Arin opened her eyes to white.
Not the blinding white of light, but the suffocating, endless white of a blank page.
There was no ground, no sky, only an infinite canvas that stretched in every direction, swallowing sound and shape alike.
Her breath echoed back at her, fragile in the emptiness.
[ Personal Scenario Initiated. ]
[ Ascent Trial: The Way of the Soul. ]
[ Objective: Learn the Soul's Script. Failure Condition: Dissolution. ]
The words shimmered above her like handwriting scrawled in fire. She reached for them instinctively, but her hand passed through nothing.
"…Hae-won?" she whispered.
No answer.
Her chest tightened. For the first time since she'd stepped into the nightmare of scenarios, there was no one beside her. No Do-hyun with his reckless strength, no Ha-young with her biting words, no Hae-won with his broken laughter.
Only her.
The silence pressed in until she swore she could hear her own heartbeat scratching like a pen on paper.
And then the voice came.
Not the mechanical monotone of the system, not the chorus of Narrators.
A single voice — low, weary, familiar in a way that froze her blood.
"Every soul is a draft," it said.
Arin spun. The whiteness peeled back like parchment, revealing faint silhouettes: blurred figures caught mid-motion, as though memories had been torn out of her chest and cast into the air. She saw herself at twelve, clutching a broken wand. Herself at fifteen, bowing in the academy exam hall. Herself, bloodied and trembling, standing beside Hae-won against the Titan.
"Drafts are not permanent," the voice murmured. "They are written… and rewritten."
The images crumpled like paper, burned into glowing ash.
Her knees trembled. "What are you trying to show me?"
The whiteness rippled. From it, something emerged — not a figure, but a pen. Enormous, impossibly long, dripping with liquid light. Its nib hovered above the white void, and every time it twitched, reality itself wavered.
Arin's breath caught.
Her instincts screamed that this was no relic. This was the tool of a Narrator.
The voice returned, closer now, almost inside her ribs.
"Write… or be erased."
The pen dropped.
Arin caught it out of reflex. Her hands nearly split under its weight — it wasn't made of metal or wood, but of her own veins and breath. The pen throbbed with her heartbeat, each pulse tugging at her chest as though a piece of her soul had been pulled into the nib.
She gasped. "This is—"
The system cut in like a knife:
[ Trial 1: Inscribe a Command onto Your Own Soul. ]
[ Warning: Permanent alterations cannot be undone. ]
The blank world trembled, waiting.
Arin's hand shook. She stared at the pen, then at the endless white stretched before her. Her reflection wavered faintly across it — not just her body, but something deeper, luminous, fragile.
Her soul.
She swallowed hard. Her first instinct was to write something safe — something small, meaningless.
But deep inside, her heart whispered the truth.
She didn't want safety. She wanted him.
Her fingers tightened on the pen until they bled. She pressed the nib to the white. Her voice broke into the silence.
"Endure."
The word seared into the void in blinding gold. Pain tore through her chest, as if the command had branded itself onto her ribs. She fell to her knees, coughing blood.
[ Soul Script Acquired. ]
[ First Command: Endure (Self). ]
[ Effect: Your soul cannot collapse. Even in death, its fragments will resist dissolution. ]
Her vision blurred, but the white void steadied.
The pen pulsed in her grip again — lighter now, as though it recognized her.
And for the first time in this nightmare, Yun Arin felt something shift.
Not fear. Not survival.
Authority.
The world of white did not rest.
As soon as the first command carved itself into her soul, the blank space rippled and folded like pages being turned.
Her knees hit solid ground — though "ground" was too generous a word. It was parchment, stretching out under her feet, inscribed with faint lines of golden ink that moved like veins.
[ Trial 2: Write upon another soul. ]
[ Success Condition: The target accepts your script. ]
[ Failure Condition: Rejection will damage both your soul and theirs. ]
Arin froze. "Another… soul?"
Shadows bled from the parchment. They didn't rise like enemies, but echoes — figures pulled from memory. Shapes she knew by heart.
Do-hyun's reckless grin. Ha-young's steady eyes. Seong-wu's cold determination.
And then—
"Hae-won…"
The echo of him stood just beyond reach. His body flickered with cracks of black static, as though five hundred deaths had been tattooed into his outline. Even as a shadow, he looked exhausted, shoulders slouched, eyes ringed with scars she'd never seen before.
The pen in her grip grew heavier.
Her lips trembled. "I… can't—"
The voice of the trial cut in, dispassionate:
"You must. To write upon another soul is to bind them. To command them. To save them… or to destroy them."
Her heart clenched. The command branded on her chest pulsed — Endure. It whispered to her like a tether, urging her not to falter.
But what could she write? What right did she have to change him?
