The classroom dissolved.
Not into smoke, not into ash—but into pages. Hundreds of them, yellowed and cracked, tearing loose from the walls, the ceiling, the floorboards. They fluttered in the air like feathers plucked from a burning bird.
And in the center of that storm stood two figures.
Cha Hae-won.
Jisung.
Both trembling. Both bleeding. Both wielding more than blades.
Their swords weren't just metal anymore. They dripped with black ink, the kind that bled into the world itself. Every swing slashed not at bodies, but at the script of reality.
The first clash split the classroom into two timelines.
To the left—burning Seoul. Screams echoing through crumbling skyscrapers, Titans clawing their way out of the Han River.
To the right—the Academy's ruined training hall, cadets gasping as the first Titan dissolved into debt-runes.
Two worlds, one cut. The crack hissed like molten glass, then sealed into whichever version the stronger will imposed.
Hae-won staggered back, his chest heaving. His sanity splintered with each rewrite; he felt pieces of himself peel away like old paper.
But Jisung only grinned. His left eye gleamed with a tether of ink, a sign that he had already been chosen. A Narrator's script burned through his veins.
"You still don't get it, Hae-won." His voice carried like an echo in a cathedral. "This isn't your story anymore. It never was. You're just a broken draft that should've been thrown out."
Hae-won spat blood. "Funny. A draft doesn't bleed this much."
He lunged.
Their blades collided again, and this time the room shattered into a thousand possibilities.
For a heartbeat, Hae-won stood in his old Seoul bedroom, his laptop glowing faintly on the desk. For another, he stood in a wasteland littered with bones of dead Titans. For another, in a classroom where no apocalypse had ever come, Yun Arin's laughter echoing in sunlight.
And with each shift, he felt his mind fray. He was being forced to live them all at once.
[ Warning: Sanity Threshold — Critical. ]
[ Shared Cost Activated. ]
Far away, he felt Arin wince. Do-hyun clutch his head. Even Ha-young cough blood into her sleeve. The burden wasn't his alone. The shared price of the Dream was dragging everyone into his fracture.
The ledger boomed overhead, a voice deeper than thunder:
"UNPAID."
"UNPAID."
"UNPAYABLE."
Pages of light tore free from the air, whipping around the duelists like vultures. Each page bore a line of narration.
—The cadet who should have died five hundred times.
—The returnee who carried the will of debt.
—Only one of them may remain in this script.
The cadets watching couldn't breathe. They weren't seeing a duel anymore—they were seeing two narrators clawing over the right to decide the future.
Jisung's grin widened. He slashed upward, his ink-blade shrieking. Pages folded around him, aligning into a single reality:
The story where Cha Hae-won breaks first.
The script flared, binding around Hae-won's limbs. He felt his muscles lock, his heartbeat skip. His knees almost buckled.
But he forced his head up. His eyes burned with red threads of ink.
"…You think you can write my ending?"
His voice cracked. But it cut sharper than steel.
"You forgot something, Jisung."
Another clash. The script warped again—fractured into endless shards of possibility.
Hae-won bled, his sanity shredded, but he didn't stop. Because each step forward was another rewrite. Each breath was another rejection of the story laid before him.
"I'm not your character."
He swung. The classroom fractured, collapsing into raw white paper.
"I'm the mistake you can't erase."
The ledger howled.
"ERROR. ERROR. ERROR."
For the first time, the Narrators above hesitated.
And for the first time—Jisung's grin faltered. The pages screamed.
Every blow between Hae-won and Jisung was another chapter ripped apart, another reality overwritten. The ledger's booming voice grew louder, hammering like an executioner's drum:
"UNPAID. UNPAID. UNPAYABLE."
Blood trickled from Hae-won's nose, from his ears, from the corners of his eyes. His vision shook, splintering into dozens of versions of Jisung—smirking in one, weeping in another, already dead in a third.
The Most Ancient Dream was burning through him like wildfire. It demanded more. More pain. More memory. More mind.
[ Cost Requirement: Sanity. ]
[ Sanity Balance: 17% ]
[ Currency accepted: Pain. ]
Hae-won staggered as the notification seared itself into his mind. His sanity wasn't just cracking anymore—it was being tallied like money in a ledger.
Every time he swung, another piece was subtracted. Every time he rewrote, he paid with fragments of himself.
Across from him, Jisung laughed, his voice edged with madness. "Do you feel it? The script is devouring you. You're nothing but a coin to the system now. And once you're spent—"
He slashed. Ink erupted like a tidal wave, swallowing half the classroom. Desks folded into black rivers; walls buckled into scripture.
"—I'll be the only author left."
Hae-won dropped to one knee, clutching his skull. His thoughts bled like open wounds, leaking names, memories, sensations. He couldn't remember what his father's voice sounded like anymore. His mother's smile flickered like static.
[ Sanity Balance: 11% ]
The ledger's chant grew feverish.
"SPEND. SPEND. SPEND."
Then—
A hand.
Warm. Trembling. Anchoring.
"Hae-won."
Her voice.
Yun Arin.
Her silver-thread glow shimmered in the ink storm, her Narrator's mark flaring as if defying the script itself. She knelt beside him, ignoring the chaos, ignoring Jisung's sneer.
"You'll burn yourself away," she whispered, voice breaking. "You'll pay everything until there's nothing left."
