Hae-won woke to silence.
Not the silence of sleep, or the pause between breaths. This silence was suffocating, threaded with echoes that were not his own.
He pressed a hand to his chest. His heart beat in time with two rhythms—one steady, here and now, and another faint, like a drumbeat in another room, in another world.
[ Regression Error. ]
[ Status: Bound to Secondary Timeline. ]
[ Note: Narrator link established with Incarnation: Yun Arin. ]
His breath caught. "Arin…"
And then it hit him—sights and sounds not his own. Her hands trembling as she tore stale bread apart. Her voice breaking, whispering his name into the firelight of a world where he had already turned to ash.
He staggered, nearly vomiting as her grief hollowed his stomach from the inside. He wasn't there—but through the narrator's tether, her emotions burned into him.
She's carrying them without me.
The realization was a knife.
⸻
Here, in the main world, the wasteland stretched in its usual hostile red and black, the script resuming its cruel march forward. But now Hae-won bore something new: not just his memories, not just his fractured regressions—
he carried Arin's present, too.
Her choices. Her pain. Her path.
Two timelines.
One body.
And a single truth gnawed at his chest:
If he faltered here, she would break there.
At first, he tried to ignore it.
The whispers that weren't his. The flickers of movement—her hands, her footsteps—that overlapped with his own. If he focused too long, his vision blurred, and the wasteland in front of him smeared into the image of another firelit camp where his absence was a wound no one spoke of.
He clenched his teeth. "This isn't real."
But when her voice cracked through the silence—soft, raw, carrying his name—his knees nearly buckled.
"Hae-won… why didn't you listen? Why did you—"
Her grief dragged his heart against broken glass. He pressed a shaking hand to his temple.
He had lived through deaths. Hundreds. Thousands.
But never had he lived through someone mourning him.
⸻
For a long moment, he let the tether bleed freely, drowning him in her emotions. Then—
desperation bloomed.
If she could reach him this way…
Could he reach back?
His throat worked. The words scraped like rust.
"…Arin."
The wasteland gave no answer. Wind whipped against the black towers, chains clattered like laughter.
But then—her head lifted in the other world. Her breath hitched. Her gaze turned, searching shadows.
"That voice…"
Hae-won froze. His pulse thundered.
She had heard. Not clearly, not completely—but enough.
"…I'm here," he whispered, forcing his voice steady even as the effort cracked something inside him. "Even if you can't see me—I'm here."
For an instant, their worlds overlapped. The firelight flickered against the chains. His shadow stretched across both.
And then the tether snapped taut, searing pain down his spine. He gasped, staggering to his knees.
A warning flared across his vision:
[ Narrator Link Strain: 12%. ]
[ Excessive interference may fracture both timelines. ]
He bit down a curse, clutching his chest.
So that was the price. Speak too much, push too far—and he wouldn't just burn himself out. He'd drag her with him.
Still… even that brief connection left his blood trembling with possibility.
He wasn't powerless anymore.
Even across death.
⸻
Hae-won lifted his gaze toward the horizon, where the towers swayed under the weight of chains. His breath steadied.
If this tether exists, then I'll use it.
To protect her.
To protect them all.
Even if it killed him a thousand times over. The fire crackled low, nothing more than embers. The others huddled close, trying to steal scraps of warmth from the dying glow.
Do-hyun watched Hae-won with furrowed brows. The boy hadn't spoken in hours. His gaze wasn't on the fire, or the chains overhead—but somewhere far beyond them, as if following words the rest of them couldn't hear.
Finally, Do-hyun broke the silence.
"You're staring again."
Hae-won blinked, dragged back to the camp. His lips parted, but no excuse came. The echo of Arin's voice still clung to him like smoke, and it was all he could do not to answer her aloud.
Seo Ha-young's tone was sharper. "It's not just staring. You've been muttering." Her bloodshot eyes narrowed. "Like you're talking to someone who isn't here."
Hae-won stiffened. His knuckles whitened against his knee. He hadn't realized the words had slipped past his lips.
"…It's nothing," he lied.
But the weight of their gazes didn't ease. In the silence that followed, Hae-won forced himself to shut down the tether—cutting off the faint warmth in his chest, the thread that hummed with her presence. The world felt colder immediately.
⸻
⸻
Meanwhile, in the other timeline—
Arin sat alone by the fire. The camp was quieter now, emptier in ways no one dared mention. Yoo Seong-wu's leadership had become harsher, his decisions colder, but no one challenged him.
Her hands shook as she polished her blade. The steel reflected nothing but her hollow eyes.
She could still feel him sometimes. The whisper of a shadow when she turned her head, the murmur of words that dissolved before she understood them.
"Even if you can't see me—I'm here."
The memory hit again, unbidden. It wasn't her imagination. It couldn't be.
Her chest tightened, grief and hope tangled so tightly she couldn't breathe.
"…Hae-won," she whispered to the empty dark.
The fire flickered as if answering.
⸻
Back in the wasteland, Hae-won's head jerked up. For a heartbeat, his chest pulsed with warmth, a tether tugging taut. He bit his lip until it bled, forcing the reaction down before the others noticed.
He couldn't show it. Not yet.
Not until he understood what this tether truly meant. The Trial of Chains erupted at dawn.
Steel links fell from the sky like raining thunder, carving craters into the black earth. Towers groaned awake, their spines glowing with molten script. Every chain carried hooks—hungry things that lashed at anyone too slow to move.
"Stronghold!" Do-hyun bellowed. "We need one now!"
The cadets surged forward. Screams split the air as weaker ones were dragged into the ground, chains yanking them into unseen depths.
Hae-won moved without thought. He shouldn't have been able to keep pace—not in this broken body—but instinct drove him. His hand brushed Do-hyun's back, anchoring him just as a hook nearly tore him away. He pulled Ha-young up by her collar when she slipped on the fractured stone.
The world screamed collapse, but somehow, they endured.
And then—
The tether pulled.
His vision split, lurching violently. The wasteland blurred, and for a moment he wasn't standing at all. He was watching. Watching through the other firelight, through Arin's trembling hands as she faced an enemy too large, too cruel, with no one left to hold the line beside her.
"Run," Hae-won whispered into nothing. His throat burned. "Please—"
She didn't. She never did.
The blade cut her down in silence.
The tether snapped.
Hae-won staggered, clutching his chest as though the chain had pierced him instead. His body convulsed. The world tilted, warped, the Trial dissolving into static.
Do-hyun's voice reached him, faint. "Hae-won—stay with us!"
But he couldn't.
The warmth was gone.
Her presence—gone.
All that remained was hollow silence.
And in that silence, madness bloomed.
He laughed—a raw, broken sound that silenced even the groaning towers. His hands shook as he dragged a hook from the ground, its edge still glowing with script.
"If I can't hold both—" His voice cracked, half-scream, half-sob. "—then I'll tear myself apart until I can."
Before anyone could stop him, Hae-won turned the hook inward.
The steel pierced his chest. The world fractured.
Chains shuddered, runes flickered, and the ledger roared its verdict—
[ Regression Error Detected. ]
[ Reinitializing… ]
⸻
And as his blood hit the ground, Cha Hae-won fell again—
but not backward.
Not cleanly.
This time, he carried both deaths with him.
Both timelines screaming in his skull.
Both narrations clawing for dominance.