Matt had always believed that stories saved people.
Maybe that was why he clung so desperately to The Golden Weaver's First Apprentice. The novel was more than fiction to him. It was a refuge, a pillar, a companion that whispered to him in the quiet corners of his life when the world turned unbearably sharp. Some people had family. Some had lovers. Some had lifelong friends.
Matt had this novel.
He discovered it by accident, one of those late-night recommendations buried in a forum thread he couldn't even remember joining in RedDot. The title alone had caught his attention. The synopsis was vague, the comments were nonexistent, but something about it tugged at him: a tale of a beggar who will somehow be destined to challenge and save the world. It sounded poetic, lonely, and impossible.
Persistent characters always drew him in.
At first, he told himself he was only curious. Then the early chapters captivated him. Then the middle chapters consumed him. And by the time the story neared completion, Matt realized the frightening truth:
He loved the Finster.
.......
Not romantically, of course. But with a devotion deeper, stranger, and far more desperate than anything he'd felt for a real person.
The apprentice Finster was honest to the core. Always trying to take one more step forward, even when the world shoved him back a hundred. He carried burdens without complaint. He smiled through pain. He pushed on, again and again, because he believed he was still in a position to do even better.
And Matt understood him. In ways he didn't want to.
It frightened him how much he needed those chapters. How Finster's victories became his victories, how his setbacks made Matt's chest cave in. Every week, Matt waited for the next release with an anticipation that bordered on addiction. Some evenings he came home exhausted, hollowed out by work or loneliness—but one new chapter was enough to make his world glow again.
He had built a routine around it, a fragile rhythm that stitched meaning into the gray days. So when the author finally announced:
FINAL CHAPTER — releasing tonight,
Matt felt both excitement and dread knotting in his gut.
He waited all afternoon. He refreshed the page every hour. He made coffee even though he didn't need it. He cleaned his desk, paced, opened and closed apps at random. He caught himself staring at the countdown like a starving man watching a locked pantry.
By the time the chapter was finally uploaded, his hands were actually shaking.
He clicked immediately.
And for the next forty minutes, Matt forgot the world.
The prose was beautiful. Painfully so. Every loose thread is tied together. Every prophecy, every choice, every wound—woven perfectly into the climax. He could feel Finster's hope. His determination. His acceptance.
But acceptance of what?
Matt read faster. Too fast. He slowed down. His breath hitched. His throat tightened.
And then......
He reached the ending.
Finster died.
Finster burned his own life to save a world that never once acknowledged him, never thanked him, never even knew the weight he carried.
It was noble. It was tragic.It was beautifully written.
And it crushed Matt.
He scrolled back up, reread paragraphs that blurred through the film of his tears, searching for something—anything—that hinted at survival, at a hidden miracle, or worse, a hint of an alternate ending.
But the text remained mercilessly clear.
The apprentice was gone.
Finster was gone.
Matt sat frozen for a long moment, the glow of the screen reflecting off the wetness gathering in his eyes. His lips trembled. Something inside him—something fragile and stitched together by pages—splintered.
"It's not fair," he whispered, voice shaking. "No. No, it's not fair."
He swallowed, but it did nothing to clear the ache in his chest. Air felt thin, his room suddenly suffocating as though the story had sucked the oxygen out of it.
His voice cracked.
"It all made sense… why does it hurt so much if it all made sense?"
He knew why. Because a tragedy that made sense hurt more, not less. Because logic did nothing to soften loss. Because meaning was cold comfort when the character you cherished had been extinguished.
He slammed the laptop closed, as if shutting the device could erase the ending burned into his brain. But it only left him alone with his grief.
Matt pressed his palms to his eyes. He had cried before—over movies, over stress, over loneliness—but he hadn't cried like this in years. It was an ugly, desperate sort of heartbreak. The kind that had no outlet because people didn't understand. They never understood.
It wasn't just a story to him. Finster wasn't just a character.
