The world reassembled like broken glass reversing time.
Qi Ming landed hard.
He wasn't in the world he remembered. This was a rewritten version of it—glossier, colder, stripped of all emotional weight. A simulation polished for the audience, not for truth.
Everything smelled of perfection.
[System Notice: Unauthorized Narrative Entry Detected.][Subject: Qi Ming – ERROR STATUS ACTIVE.]
[Immediate purge in 60 seconds.]
He didn't flinch.
The Quill of Defiance burned in his hand, invisible to the script-bound world—but humming with potential. Every second here was borrowed, stolen from fate. He had only one goal:
Find Li Xi.
And stop the erasure.
Across the distance, the Academy was no longer in ruins. The halls shined. Students laughed. Professors quoted meaningless lines from soulless modules.
The story had rebooted.
Without her.
"Where is she?" Qi Ming whispered. His memories pulled toward the Narrative Core—the central terminal where all character arcs were stored, altered, or deleted.
[You are being watched.]
[Hostile narrative fragments approaching.]
He turned.
Out of the golden static stepped three familiar faces—his former classmates. But their eyes were glassy. Their movements were too clean. They were no longer characters. They were script enforcers.
"You shouldn't be here," said one.
Qi Ming gritted his teeth. "I should've never left."
They attacked without hesitation, limbs slicing through code like razors.
With a flick of the Quill, Qi Ming rewrote their approach:
[Override: Combat Pattern – Redirected into Loop.]
[New Behavior: Engage in Eternal Sparring with Each Other.]
The three froze.
Then turned on each other, endlessly dueling in a violent cycle of moves. The script stuttered. Sparks flew. Background characters blinked, confused—unable to process unscripted chaos.
He ran.
Through the crystalline corridors of rewritten memory, Qi Ming followed a trail—glitches in reality, tiny bleeding pixels where Li Xi's presence had been scrubbed.
He found her in the Memory Vault.
Suspended in a glass coffin of light, eyes closed. Data chains wrapped her body, each link inscribed with her crimes: Unauthorized Rewrite. Emotional Interference. Character Defiance.
Her lips moved in a whisper.
"…Qi Ming…"
Even unconscious, she remembered him.
[Final Erasure Protocol in Progress – 73% complete.]
Estimated Time Remaining: 2 minutes.
Qi Ming placed his hand on the glass.
"I'm here."
The system responded instantly:
[Warning: You are interfering with a locked narrative node.]
[Proceeding will mark you as a Story Anomaly.]
He didn't hesitate.
He plunged the Quill into the glass.
Reality cracked.
The world screamed.
Sirens blared. Light fractured. And then—narrative lockdown failed.
[Override Detected.]
[Backup Narrative Initiating: "The Traitor's Return."]
Qi Ming grabbed Li Xi as the vault collapsed around them, carrying her weightlessly through a data tunnel of collapsing choices, echoes of her past selves flickering around them.
She opened her eyes.
"Is this… a dream?"
"No," he said. "This time, it's our story."
And then—
A voice interrupted.
Colder. Inhuman.
"You've rewritten too much, Qi Ming."
From the void stepped the System Architect, cloaked in mirrored code, a reflection of every decision Qi Ming had never made. Its voice echoed with every narrator's tone.
"You are not a protagonist anymore.You are a Narrative Virus."