrinated certainty and desperation.
"Are these tests… famous?"
He shrugged. "Not really. Only certain people get picked. Families. Clans. Monsters."
Monsters? Clans?No.This wasn't my past.This was a past, but not the one I had lived.
I felt the divergence then, deep in my bones like a shift in gravity.A new timeline? A simulation? A broken loop?Something was wrong.
And before I could ask more, before I could piece it together—
—He Lunged.
The knife plunged into my chest, right beneath the sternum. The force was clumsy, the angle poor, but the blade found flesh and bone. I gasped, more in surprise than in pain, but the metallic taste of blood rose fast.
"I'm sorry," the boy whispered through trembling lips, "but I… I have to survive. You understand, right?"
A twitch ran through my eye.
How predictable.
My hand snapped forward, clutching his wrist before he could pull away. I twisted my torso, driving the blade deeper into my own chest—not out of self-destruction, but to lock him in place.
His eyes widened in horror.
"W-what are you—?"
But the words never finished.
With the other hand, I grabbed the back of his neck and yanked him forward.
My teeth sank into his throat.
A crunch. A rupture. A spray of heat and life.
His body convulsed violently, voice catching in a gurgle. I pressed my hand against his chest and drank—not blood, not flesh, but Essence. The raw vitality that kept him tethered to this world. It flooded into me like a stolen breath.
And in those final seconds, he found words again. Desperate. Spitting.
"No… no, you're not supposed to be here… they said people like you… like you don't show up until the tenth test—**THEY LIED TO ME—**ADMIN, HELP—!"
Admin?
My eyes narrowed as his soul flickered and dimmed.
So there it was. Confirmation.This place was structured. Monitored. Orchestrated.And very likely… artificial.
I dropped his husk. The sound of his lifeless body hitting the floor echoed across the space.
I stood again.The knife still in my chest.The blood still on my lips.
I rolled my neck, vertebrae cracking like dry twigs in the wind.
"Admin… huh," I muttered, a thin smile curling across my face. "Interesting."
The room remained still.
But somewhere behind the silence, I could feel it—the watchers. The gods of this realm. Or perhaps just parasites in white coats and observation chambers.
I turned to the door.
Whatever this test was…
I was going to pass it.And I was going to find whoever dared rewrite the truth of my past.