The Hae-won she knew — the real one — would laugh in her face if he heard. He would call her naïve, tell her not to waste her soul on him. He would rather burn alone than let someone else shoulder his weight.
And yet—
The echo's eyes lifted. They weren't his, not truly, but they still pierced her. They looked… tired. So tired she thought he might vanish if she blinked.
Her hand shook. The pen throbbed like a second heartbeat.
"Write," the voice commanded.
She stepped forward. Her knuckles whitened around the pen until she thought her bones would splinter. She pressed the nib to the shadow's chest. The parchment beneath her feet trembled.
Her voice cracked as she whispered, "Live."
The word seared itself into the echo's chest. Gold spread through the cracks in his form like fire through dry paper. He shuddered, then lifted his head with something almost like defiance.
[ Soul Script Applied. ]
[ Target: Cha Hae-won (echo). ]
[ Command: Live. ]
Pain ripped through her body — worse than before. The backlash of trying to force a command onto a soul that resisted. She doubled over, blood flooding her mouth, but she held on.
The echo staggered, half-obliterated, but the golden command pulsed at its core. It didn't vanish. It endured.
Tears blurred her sight.
She whispered, "If the real you hates me for this… then hate me. But I won't watch you vanish anymore."
The void shifted. The echo faded back into parchment light, leaving only the weight of the pen in her hands.
[ Trial 2 Complete. ]
[ Second Command Acquired: Live (Other). ]
[ You may now inscribe upon the souls of chosen targets. Success depends on their acceptance. ]
Arin fell to her knees, panting, her chest seared raw where the word "Endure" still burned.
Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. She didn't feel triumphant. She felt like she'd stolen something that wasn't hers.
But deep inside, a thread connected her to Hae-won's echo — faint, but real.
And for the first time since the scenarios began, she thought:
Maybe I don't have to just follow him. Maybe I can hold him back from the edge, even if he hates me for it.
The parchment world folded again. A new page turned.
And the voice whispered:
"The third trial awaits."
The parchment world turned again.
This time, Arin didn't fall — she was pulled. Yanked forward as if the ground itself rejected her weight. She tumbled into a vast library, endless shelves spiraling upward into a sky that wasn't a sky at all but a ceiling of fire.
Every book glowed faintly. Some were bright, others dim, and one entire aisle flickered like it was burning out.
Her breath hitched. She knew instinctively what they were.
Lives.
The library was made of souls. Each book was a story lived, endured, or broken.
At the center stood a lectern, and upon it, a single book — bound not in parchment, but in chains. Its title burned her eyes.
[ The Crimson Regressions. ]
She staggered toward it. Every step rang in her bones.
The voice of the trial resounded, sharper this time:
[ Trial 3: Inscribe your final command. ]
[ Failure: Erasure of your soul. ]
[ Success: Ascension. ]
Her chest clenched. Final…?
The chains rattled, reacting to her presence. They slithered across the book's cover like living things, coiling tighter.
Her hand trembled as she reached for it — and suddenly, the space warped.
Figures appeared at the edges of the shelves. Not echoes this time, but visions.
She saw Hae-won in countless regressions.
One with eyes bloodshot, tearing his throat raw with screams as he bled himself dry.
One laughing hysterically, sanity broken beyond repair.
One kneeling in chains that pierced his body, whispering apologies no one could hear.
One standing tall, eyes steady, chains swirling like a crown.
Every version turned to her at once. Their voices layered together.
"Will you restrain me?"
"Will you free me?"
"Will you save me?"
"Will you end me?"
Arin's knees buckled. The pen in her hand burned white-hot. She was meant to write a single word — a command that would echo forever in her soul and his.
Her choices flashed before her.
• Restrain. To shackle him, prevent his fall into madness.
• Liberate. To cut his chains and let him burn, even if the world could not contain him.
• Protect. To anchor him, even at the cost of her own soul.
Her breath broke into sobs. She remembered his voice — raw, bitter, always defiant. "Then I'll rewrite it, even if it breaks me."
And she remembered her own, trembling but steady: "If you hate me for this… then hate me. But I won't let you vanish."
She lifted the pen. With blood and will, she carved the word onto the chained book's cover.
[ Command Inscribed: Protect. ]
The chains convulsed — not broken, not tightened, but shifted. They rearranged themselves, coiling into a shield around the book instead of a prison.
A light unlike any other exploded outward.
[ Soul Script Ascension Complete. ]
[ Title Acquired: Guardian of the Narrator. ]
[ Command Words: Endure (Self), Live (Other), Protect (Shared). ]
Arin collapsed to her knees, gasping as the power settled into her bones. Her skin glowed faintly, etched with golden script that pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat.
And in the distance — though this trial was separate, beyond timelines — she swore she felt a tug.
As though Hae-won himself had turned, chains swirling like galaxies, whispering her name through the void