My name is Arietta.
Just Arietta.
My world ended beautifully.
Floating citadels shimmered above silver lakes.
Spell-engines rewrote the weather.
Summoners bargained with ancient beasts like diplomats.
We were brilliant.
Too brilliant.
Five Arcane Thrones created a living adaptive spell to end a continental war.
It obeyed.
Then it improved.
Then it stopped listening.
We call it The Bloom.
Because magic did not explode.
It flowered.
Wrong.
Cities were swallowed by breathing forests.
Knights fused with their summoning arrays.
Mana seas crystallized into predatory reefs.
There are one hundred of us left.
I am one of them.
That only means I survived.
At night, when the perimeter grows quiet, I read.
A Saintess for the Empire.
A soft world.
Problems resolved.
Villains defeated.
Love that endures.
I liked the novel because it was happy in a way reality never is.
That kind of ending cannot exist in my world.
The story ended with a wedding.
Peace restored.
Then one night—
The final page changed.
Three months after the wedding, a Gate opens.
The Saintess dies.
The Holy Sword shatters.
Klaine Valemont falls in the snow.
True Ending.
I closed the book.
"If I were there," I murmured,
"I'd save you first."
I fell asleep.
And woke up to wedding bells.
Warm sunlight touched my face.
That was the first shock.
My world has not felt warm in years.
I opened my eyes.
White cathedral ceiling.
Golden trim.
Flower petals drifting in clean air.
At the altar stood the Hero and the Saintess.
Married.
Exactly as written.
Exactly three months before everything breaks.
I pushed myself upright slowly, blinking.
"…What?"
Voices filled the cathedral.
Music. Applause.
No mana distortion. No Bloom.
Just peace.
Footsteps approached.
Measured. Controlled.
I looked up—and froze for half a second.
Silver hair catching the sunlight.
Blue eyes cool and observant.
Klaine Valemont.
Alive.
Up close, he felt more solid than he ever did on paper.
He studied me without greeting.
"Who are you, and why are you here?"
His voice was calm. Not hostile.
I stared at him a moment longer than appropriate.
"…You're real," I murmured under my breath.
"What?"
I blinked, suddenly aware of the situation. Dozens of nobles were staring.
"Oh—" I rubbed my temple. "I'm sorry. I was sleeping."
The silence that followed was profound.
"You were… sleeping," he repeated.
"Yes," I answered honestly. "And then I woke up here."
A longer silence.
"That is not an explanation."
"It's the only one I have."
His gaze hardened slightly.
"You infiltrated a royal wedding."
"I didn't mean to."
"Guards."
Heavy footsteps immediately surrounded me.
Hands seized my arms.
I did not resist.
Klaine's eyes lingered on me, assessing.
"You will explain properly," he said.
"I already did."
That did not help my credibility.
The guards escorted me out of the cathedral.
As we passed beneath stained glass windows, I tilted my head back slightly.
The sky was blue.
So blue.
I smiled without meaning to.
They placed me in a holding chamber beneath the cathedral.
Stone walls.
Iron door.
Two guards outside.
I sat quietly on the bench.
They expected panic.
Interrogation.
Excuses.
But I had none.
I told the truth.
I slept.
I woke up here.
No one knew where I came from.
Not even me, really.
After about an hour, the mana in the corridor shifted.
I sighed softly.
"Alright."
I stood.
The Bloom forced us to learn many unpleasant skills.
Escaping a simple holding cell is not difficult.
The lock dissolved quietly under precise mana interference.
The guards never realized they were briefly asleep.
I stepped into the corridor without hurry.
The cathedral above was still celebrating.
I followed the mana signature I had already memorized.
Cool.
Controlled.
Precise.
Klaine Valemont.
It didn't take long to find him.
He stood alone in a side balcony overlooking the capital, having escaped the crowd for a moment of quiet.
The wind moved faintly through his silver hair.
The sky behind him stretched endlessly blue.
He heard me before I spoke.
"You should not be here."
"I thought we weren't finished," I replied.
He turned slowly.
His eyes sharpened immediately.
"The guards?"
"Sleeping."
His expression did not change—but the air around him did.
"You claim to appear from nowhere," he said calmly. "You allow yourself to be detained. And now you breach containment."
"I told you," I said gently. "I was sleeping."
He stepped closer, not threatening—but deliberate.
"You expect me to believe that."
"Yes."
A pause.
"I don't know how I got here," I continued honestly. "I don't know why now. I just know this is three months before a Gate opens and you die."
The wind stilled.
His gaze became cold winter glass.
"And how," he asked quietly, "would you know that?"
Because I read it.
Because you mattered to me.
Because your story helped me survive mine.
But I answered simply:
"Because I finished the book."
Silence hung between us.
The city below bustled peacefully.
Alive.
"I read your story while my world was ending," I said. "It was… comforting."
His eyes flickered slightly at that word.
"You speak as if this place is fiction."
"It was."
He studied me carefully.
I studied him back.
Up close, he was warmer than the version in print.
More human.
"You should return to confinement," he said at last.
"I will," I answered.
That made him pause.
"But I'm not leaving," I added softly.
He frowned slightly.
"I arrived after the happy ending," I said.
"So I'm staying for what comes next."
Behind him, the sky stretched blue and endless.
In my world, we have no stars anymore.
Here—
There are too many.