The dome of silence shuddered.
Hae-won's Authority pressed down on the world like scripture burned into stone—immovable, suffocating.
But the new figure walked through it.
Unbothered.
Untouched.
Every step cracked the words Hae-won had carved into reality, like footprints trampling across paper.
"…How?" Hae-won whispered, blood dripping into his mouth, turning every breath metallic.
The man smirked.
"I was already outside the story once. You think your little Authority can leash me?"
[ Returnee – Jisung ]
[ Modifier: Endless Return ]
[ Status: Error Overwritten ]
The system messages burned across Hae-won's vision like fire. His knuckles whitened as his Authority trembled.
Do-hyun's voice was raw with panic.
"Hae-won, he's—he's like you—!"
"Not like me," Hae-won cut sharply, his voice carrying the weight of command. "Worse."
Jisung tilted his head, his satchel rattling with the clink of stolen relics. His smile widened.
"I thought I was alone in this hell. Five hundred regressions, was it? …Pathetic."
He stepped closer, and with each word, the dome of silence cracked further.
"I've endured thousands. Every time I tried to change something, the world laughed in my face. So I stopped trying. Now?" His eyes gleamed, fever-bright. "I don't fix stories. I burn them."
The Authority around Hae-won buckled. Students began twitching again, their screams bubbling at the edges of silence.
Arin grabbed Hae-won's arm. "If you fight here, the entire academy—"
"I know," he said, his voice like broken glass. He met Jisung's gaze with a defiance carved out of fire and blood.
"But if I don't, he'll tear everything apart anyway."
Jisung laughed softly, raising one pale hand. Something shifted in the air, like pages being ripped out of a book.
[ Returnee Authority: Rewrite Fragment ]
Dozens of desks and chairs folded into jagged shapes, warping into blades of splintered wood and metal, floating behind him like wings.
"You think you're the only one who can wield the story, Cha Hae-won?" His voice cracked with amusement. "I've been writing it longer than you've been alive."
⸻
Hae-won's chest throbbed where the Titan's debt-sword had once pierced him. His veins burned with the cost of Authority.
Sanity slipping.
Pain ledger overflowing.
But he clenched his fists, and the words of Authority crawled out of his throat like fire.
"Obey."
The fractured world froze again, but Jisung just kept walking, shards of warped desks orbiting him like broken stars.
"Cute trick," Jisung said softly. "But I'm not part of your script. I'm my own."
The two forces collided—
Ink against fire, Authority against Rewrite—
and the academy itself screamed.
⸻
The clash didn't come as a single blow.
It came as narrative collapse.
Windows shattered without wind. Books bled ink across the floor. Banners burned without fire.
Arin cried out, clutching her head. Do-hyun dragged her behind a collapsed desk. Ha-young gritted her teeth, watching with a strategist's horror as the two story-wielders tore the classroom apart without touching each other.
Jisung's voice echoed like laughter across collapsing pages.
"Let's see, then. Whose story gets to survive?"
Hae-won bared his teeth, blood smearing them red.
"I won't let you write this world into ash."
And for the first time since his regression began, he surged forward—not to survive, not to endure—
—but to kill.
The ground cracked beneath Hae-won's feet as he forced every fragment of his Authority to ignite at once.
[ Skill Activated: Authority — Absolute Narrative Command ]
[ Warning: Overconsumption of Sanity Threshold ]
[ Shared Cost → Active ]
The dome of silence shattered—not into nothing, but into blades of command, jagged sentences ripping out of the air like broken scripture. They swirled around him, each one burning with his blood.
Jisung's grin only widened.
"So the little writer wants to play god."
The warped furniture orbiting him folded tighter, reforging into spears of jagged ironwood. His Modifier's ink bled into them, each weapon radiating the weight of a thousand failed timelines.
[ Returnee Authority — Rewrite: Collapse ]
The spears launched forward. Dozens. Hundreds.
The entire world seemed to lurch toward Hae-won.
