The familiar glow of the screen bathed my room in soft blues and reds, Pikachu's cry echoing faintly as the ending theme began to play.
Years—no, a lifetime—of watching, restarting, catching up, falling behind, and returning again were finally coming to a close.
I was really going to finish it. All of it. The thought made my chest feel strangely tight.Then the world… slipped.
There was no dramatic pain. No tunnel of light.
Just a sudden, terrifying absence—as if someone had reached inside me and switched reality off.
And then I was awake.
But I wasn't breathing.
That was the first thing I noticed.
No rise and fall of my chest. No heartbeat pounding in my ears. I tried to gasp, instinct screaming at me to inhale—but nothing happened.
Yet I didn't suffocate. I didn't feel panic, either. Only a vast, hollow stillness, stretching endlessly in all directions.
I opened my eyes.
Or at least, I thought I did.
Before me lay an expanse of nothingness, dyed in colors that didn't quite exist—deep purples bleeding into silver, threads of light drifting like cosmic dust. I had no body. Or perhaps I did, but it felt weightless, undefined, as though I were a thought pretending to be a person.
Am I… dead?
The word echoed through me, heavier than any scream.
That's when I saw it.
Floating ahead was something that shouldn't have been there—a massive, translucent barrier, curved like the surface of a soap bubble. It shimmered gently, refracting the strange light around it, and upon its surface rippled scenes I couldn't fully understand. Skies filled with unfamiliar stars. Vast landscapes. Shadows of towering creatures that made my instincts recoil.
The barrier felt alive.
And it was watching me.
I don't know why, but I knew—absolutely knew—that staying where I was wasn't an option. This place was not meant for lingering. Whatever I had become, I was standing at a crossroads between existence and something else.
Between worlds.
My thoughts trembled as I drifted closer. With every inch, the barrier responded, its surface quivering like disturbed water. Memories surged through me—my room, the screen, the unfinished episode, the promise I would "watch it later."
A bitter laugh escaped me.
"So this is how it ends," I thought. "I don't even get to see the finale."
When I reached out—if that motion could even be called reaching—my consciousness touched the barrier.The instant I stepped beyond the bubble-like barrier, a crushing pressure descended upon me.
It wasn't physical—there were no hands, no chains—yet I was utterly restrained. Space itself seemed to lock in place, pinning my existence where it stood.
It felt as though an immeasurable will had turned its gaze upon me, vast and ancient beyond comprehension, and in that single moment of recognition, I was rendered insignificant.
Seen.
The realization alone was enough to make my thoughts tremble.
That will pressed down harder, suffocating not my body, but my very sense of self. I couldn't move. I couldn't retreat. Even the act of thinking felt like wading through a frozen sea. It was as though I had trespassed upon sacred ground, and the world itself was passing judgment.
Then it began to push deeper.
Something vast and formless reached toward the core of my consciousness, probing, prying—seeking entry into the place where my memories, my identity, my will resided. A silent invasion. An attempt to overwrite, to claim.
Panic surged.
No.
I don't know where the strength came from. Perhaps it was fear. Perhaps stubbornness. Or perhaps it was the countless hours I had spent chasing impossible dreams, refusing to give up even when the end was always just out of reach.
I resisted.
I gathered every fragment of myself—every memory, every desire, every unfinished promise—and pushed back. My consciousness screamed, standing defiant against a presence that felt closer to a god than anything human.
For a moment that felt like eternity, the two wills clashed in absolute silence.
Then… it stopped.
The crushing pressure eased. The invasive presence withdrew, slow and deliberate, as if reassessing me.
And in the space before me, where the weight of that will had once been, something opened.
A single eye bloomed into existence—vast, radiant, and impossibly intricate. Petals of luminous light unfolded around it, layer by layer, forming a magnificent lotus-shaped eye that gazed upon me with neither hostility nor warmth.
Only understanding.
I stared into the lotus-shaped eye, and understanding dawned without words.
This wasn't a god in the way humans imagined gods. It wasn't a guardian spirit, nor some exaggerated myth given form. The moment its gaze settled upon me, truth seeped directly into my awareness—as naturally as breathing once had.
This was the Will of the Universe.
No… more than that.
A vast, layered existence spanning universes upon universes. A multiversal framework so immense that the word infinite felt embarrassingly small in comparison. I had not merely crossed into another world—I had trespassed into a greater cosmological order, one governed by laws that existed long before concepts like life, death, or stories were ever born.
And I was not welcome.
The lotus eye did not glare at me with anger, nor did it burn with hostility. Its judgment was far colder than hatred. I could feel it categorizing me, measuring my existence, determining whether I was an error… or a threat.
An intruder.
So that was it.
I couldn't help it. A hollow, humorless laugh echoed inside my mind.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
If this really were some kind of game—some twisted isekai fantasy where death tossed you into a new world—then my luck had to be legendary in the worst possible way. I hadn't even taken my first step, hadn't drawn a single breath in this universe, and already I'd triggered the appearance of something that felt like the final hidden boss.
No—worse.
This wasn't the kind of enemy you fight at the end of a long journey, after grinding levels and collecting artifacts. This was the kind you weren't even supposed to know existed. The one buried in forgotten lore, locked behind impossible conditions, spoken of only in vague, terrified whispers.
And I had met it at the very start.
Game over before character creation, huh?
The realization weighed heavily on me. Not fear—oddly enough—but sadness. A quiet, sinking disappointment that settled deep within my consciousness.
I had died once already, clinging to a simple wish: to see the end of a story I loved. And now, reborn into something extraordinary, it seemed fate had decided to mock me yet again.
No second chances. No grand adventure.
Just judgment.
