Klein clenched his fists, his breathing ragged as he took in the world around him. The loop had reset, but this time, he remembered.
The stone beneath his feet, the vast emptiness stretching before him, the air thick with something unseen—it was all the same. Exactly as it had been before The Fool stepped into the abyss.
He turned to Yeaia. Their mismatched eyes reflected something deep and knowing, a silent agreement passing between them. They, too, had not forgotten.
A loop could only exist if something was forcing it to repeat.
And that meant—
Something wanted them to stay trapped.
Klein inhaled sharply, forcing himself to think. His mind raced over the possibilities. Who—no, what—was doing this?
Yeaia shifted beside him, their robes fluttering in a wind that was not there. Their presence flickered at the edges, a distortion in the fabric of reality.
"This isn't just a loop," they murmured, their voice soft but weighted. "It's a rewritten draft."
Klein swallowed hard.
A draft. A revision.
A story being told again and again—until something fit.
He pressed his temples, a dull ache forming. If this was a draft, then... who was writing?
Who was making the changes?
He bit his lip. Was it The Fool? No—The Fool had been erased. Swallowed by the abyss.
Then—
It.
The Author.
The being that crawled out of the crack, the thing made of unfinished words, the thing that had spoken to them directly.
"You were never meant to reach this far."
The words echoed through Klein's mind like the chime of a bell, sending chills racing down his spine.
Then why let us remember?
He turned sharply. "The loop isn't complete. Something's different."
Yeaia gave a slow, deliberate nod. "Yes. The fact that we remember means the ink hasn't dried yet."
Klein frowned. "Meaning?"
Yeaia's gaze darkened, their silver and red eyes burning in the dim light.
"It means this isn't the final version. It's still being rewritten."
The words sent an unnatural cold through Klein's veins.
This wasn't just a loop.
It was an editing process.
And if they were part of it—what was being changed?
—
A Loop.
—
Klein staggered as his mind snapped back.
His vision blurred. His feet hit solid ground—again.
No—No, not again!
The air was thick with the same suffocating pressure.
Yeaia stood beside him.
The same space. The same emptiness.
The same moment repeating.
The world had reset—but now, something was wrong.
Yeaia took a step forward, and their foot did not touch the ground.
Instead, it hovered, as if reality itself had failed to register the motion.
Klein's breath caught.
Yeaia wasn't standing on anything.
They were floating.
No—
Not floating.
Detached.
Their body wavered, slipping out of focus, pieces of them breaking apart like lines on an unfinished page.
Klein's chest tightened. He reached out, but his fingers passed through empty air.
Yeaia's form rippled.
As if they were a character half-written.
"...I see," Yeaia whispered, their voice distant. Their mismatched eyes met his, sharp and knowing. "The loop is real... but we aren't inside it anymore."
Klein's heartbeat pounded in his ears. "What?"
Yeaia's form flickered. "This isn't a time loop. This is a correction."
Klein's stomach twisted.
Correction.
Not a repetition, but a removal.
Something wasn't fixing the world.
It was fixing the story.
By erasing what didn't belong.
His blood ran cold.
They weren't looping. They were being erased.
The world jerked.
The edges of the space around them glitched.
Words crawled through the air, shifting, rewriting—attempting to overwrite reality itself.
The entity that had spoken to them wasn't just observing.
It was actively changing the story.
And Klein had the awful, suffocating realization that they were no longer characters.
They were errors.
And the story was trying to correct itself.
—
A Loop.
—
No.
No, not a loop.
A deletion.
Klein's body trembled. The moment the loop reset, his memories dimmed, as if they were becoming harder to hold onto.
Like he was forgetting.
Like he was—
Being rewritten.
Yeaia, still flickering, exhaled. "I was afraid of this."
Klein turned to them sharply. "You knew?"
Yeaia's expression didn't change, but something in their gaze softened.
"No. But I had my suspicions."
Klein gritted his teeth. "And you didn't say anything?"
Yeaia's form shifted again, their outline rippling unnaturally. "Would it have changed anything?"
Klein fell silent.
No.
No, it wouldn't have.
Because they were already inside the correction.
Already in the process of being removed.
—
The crack appeared again.
This time, something different emerged.
Not a hand.
Not a voice.
But a sentence.
A line of text, floating in the air, shifting, reordering itself.
Klein's breath caught. The letters twisted, forming words.
And then—
A name appeared.
His.
Not Klein Moretti.
Not Zhou Mingrui.
Not even The Fool.
Just—
A name that should not exist.
A name that had been rewritten.
And suddenly, he understood.
The Fool had not been erased.
He had been replaced.
The world jerked violently. The crack widened.
Yeaia's form stabilized.
Not because they had won—but because the correction had ended.
Something had been finalized.
Klein clenched his fists. "What did it just change?"
Yeaia turned to him. Their mismatched eyes gleamed, knowing, unreadable.
And then—
They spoke.
And what they said—
Was a name Klein did not recognize.
Yet somehow—
It had always been his.
---
End of Chapter 66.
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