Chapter 1 – "A Side Character's Life"
POV: Third-person limited (MC-focused)
The sun rose lazily over the village of Eryndor, painting the streets in shades of amber and gold. Children ran past mud-brick houses, their laughter echoing off the cobblestones, and merchants arranged their wares with practiced precision. Among them, a boy sat quietly on the edge of the fountain, a notebook balanced precariously on his knees.
His name was Lyran. To anyone passing by, he was nothing more than an ordinary boy—the village blacksmith's apprentice. But in truth, he was the kind of person who never truly belonged anywhere. His eyes lingered on the way the world worked—the predictable patterns, the cause and effect of every gesture and word.
He doodled in his notebook, not dragons or swords, but intricate diagrams of human behavior. How the village guard patrolled, how merchants haggled, how the children chose which games to play. To anyone else, it would have seemed pointless. But to Lyran, it was survival, understanding, preparation.
"Lyran! Stop daydreaming and fetch more water!" barked the blacksmith, his voice echoing from the workshop.
Obediently, Lyran rose, but his mind wandered. Even here, in this mundane life, he could feel the invisible strings tugging at him. Patterns he couldn't ignore. Outcomes he knew before they happened. His entire existence felt… predetermined.
He had always known his role. The village heroes—the brave warriors, the talented mages, the chosen children of prophecy—were the ones who mattered. He was a side character. A background fixture. A pawn. And pawns died first.
He had seen it happen, over and over, in his memory.
A shiver ran down his spine, but he suppressed it. Not because he feared the blacksmith's scolding—no, this fear was older, deeper. The knowledge that life itself had an order, a narrative, and he was not meant to rise above it.
And yet… there was a thought that lingered in the back of his mind, a dangerous one. What if the story could be bent? What if a pawn could step outside the board?
He carried the water back to the workshop and kept silent, but inside, his mind was alive with calculations. He watched the villagers, the patterns of their lives, the way each event seemed to cascade into the next. Even as the blacksmith praised the apprentice-heroic gestures of others, Lyran observed, memorized, and plotted.
Because he knew one undeniable truth: the world had a will. And that will was absolute… but it was not perfect. Somewhere, in the cracks of its order, there might be a loophole.
He didn't know what it would be yet. He only knew that he would find it. And when he did… nothing would ever control him again.
The sun climbed higher, and the village carried on its endless, predictable rhythm. Children laughed, merchants bickered, heroes practiced their duels. And Lyran, sitting quietly by the fountain with his notebook, smiled ever so slightly. Not for the world, not for the villagers, not for the blacksmith.
For the first time, he imagined something beyond his role—a life where a side character could choose his own fate.