He didn't dodge. He didn't flinch.
His Authority slammed down, rewriting the rules of the classroom.
"Obey. Break. Shatter."
The spears snapped mid-flight, reduced to ash and ink. The backlash rattled the walls, sending cracks climbing like black veins through the ceiling.
The cadets who hadn't already fainted were screaming now, their minds bleeding under the clash of two impossible existences.
Do-hyun shouted through the chaos, voice hoarse:
"HAE-WON! IF YOU—IF YOU KEEP GOING, YOU'LL—!"
But Hae-won couldn't stop.
Every nerve burned. Every heartbeat threatened to split his skull. His vision fractured into timelines, and he pulled each one into his Authority, twisting them together until reality itself howled.
"Five hundred times I died to fix this story." His voice was jagged, inhuman, laced with Authority. "I won't let a bastard like you drag it back into failure."
Jisung's laughter was cruel, wild, echoing like broken glass.
"You don't get it, do you?"
His Rewrite surged, warping the ground itself into jagged spikes. The academy floor rose like teeth, snapping toward Hae-won.
"I stopped fixing because the story doesn't want to be fixed. The only way forward—" His eyes gleamed, mad and triumphant. "—is to erase it all."
The floor collapsed beneath them as the two forces clashed again. Sentences burned against warped ink, Authority against Rewrite.
Hae-won forced more blood into the script. His arms split open, veins glowing like molten fire, his sanity splintering with each command.
"Then I'll erase you first."
The two collided in the ruins of the academy, and the world itself screamed as if a god had been murdered.
The world cracked.
Ink poured from Jisung's hands in jagged streaks, solidifying into lances of rewritten possibility. Each one carried the weight of a failed regression—worlds that had burned, companions that had died, timelines he had thrown away.
"Do you feel it, Hae-won?" Jisung's voice bled with contempt. "Every time you try to fix it, the world takes something from you. But me—" He laughed, mad and sharp. "—I learned to stop paying the debt. I learned to collect."
The lances screamed forward.
Hae-won raised his palm. Authority flared, his own words dragging across the air in raw, burning script.
"Break."
The lances shattered. Not into dust—but into words. Broken syllables scattered across the air like a rain of torn paper.
The backlash ripped through his skull. Blood poured from his nose, his ears, his eyes. His sanity shrieked against the chains that barely held it in place.
But he stood.
[ Sanity Threshold: 14% ]
[ Shared Cost → Distributed to nearby incarnations. ]
Arin staggered, clutching her head as the pain split her open too. Do-hyun collapsed to one knee. Even Ha-young hissed in agony as the cost spilled across them.
"Damn it, Hae-won!" Do-hyun roared. "You'll kill us all at this rate!"
But Hae-won didn't stop. Couldn't.
"Then survive. Because if I fall here—so does every one of you."
He pulled deeper. Authority writhed across his skin, veins glowing black and gold, his voice carrying the weight of five hundred failures.
"Rewrite me instead. I am the story."
Jisung's eyes widened. For the first time, the confidence faltered.
"Impossible—"
The classroom dissolved. Walls melted into script, ceiling torn away to reveal not sky, but pages upon pages fluttering like wings of a colossal beast. Entire paragraphs hung in the void above them, glowing with the ink of Narrators who could no longer look away.
The duel had torn reality into its bones.
Jisung bared his teeth, laughter breaking into rage. "If you are the story—then I'll be the one who ends it."
He raised his arms, and dozens of glowing failed endings appeared around him. Each one a scene from another timeline: Hae-won dying, Arin bleeding, Do-hyun burning, Ha-young betraying.
He clapped his hands—
—and the failed endings surged forward like an army of ghosts.
Hae-won met them head-on. His blade screamed with Authority, dragging his words into steel.
"Then come. Let's see whose quill is sharper."
The impact split the ledger itself. Pages burned. Sentences screamed. And for a moment—it was not two cadets clashing.
It was two authors, trying to overwrite each other's story