The world had always seemed too sharp after a regression.
Colors stabbed into his eyes, laughter carried knives under its melody, and sunlight felt less like warmth and more like judgment.
But this time—it was different.
It wasn't just sharper. It was hostile.
The system's whisper was no longer an accounting of debts. No chants of "unpaid… unpaid…" lingered in the corners of his hearing. Instead, each passing sound was warped, turned against him.
The scrape of chairs became a growl. The rustle of papers hissed: enemy.
Every step he took echoed like the world itself was waiting for him to trip.
Cha Hae-won realized, with a bitter laugh caught in his throat, that this was the new script.
[ Modifier: The Most Ancient Dream — Active. ]
[ Modifier: The Enemy of Every Path — Bound. ]
The messages had seared across his vision before fading into the marrow of his bones. The dream had torn at his sanity, forcing him to relive failures until his own memories blurred into a dripping scar across his thoughts.
And now, the Enemy Modifier had branded him something worse than prey.
Every path wanted him dead.
Even the sunlight seemed to shrink away from him, like the world was repulsed by his breath.
⸻
The lecture hall emptied. Cadets jostled in their chatter, too wrapped in themselves to notice the boy whose steps rang too loudly, whose shadow dragged just a little too long on the floor.
But Ha-young noticed.
Seo Ha-young leaned against the far wall, her hair loose around her shoulders, gaze sharp with something that wasn't quite suspicion but wasn't kindness either. There was something colder in her eyes than before. Something calculating.
She watched him like he was an unstable equation.
"You've changed again," she said simply, her tone flat, cutting through the noise of the crowd.
Hae-won paused mid-step. His throat was dry. "You… remember?"
Her lips quirked—not a smile, not even close. "Regression leaves scars if you've traveled enough dimensions. I can smell it on you. The bleed of timelines, the echo of memory."
She tilted her head. "But you—" her eyes flickered, briefly unreadable "—you've gone further than I thought you could."
Hae-won clenched his fists at his side, nails biting flesh until a bead of blood welled and stung. The metallic taste of his own breath anchored him.
"I don't care what you think I've done," he said hoarsely. "All I care about is cutting the chain."
Ha-young studied him for a long moment. Then she leaned forward, voice low, sharp.
"Be careful with words like that. Chains have a way of tightening when you call them out loud."
Her tone wasn't mockery. It was warning.
And that unsettled him more than if she had laughed in his face.
⸻
That night, Hae-won sat alone in his dorm. He had washed the blood from his knuckles, but the faint sting remained.
His reflection in the window didn't look like him. His eyes were ringed dark, pupils trembling faintly, as if they were holding back too much light. He could see fragments of himself splinter across the glass—one Hae-won screaming, one weeping, one lying face-down in blood, one reaching, one kneeling.
The Dream is bleeding again.
He shut his eyes tight. His heart hammered. The echoes of five hundred lives pressed against his skull. For a moment, he swore he heard his mother's voice—gentle, humming, before it was cut off by a wet sound, a gurgle, the sound of someone dying behind her.
He staggered from the bed, clutching his head until his fingernails broke skin.
Not yet. Not now.
The ledger's whispers crawled back in, warped, snarling:
"Enemy… enemy… enemy…"
Hae-won straightened, blood trickling down his temple where his nails had cut deep. He smiled faintly, bitterly, at the window.
"So be it," he whispered.
If the world had decided he was its enemy, then he'd play the part.
He wouldn't be its victim again.
⸻
The academy grounds looked normal the next morning. Cadets drilled in the yard, swords clashing, magic sparking. Instructors barked orders, quills scratched across parchment.
But to Hae-won, it was wrong.
Every detail flickered like broken film. The sword swings dragged a fraction too long. The clatter of steel echoed with whispers: inevitable, inevitable, inevitable. The sunlight over the field cracked, faint fractures running through the blue of the sky before healing again.
The world was resisting him.
The path hated him.
And deep down, some part of him—perhaps the part the Ancient Dream had left half-mad—was almost glad.
Because if the world hated him, then it meant he could hurt it back.
The clang of steel split the morning air.
