The academy library was quiet. Too quiet.
Hae-won sat among the shelves, his back pressed against the cold stone wall, half-buried in shadows. Books towered on either side, their spines worn smooth by hands long gone. The place smelled of paper and dust—comforting once, suffocating now.
He couldn't stop shaking.
Not from fear this time. Not even from exhaustion.
It was the words. Her words.
"I've walked through worse."
"Dozens of worlds."
"You think you're the only one to bleed for the ledger?"
Seo Ha-young's voice wouldn't leave him, repeating like a chant, mocking him with the weight of truths he hadn't even considered possible.
Regression was supposed to be his curse. His prison. His torment alone.
But what if it wasn't?
What if he wasn't special at all?
His hands trembled on the open book before him. He hadn't read a single word on the page. The letters blurred into shapes, then into blood.
The library doors groaned open.
Hae-won's body tensed instantly.
Footsteps. Soft, measured, deliberate. Not the careless chatter of students, not the stern march of professors. No—he recognized this rhythm already.
Seo Ha-young.
She found him easily, as though she had known he would be here. She always did.
"You look like a ghost," she said, her voice echoing softly in the cavernous space.
He didn't lift his head. "Leave me alone."
Instead, she walked closer, her presence heavy but unhurried. She sat down across from him, folding her arms on the table like they were old friends studying together. The bruise on her jaw—his punch—was still there, though lighter now. She hadn't tried to hide it. She wore it openly, like a scar meant to be remembered.
"I warned you not to bore me," she said lightly. "And hiding in the library doesn't count as entertainment."
Hae-won's gaze snapped up, his voice harsh. "Stop playing games. What are you?"
Her smile widened, slow and deliberate. "Finally. The real question."
She leaned back in her chair, tilting her head so moonlight from the high windows caught her face. Her eyes gleamed with something deeper than mischief, something colder than cruelty.
"I'm a traveler," she said simply. "Not of roads or seas. Of worlds."
The words hit him like a hammer.
His throat tightened. "…Worlds."
"Yes," she said. "Dimensions. Realities. Whatever word makes it easier to swallow. You're chained to your little regression, repeating the same scenario again and again. Me? I've seen entire realities collapse. I've stepped over the corpses of gods. I've watched debts tallied so high they swallowed the concept of time itself."
Her tone was casual, but every word dripped with a weight Hae-won could feel in his bones.
"You're lying."
Her laughter rang sharp in the quiet library. "You keep saying that, but your eyes tell me you don't believe it. You can't. Because you know the system you serve isn't normal. That ledger inside you? That endless whisper of 'unpaid'? You think it was made just for you?"
His stomach dropped.
Seo leaned forward, her voice low, intimate. "It wasn't. It's older than you, older than this academy, older than this world. It doesn't belong to you. You're just the latest fool bound to it."
The ledger's whispers swelled in his head as if to confirm her words. …unpaid… unpaid…
He pressed his palms against his skull, nails digging into his scalp. "Shut up."
But she wasn't done.
"You've only regressed twice so far, haven't you?" she asked, her tone almost pitying. "Pathetic. I've seen some regressors crack after ten. Others after fifty. Do you know the record I've witnessed?" She held up a single finger. "Two hundred and ninety-seven. By the end, he didn't even remember his own name."
Hae-won's breath hitched.
"Stop," he whispered.
Her eyes narrowed, sharp as blades. "Why? You wanted answers. You've been bleeding yourself dry for scraps of meaning, and now it's handed to you—and you want me to stop?"
Her words cut deeper than steel.
Because she was right.
Every time he'd died, every time the debt-sword had pierced him, every time Arin's scream echoed in his ears—he'd begged silently for an explanation. Why him? Why this curse? Why the endless tally of unpaid debt?
And now that someone was finally telling him, he wanted to run.
Seo Ha-young leaned closer, her grin cruel but not unkind. "Listen carefully, Hae-won. Regression is not your curse. It's a currency. A contract. The ledger invests in you. It rewinds you like a coin flipped back into the air, hoping one day you'll land on the side that pays. And when you don't…" She shrugged. "…It just keeps trying."
His hands shook.
A currency.
A contract.
Not fate. Not destiny.
Just a system.
A system that didn't care about him at all.
"You're lying," he said again, but weaker this time, his voice breaking.
She tilted her head. "Do you want me to prove it?"
Before he could answer, she raised her palm. Symbols crawled across her skin, glowing faintly red. Not runes from their academy lessons. Not marks of any spell he'd ever seen. They pulsed like veins, alive, hungry.
The ledger's whispers shrieked in his skull at the sight.
…intruder… unpaid… anomaly…
Hae-won gasped, clutching his chest.
Seo's smile widened. "You hear it, don't you? It recognizes me. It hates me. Because I've carried its brand before. Not just here. In other worlds. I broke its chains once, and it's never forgiven me."
The glow faded, the marks vanishing into her skin.
She leaned back, her voice suddenly soft. "That's what I am, Hae-won. A dimensional traveler. A survivor of more ledgers than you can imagine. And you…" Her gaze pierced him. "…are still a child drowning in your first regression."
Silence pressed heavy between them.
His chest heaved. His mind spun. The library tilted around him, books looming like silent witnesses.