He wanted to shove her hand away. To scream that she didn't understand. That he was the writer, the failure, the one who had to pay.
But her grip tightened.
And something shifted.
[ Incarnation Yun Arin has chosen you as Narrator. ]
[ Shared Currency Activated. ]
[ Sanity Cost Distributed. ]
Light ripped through his veins, silver weaving into the black. His vision steadied—not clear, not whole, but tethered.
For the first time since the Dream had awoken, he wasn't paying alone.
Arin grimaced, blood streaking down her lips as the shared pain hit her. Her sanity flickered visibly in her trembling eyes. But she didn't let go.
"If you're going to bleed for this story," she hissed, "then I'll bleed with you."
Hae-won's breath hitched. For a heartbeat, the fracture inside him slowed.
He stood.
Jisung snarled, his grin breaking into fury. "So that's your trick? Borrowing scraps of will from someone else? Pathetic. You can't even stand on your own sanity."
Hae-won raised his ink-blade, its trembling edge now threaded with silver. His voice cracked, but it carried.
"You're right, Jisung."
Another step forward.
"But that's what makes me human."
He swung.
This time, the cut wasn't just black ink—it was silver fire braided into script. It tore Jisung's narrative apart, scattering his chosen pages into a storm of ash.
The ledger roared in fury.
"UNBALANCED. UNBALANCED. DEBT SHIFT DETECTED."
Reality bent, as if even the system couldn't account for two Narrators' threads binding together.
Hae-won's lips split into a bloodied grin.
"Sanity as coin?" His voice was hoarse, ragged, trembling. "Then I'll spend everything."
Arin's silver glow flared beside him. "And I'll cover the rest."
Together, they stepped into the storm.
The classroom was gone.
The walls were torn into pages. The floor was a black river of sentences, dragging desks and corpses downstream like driftwood. Above them, the ceiling had split into a sky of quills and bleeding ink, every Narrator leaning closer, desperate to see who would collapse first.
Jisung stood at the center of the storm, cloak whipping in the current of words, his eyes wild with borrowed madness. His blade wasn't metal anymore—it was scripture sharpened into an edge. Every slash bled paragraphs, each attack rewriting the air itself.
And across from him—
Cha Hae-won, sword trembling in his hand, silver light braided into the black flames of the Dream. Yun Arin stood just behind him, her arm looped through his, her own veins glowing as she shared the burden. Her face was pale, but her gaze steady.
Every time the ledger screamed for payment, two hearts paid together.
⸻
Jisung sneered.
"You really think her silver thread can hold back the cost? You've already spent more lives than you can count. You're nothing but a carcass walking."
He raised his blade, the ink storm condensing into a single black sun above him.
"I'll prove it. You were never the writer. You're just a draft that should've been burned."
The black sun fell.
⸻
Hae-won staggered forward, sanity fracturing like glass.
[ Sanity Balance: 6%. ]
[ Shared Balance with Incarnation Yun Arin: 14%. ]
The weight of 503 regressions screamed in his skull—every scream, every death, every failure rushing forward. He should've collapsed. He should've burned out.
But Arin's hand dug into his arm.
"Hae-won," she whispered, voice shaking. "Write it differently. Just once—write it differently."
Her silver glow wove into his black fire. And for a moment—just one—his vision cleared.
The storm froze.
⸻
He remembered the night in 2025, in his tiny apartment, staring at his laptop. His failed novel open on one side. A web novel he admired—Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint—open on the other. He had written this world. He had abandoned it.
But now, the abandoned draft was screaming for him to finish it.
His lips curled into a broken grin.
"…Then I'll finish it."
⸻
The Dream surged.
[ Most Ancient Dream: Rewrite Activated. ]
[ Enemy of Every Path: Hostility Engaged. ]
His blade split into two halves—one black with debt, one silver with renewal. He stepped into Jisung's collapsing sun and cut straight through it.
The classroom quaked. Paragraphs shattered into white dust. Jisung's eyes widened, horror slicing through his madness.
"No—NO! That was my fate, my path! You can't—"
Hae-won's scream drowned him out.
"I CAN. BECAUSE I WROTE IT!"
The dual blade drove through Jisung's chest. Ink exploded outward, flooding the room in a tide of narrative fragments. The ledger howled, quills above thrashing.
"ILLEGAL REWRITE."
"CURRENCY OVERDRAWN."
"UNPAID. UNPAID. UNPAID."
But the cut held. Jisung's script unraveled, his Narrator's voice shrieking as its connection was severed.
For the first time, a Narrator itself screamed in pain.
And then—silence.
⸻
Hae-won collapsed, gasping, his sanity flickering at the edge of nothing. Arin fell with him, her arms locked around his trembling frame. Both of them shaking, both barely conscious.
But alive.
Above, the Narrators whispered. Not in unity, but in terror.
"Unbound."
"Unwritten."
"Impossible."
And beneath it all—the ledger.
[ Scenario 2 Complete. ]
[ Warning: Scenario 3 — Descent to Hell — begins in 48 hours. ]
The ink storm dissolved, leaving them in ruins.
Jisung's body was gone, erased. But his laughter still lingered in Hae-won's ears, a haunting echo from the void.
⸻
Hae-won leaned against Arin, his voice shredded, but steady.
"…We bought ourselves time."
She brushed the blood from his lips, tears in her eyes, and whispered:
"Then let's make it count."
The ledger fell silent.
For now.