The Regulator stopped recalculating.
That was the warning.
I felt it before it happened.
Not fear.
Not pain.
Finality.
The Regulator didn't attack me.
It completed me.
No explosion.
No struggle.
The sentence ended.
And so did I There was no darkness.
No void.
No after.
Because those things still count as scenes.
This was nothing left to observe.
Nyx screamed but the sound never reached anywhere.
Aethern tried to anchor reality there was nothing to root into.
Selene saw no futures because there was no present.
I was gone.
And then.
Something impossible happened.
The story waited.
No continuation followed.
No replacement protagonist.
No epilogue.
Just silence stretching too long.
ERROR the Regulator reported.
CONCLUSION FAILED.
Because death only works…
If something comes after it.
I stepped back in.
Not resurrected.
Not reborn.
Uncontinued.
The world snapped violently around me.
The Regulator recoiled.
YOU WERE FINALIZED.
I nodded once.
Yes I said calmly.
And I didn't accept it Aethern stared at me.
You didn't survive death.
Nyx whispered, shaken.
You ignored it.
I looked at the Regulator.
For the first time.
It backed away.
Not because it was beaten.
But because it now understood:
I wasn't breaking stories.
I was proving they couldn't close without my consent.