Cadets circled the training yard, their boots crunching against dirt. Instructors barked names, paired students, and threw them into sparring drills. The rhythm was familiar, almost comforting—until it wasn't.
Because for Hae-won, the rhythm was fractured.
Every strike he saw played twice: once in the present, and once in a thousand possible tomorrows. Every shout echoed with screams from other regressions, other lives.
The Ancient Dream was bleeding through him again.
He raised his practice blade, but his grip trembled. Not from weakness—from overflow.
[ Modifier: The Most Ancient Dream — unstable. ]
[ Regression Memories — bleed rate: 9%. ]
[ Warning: Sanity erosion accelerating. ]
The voices clawed at him. Five hundred Hae-wons, each whispering failure, each dragging nails across the inside of his skull.
"You'll fail again."
"Do-hyun will die again."
"Arin will scream again."
"The Titan will rise again."
He staggered a step back, drawing stares from cadets.
"Hae-won?" the instructor barked. "You look like you're seeing ghosts."
He almost laughed. Ghosts would've been kinder.
Seo Ha-young stood across from him, blade in hand, watching with those sharp eyes that always seemed to know more. The way her gaze lingered, like she was daring him to lose control—it only tightened the pressure in his chest.
Enemy of Every Path pulsed.
The cadets' eyes shifted toward him, one by one. Whispers under breath. Snickers. Even the instructor's frown carried an edge of hostility.
It wasn't paranoia. The modifier was real. The world itself was branding him as the anomaly, the obstacle, the enemy.
His heartbeat thundered. His head split with pain. He could see it—Do-hyun lying crumpled, blood pooling beneath him. Always the same. Every regression. Every path. Do-hyun's death was a fixed point.
The ledger whispered: unpaid… unpaid…
Something in Hae-won snapped.
The blade in his hand shook—and then steadied. His vision burned white, then black, then white again. He saw himself collapsing. He saw himself kneeling in madness. He saw himself crushed by the Titan again and again—
And then he refused it.
No.
The word tore out of him, raw, loud enough to silence the yard. His voice cracked, but his eyes burned with something not even the Dream could drown.
"I will break it this time."
The whispers faltered. For the first time, the chorus of five hundred selves paused.
The cadets shifted uneasily. The instructor frowned deeper. Ha-young's eyes widened—just for a heartbeat—before narrowing again into something unreadable.
The Dream hissed against him, trying to drag him down into memory. The Enemy Modifier twisted the world to brand him wrong. But Hae-won gripped his blade until his palms bled, and he leaned forward into the hostility of it all.
"I don't care if Do-hyun's death is written into every path," he spat through clenched teeth. "I'll rewrite it. I don't care if the world calls me its enemy—I'll make it choke on me."
The air around him rippled faintly. A pressure, subtle but undeniable, pressed against every cadet in the yard. It was nothing like magic they'd been taught. Nothing like aura or willpower.
It was defiance. A raw, jagged presence that screamed at the world itself.
Even Ha-young, the dimensional traveler, straightened. Her lips curved—not into a smile, but into something sharper. Recognition.
"Finally," she murmured. "You're starting to sound like someone who could actually break it."
Hae-won's chest heaved, sweat stinging his eyes. The voices hadn't stopped. The sanity erosion hadn't reversed. The ledger still tallied every failure, every debt unpaid.
But for the first time, the cycle cracked.
And if there was a crack… then he would drive his fist through until the whole cursed script shattered.
⸻
That night, as the dormitory settled into uneasy silence, the system whispered again—this time not as a debt collector, but as a warning.
[ Modifier Synchronization: 27% ]
[ Synergy Detected: The Most Ancient Dream + Enemy of Every Path ]
[ Resulting Potential: Pathbreaker ]
The text seared across his vision, then burned away.
Hae-won lay awake long after the others had fallen asleep, his knuckles still raw. He didn't close his eyes. He couldn't.
Every time he blinked, he saw Do-hyun die.
But this time, the image didn't chain him down.
This time, it gave him something else.
Fuel.
The moon hung low, silver light spilling across the courtyard's stone tiles. The academy dorms were hushed now, cadets long since asleep, their snores and soft murmurs muffled by the walls.