The lotus eye continued to observe me in silence, its countless luminous petals rotating slowly, each one etched with patterns that felt like equations of reality itself. I felt stripped bare under that gaze, as though every secret, every thought, every fleeting desire was laid open.
And still… it did not erase me.
That, more than anything else, unsettled me.
If I were truly an unacceptable anomaly, wouldn't I already be gone?
The thought flickered like a spark in the void.
I straightened—if only in spirit—and met the eye's gaze directly.
"Alright," I thought, a bitter smile forming within me. "If this really is the deepest, most broken boss fight… then at least let me know why I'm still standing."
The universe did not answer.
But the lotus eye pulsed once, slowly—
as if the game had finally acknowledged the player.The heavenly will stirred.
It didn't speak—not with sound, not with language—but the moment its intent brushed against me, agony tore through my consciousness.
It was sharp. Immediate. Absolute.
My thoughts fractured as if struck by lightning. Memories blurred, stretched, threatening to dissolve into nothingness. I felt myself unraveling, as though the very concept of "me" was being peeled apart layer by layer. Panic flared as a terrifying realization took hold—
I'm about to disappear.
Not die.
Disappear.
Erased so completely that even the idea of my existence would fail to persist.
But just as suddenly as it began, the pain halted.
Clarity returned in gasping fragments, and with it came understanding.
That wasn't an attack.
It was communication.
The heavenly will had merely turned its attention toward me, and even that passive intent—dulled, restrained, reduced beyond measure—was far too vast for a fragile consciousness like mine to endure.
The implication made my core tremble.
If this was what its weakened presence felt like… then what kind of existence was I standing before?
I sensed a subtle shift.
The pressure lessened further, reality around me adjusting in imperceptible increments, like an infinite mechanism fine-tuning itself. The will was lowering its "volume,"
compressing its immeasurable authority into a form that wouldn't annihilate me outright.
Only then did meaning begin to surface.
Not as words, but as structured intent—concepts carefully shaped so my mind could survive receiving them.
And that was when true horror set in.
This being… was not trying to threaten me.
It was being considerate.
The thought sent a cold shiver through what passed for my spine.
I had been so focused on my fear, my bad luck, my twisted sense of irony, that I hadn't fully grasped the truth until now. The gap between us wasn't one of strength or hierarchy.
It was one of existential scale.
To the heavenly will, I wasn't an enemy.
I was a thought too small to perceive clearly without adjustment.
The lotus eye glowed softly, its countless petals aligning, and for the first time, I felt that I might actually understand what it was trying to convey.
And that realization terrified me more than the pain ever had.
Because if this was the power required just to speak to me—
Then whatever it had to say would undoubtedly reshape my fate
Things finally began to unravel.
As the adjusted pressure settled into something my consciousness could barely endure, meaning crystallized out of the vast intent flowing toward me. Not words—never words—but an absolute declaration, engraved directly into my awareness.
Great Dao.
The lotus eye before me named itself so plainly that the weight of the title alone made my thoughts tremble.
Dao.
The word wasn't unfamiliar.
In my previous world, it existed as philosophy, as mysticism—an abstract principle spoken of in ancient Chinese texts. The Way. The natural order of all things. Something scholars debated endlessly and cultivators in fiction chased with desperate obsession.
Balance. Flow. Law.
I had always thought of it as a concept.
I was wrong.
This wasn't an idea given form.
This was the source.
The Great Dao did not represent the laws of the universe—it was those laws. Time, causality, existence, nonexistence, birth, annihilation… all of them were merely expressions of its will. Universes were not created by it in some grand act of intent; they simply occurred as consequences of its existence.
And I—
I had stepped into its domain without permission.
Understanding deepened, and with it came a sharp, sinking dread.
I had assumed the Dao regarded me as an intruder because I was foreign.
That assumption shattered.
The truth it conveyed was far worse.
I was not an intruder because I came from another world.
I was an intruder because I should not exist here at all.
My presence did not align with the Great Dao's recorded flow. My origin, my death, my rebirth—none of it followed the established sequences of cause and effect. I was not a traveler, not a summoned hero, not a chosen soul.
I was an irregularity.
An error that had slipped through layers of reality unnoticed until now.
The Great Dao had not appeared to judge me.
It had appeared because my existence had finally crossed a threshold where it could no longer be ignored.
Cold comprehension spread through me.
In cultivation stories, characters chased the Dao to gain enlightenment, power, immortality.
But no story ever asked—
What happens when the Dao notices you first?
The lotus eye regarded me with calm inevitability. There was no anger in its presence. No malice. Just an unyielding certainty that if left unresolved, I would eventually destabilize the flow of this multiversal system.
And then came the part that shattered everything I thought I understood.
The Great Dao conveyed something completely different from what I expected.
It did not declare my destruction.
It did not decree punishment.
Instead, it acknowledged a contradiction.
My consciousness carried memories, experiences, and narrative frameworks that did not originate from any universe under its governance. Concepts that should not exist here—stories of worlds stacked upon worlds, systems, reincarnations, protagonists defying fate.
Fiction.
To the Great Dao, those weren't stories.
They were foreign informational structures.
And somehow… I carried them intact.
Horror clenched tightly around my thoughts.
If the Dao was absolute law—
Then what did it mean that something outside its recorded existence had arrived within it?
The lotus eye's petals rotated slowly, radiating a gravity that made the void itself feel small.
And I understood then.
The Great Dao was not only observing me.
It was trying to determine whether I was a flaw to be corrected—
Or a variable that could not be erased without consequence.
My sadness from earlier returned, sharper now, edged with fear.
I hadn't met the final boss.
I had stumbled into the administrator of reality.
And for reasons I could not yet comprehend…
It was hesitating.