To Matt, he had been family.
He felt stupid for feeling that way. Yet the emotions didn't care about logic. They rose and surged, overwhelming him until he thought he might physically break under the weight of it.
"I hate bad endings," he whispered again, barely audible.
He hated sacrifice. Hated noble deaths. Hated that Finster, who tried so hard and deserved so much, was erased by a world that would never remember him.
"I hate it," Matt said, louder this time, as if speaking could undo fate. "I hate that he died. I hate that he didn't get a chance. I hate that after everything… he just—"
His voice cracked again.
"He was the reason I'm still here," he choked. "He kept me going. And now he's gone. And it just—ends."
He didn't know how long he sat like that—minutes, maybe longer—until his phone chimed beside him, its sudden light cutting through the dimness of his room.
Matt sniffed, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve. He reached for the phone without thinking, expecting a notification, an email, anything mundane.
But the screen… wasn't normal.
A soft, pulsating glow radiated from it, like a warm breath held behind glass. The light twisted, expanded, then condensed into a line of text that seemed to hover and float in front of him.
Matt blinked.
No app was open.No keyboard active.No widget, no notification, nothing he recognized.
Just a sentence.
How do you think it should have ended?
Matt stared, uncomprehending.
"What…?" His voice was hoarse.
He rubbed his eyes, believing it was his exhaustion playing tricks on him. But when he looked again, the words remained—steady, bright, impossibly present.
How do you think it should have ended?The question repeated—a second line forming beneath the first. The glow intensified faintly, almost like the device was waiting for him, listening.
"That's not funny," Matt muttered, trying to steady his breathing. "Who's doing this? Is this some kind of glitch?"
No reply.
Just the warm, patient radiance of the screen.
....
....
......
Matt, fragile from tears and confusion, felt the world tilt slightly—the kind of tilt that suggested the ground beneath him was no longer entirely real.
"Why… why are you asking me that?" he whispered.
His fingers trembled as he held the device. His chest was tight again, not from grief this time, but something else rushing, an unfamiliar yet familiar sensation.
The text pulsed softly.
How should it have ended?
The answer rose inside him instinctively, from a place deeper than thought.
"I… would be there," he said quietly, almost to himself.
His voice was soft, barely a whisper, but the phone immediately brightened even more, responding as if it had heard him.
Matt swallowed, heartbeat pounding too fast.
"I'd be there for him," he continued, words spilling out before he could question them. "I'd support him. I'd be his anchor. His start and his release. His companion and his ally."
The screen shimmered, the light rippling outward like a drop in still water.
"I owe him at least that much…" Matt whispered, feeling the conviction tighten in his chest, fierce and unyielding. "He shouldn't have died alone."
His vision was blurry again, not from sadness this time, but from something painfully earnest rising inside him.
He hadn't realized how much he meant it.
The glow dimmed for just a heartbeat. Then, the phone displayed a new line.
As expected.
Matt's breath hitched.
The light paused.
Then the final message appeared, steady and resolute:
Don't fail this time.
Time.This time.
The phrasing punched through him like a shockwave.
"What… does that mean?" Matt whispered. "This time? What time? What are you?"
The phone's light surged brilliantly, blinding, all-consuming. Matt gasped, shielding his eyes, but the glow seeped through his fingers like sunlight through water. His room trembled. His senses drowned in radiance, swallowing sound, shape, and the beating of his own heart.
He tried to drop the phone, but it clung to his hand like gravity had reversed.
The air thickened. His ears rang. His breath caught in his chest as something unseen dragged him forward, like his soul was being pulled through threads of light.
He felt heat. Cold. Then neither. Then both.
He felt motion without moving and falling without descending and rising without ascending. The world spiraled, folded, twisted upon itself, every sensation unmoored from reality.
Thinking he was gonna die, his last coherent thought was a quiet, trembling plea:
I guess I will also receive a "bad ending".
The radiance swallowed everything.
And Matt vanished.