But not Hae-won.
He sat at the far bench beneath the courtyard tree, palms pressed against his knees, chest tight. His knuckles were still raw from the training yard. The voices of five hundred past selves clawed at his skull. The ledger whispered unpaid, unpaid… as if mocking him for daring to resist.
"Brooding alone again?"
The voice slid out of the shadows like smoke.
Ha-young.
She stepped into the moonlight, arms folded, the breeze tugging faintly at her academy jacket. Her eyes caught the silver glow, sharp, too sharp.
Hae-won stiffened. "Why are you here?"
Her lips curved faintly, though it wasn't quite a smile. "Because you're finally interesting. Because you're finally fighting the script instead of rolling over."
He turned away, jaw tight. "If you're here to mock me—"
"Mock?" She let out a low laugh, tilting her head. "No, Hae-won. I'm here because you need to know the truth. Otherwise, you'll waste this regression just like the others."
His eyes snapped back to her. "What do you mean 'just like the others'? You—"
"Yes," she interrupted, voice calm, deliberate. "I've seen you before. Hundreds of times. In other dimensions. In other threads of the weave."
The air seemed to hollow. Even the whispers of the ledger faltered at her words.
Hae-won's mouth went dry. "…You're a traveler."
Her gaze sharpened, a spark of pride—or perhaps bitterness—in her eyes. "Dimensional traveler. I can walk through worlds, Hae-won. I've watched countless regressors claw at their cages. Most break. Some go mad. But you…" She leaned closer. "You're still standing."
The courtyard seemed too small, the night too heavy. His chest burned as if the debt-sword still speared him.
"Then tell me." His voice was hoarse. "Why is Do-hyun always—" He stopped, the word choking in his throat.
Her expression softened for the first time—not kind, but grim. "Because Do-hyun's death is a fixed point. A keystone event. It isn't just your regression that ties to it—every path, every weave, every dimension echoes it. His death anchors the Titan's birth. Without his fall, the Titan never manifests."
The words landed like blows.
Hae-won's nails dug into his palms until blood welled. "You're saying… if I can save him—"
"Then you'll break the cycle." Ha-young's tone was flat, final. "The Titan won't rise. The debt won't spiral. The ledger itself will falter."
The night air seemed to still.
Save Do-hyun. End the nightmare. End the Titan.
The voices in his head surged. The five hundred selves screamed all at once—some with hope, some with denial, most with despair.
"But," Ha-young added, her tone sharpening like a blade, "to break a keystone is to shatter the weave. Do you understand what that means?"
His throat tightened. "…Say it."
"It means the world will resist you with everything it has. Not just cadets turning against you, not just Titans clawing at you. Reality itself will twist to kill you. Because you won't just be fighting fate anymore. You'll be fighting the architecture of existence."
Silence. Only the rustling leaves overhead filled the air.
Hae-won stared at the stone tiles, breath ragged, heart pounding like a drum. Save Do-hyun. Stop the Titan. Break the ledger. Even if it meant fighting reality itself.
Finally, he raised his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, raw with exhaustion, but steady.
"I don't care if it costs me my mind. I don't care if the weave turns the whole world against me. I'll do it."
The ledger whispered again—unpaid, unpaid…—but there was a tremor in it now, as though the collector itself had flinched.
Ha-young studied him, expression unreadable. And then, for the first time, she smiled. Not mocking. Not cruel. Something sharper.
"Good," she murmured. "Because from here on… you're not just a regressor anymore."
She leaned closer, her words like a knife slipped between his ribs.
"You're a Pathbreaker."
⸻
The system pulsed in his vision, searing bright:
[ Modifier Fusion Advancing: Pathbreaker ]
[ Condition: Save the Keystone. Defy the Weave. ]
Hae-won closed his eyes, the phantom weight of five hundred deaths crushing him. He felt madness licking at the edges of his mind, the Ancient Dream gnawing for control. But beneath it, one truth burned steady.
Do-hyun's death wasn't just tragedy anymore.
It was the door.
And this time, Hae-won would tear it off its hinges