Finally, he whispered, "Why are you telling me this?"
Her smile thinned. For the first time, her eyes softened, almost regretful.
"Because I don't hate you," she said quietly. "Not yet. You remind me of myself—before I learned better."
She stood, her shadow long across the table.
"Remember this, Hae-won. Every choice you make from now on will be measured. Not by you. Not by me. By the ledger. And it never forgets an unpaid debt."
Her footsteps echoed as she walked away, leaving him trembling in the silence.
The whispers clawed at him again, louder, harsher, as though angered by what had just been revealed.
…unpaid… unpaid… unpaid…
He pressed his forehead against the table, blood dripping from where his nails had broken skin.
He just had to bleed himself into every word until it was true.
But now he understood—truth wasn't going to save him.
It was only going to drown him deeper.
The next morning broke like all the others.
Golden light spilled through the dormitory shutters, cadets shuffled half-asleep toward their duties, and the bells of the academy tolled the hour with relentless calm. The world carried on as if nothing had shifted.
But inside Hae-won, nothing was the same.
Sleep had not come. Not really. He had drifted in shallow waves, mind circling the same words again and again:
A contract. A currency. A ledger older than worlds.
Seo Ha-young's face lingered in every shadow, her mocking smile carved into his memory. Dimensional traveler. Survivor. Breaker of chains. And she had been watching him—the way one might study a chess piece struggling to cross the board.
The ledger's whispers were louder this morning.
… unpaid … unpaid … anomaly …
He pressed a hand to his chest, jaw clenched. The sound grated like broken glass in his skull, but beneath it, something was different. Quieter. A faint undertone threading through the noise.
It wasn't just condemning him anymore.
It was… waiting.
⸻
The courtyard was alive with laughter.
Cadets spilled into the training grounds, their wooden swords clacking in practice bouts. The instructors barked orders, impatient and half-bored. Everything unfolded according to script.
But Hae-won's eyes saw differently now.
He remembered the patterns. The sequence of events. Which cadet would trip over his sword. Which instructor would scold a girl for sloppy stance. Which breeze would scatter blossoms across the path.
The script.
And for the first time, he wondered: could he nudge it?
His heartbeat thundered as he stood at the edge of the sparring field. He picked a moment he remembered—one of the harmless ones. A cadet dropping his sword after a sloppy block, followed by the usual chorus of laughter.
He closed his eyes, focusing on that faint undertone beneath the ledger's whispers.
Not unpaid. Not anomaly. Change.
The word bled from his lips without sound, more intention than speech.
The air shivered.
When he opened his eyes, the cadet still swung, still fumbled his grip—but the sword didn't drop. His fingers tightened at the last instant, steadied, corrected. No laughter followed. Only silence, then the bout resumed as if nothing had changed.
Hae-won's breath caught. His chest burned.
The ledger hissed, a thousand voices screaming in discord.
… modifier … modifier … unauthorized change … unpaid …
Pain lanced through him, sharp as a blade, and he staggered. His vision swam.
But he was grinning through clenched teeth.
It worked.
He had changed something.
Not much. A tiny correction. Barely a ripple.
But it was his.
His choice.
⸻
"Hey."
The voice startled him.
Arin stood beside him, brows furrowed. She had been sparring earlier, her hair damp with sweat, cheeks flushed. Her wooden sword rested against her shoulder.
"You're… smiling?" she said carefully, as if the sight unnerved her.
Hae-won blinked. Had he been? His lips still twitched upward, an alien expression that felt half-wrong on his face.
"Just thinking," he said.
Her eyes searched him, suspicious. "About what?"
"About changing things."
She tilted her head, clearly confused. But before she could press further, an instructor shouted for the next round, and she was pulled away.
Hae-won exhaled slowly. His pulse hadn't steadied. The modifier had drained him more than any battle. His body still trembled from the weight of the ledger's backlash. But beneath it all burned something fierce and unfamiliar.
Possibility.
⸻
That night, alone again in the dorm, he tried once more.
This time, he focused on the candle on his desk. In the last regression, he remembered it flickering and dying just before midnight, leaving him scribbling notes in darkness. A small thing, irrelevant—but a fixed moment nonetheless.
He narrowed his gaze on the flame, heartbeat steady.
Not unpaid. Not anomaly. Modifier.
The whispers roared.
… unauthorized … error …
His chest tightened. Blood welled in his mouth. His hands shook violently.
The flame shivered—then stilled.
It burned steady.
Midnight passed.
The candle did not go out.
Hae-won collapsed forward, gasping, forehead pressed against the desk. Blood dripped from his nose onto the wood, hot and sticky. His body screamed in protest. The ledger hissed like a nest of snakes, its fury rattling his skull.
But he laughed. Quiet, broken, disbelieving.
He had done it again.
He had bent the script.
Not by much. Not enough to change the grand design. But the modifier was real. His.
He wiped the blood from his lips, his eyes wild in the flickering light.
Seo Ha-young's words echoed again: "Every choice you make will be measured. Not by you. Not by me. By the ledger."
But she hadn't known this.
She hadn't seen this.
The ledger might measure him, might weigh every action, but now—he could push back.
For the first time, the debt was not absolute.
And that meant one thing.
He wasn't just a pawn anymore.
He was a player