The problem wasn't that the ending was tragic.
Tragedy, when written properly, obeyed rules. Cause followed consequence. Pain was earned. Despair arose from choice, not convenience.
This ending had none of that.
I lay on my bed, phone glowing faintly in my hand. The hum of the city outside—traffic, generators, distant voices—grounded me in my modern world. And yet my mind was trapped inside the story I had just finished.
Final Chapter — Completed.
I didn't close the app.
Instead, I reread it.
Slowly. Carefully. Intentionally.
That had always been my habit. When something felt wrong, I didn't react emotionally. I dissected it. I traced every character decision, every implied motivation, every plot point. I wanted to see why it failed.
Princess Olyrén Kemíel Enoria Valerith Aurelion stood alone in the throne room.
Red hair unbound.
Golden eyes empty.
Blood drying across polished marble.
She had killed them all.
Her parents, who had treated her as a stain on the imperial line.
Her siblings, who had sharpened cruelty into sport.
She took the throne of her empire.
And then—without necessity, without inevitability—she ended her own life.
I exhaled slowly.
"No," I said, voice calm. "That doesn't follow."
The author had wanted despair.
I understood the intent. But despair without structure was not depth—it was convenience.
Olyrén had endured ten years of neglect, humiliation, and political isolation. Ten years where the story could have explored divergence: escape, resistance, corruption, or even redemption.
Instead, it chose erasure.
I scrolled back, reconstructing the timeline in my mind.
Ten years.
A gap large enough for countless variables to intervene.
The ending was not bold.
It was avoidable.
I typed my thoughts into the comment section:
This ending mistakes inevitability for depth.
You wrote a character shaped by cruelty, then refused to test whether she could become something else.
That is not realism. That is surrender.
I reread it once and hit post.
Immediately, my phone vibrated violently.
Once.
Twice.
Then the screen fractured.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
Veins of golden light bled outward across the glass, as if the story beneath it had grown tired of containment.
My heartbeat remained calm. Hallucinations rarely preserve internal logic—but this did.
A pressure built in the air behind my eyes.
Then a voice spoke—not aloud, not inside my head, but through the space between thought and perception.
"You perceive the flaw."
The light flared.
"So you will witness the correction."
I did not scream.
I reached one final conclusion as the world dissolved:
If this was a dream—then it was written for someone capable of understanding it.
The phone shattered into light.
I awoke with the first awareness of a foreign body.
Muscle memory, posture, reflexes—they all belonged to someone else. A body trained since childhood, not my modern one.
I flexed my hands.
Strong.
Calloused.
Longer fingers.
Scars along the knuckles.
Black hair fell over my eyes.
I studied the mirror.
The reflection was sharp, noble, disciplined.
Name: Prince Atelion Abdryth Maetyr Aurelion
Title: Crown Prince of the neighboring empire
Position: Heir to a kingdom that will one day face Olyrén's empire
Two siblings awaited me:
• Younger Brother: devoted, dreams of becoming Captain of the Royal Guard, loyal beyond measure.
• Younger Sister: youngest, beloved by both elder siblings, a quiet joy in this world.
Political matters pressed even in these first moments: I was already engaged—politically—to Princess Olyrén of the neighboring empire that would eventually invade us.
A ten-year window stretched before me.
Ten years to prevent catastrophe.
Ten years to protect my kingdom.
Ten years to understand a red-haired girl whose destiny I had already read.
I focused inward.
Aura stirred—warm, disciplined, flowing naturally through the muscles and bones of this body. Three Stars. Promising, but not complete.
Then, a colder, more infinite force responded—Mana.
Impossible, given the body's lineage. Yet it waited patiently, ready. One Circle. Just the beginning.
I smirked faintly.
Two incompatible powers, waiting to combine.
Intelligence, analysis, and calculation—the only constants I had brought from my world—aligned them perfectly.
The path forward was no longer random.
It was deliberate.
And I would master it.