The world returned in pieces — jagged shards of light, muffled sounds, and the echo of a memory that wasn't quite his.
Kim Dokja gasped as he sat upright, lungs seizing against phantom flames. The air was cool now, laced with smoke but breathable. The fire was gone. The bookstore was gone. And for a moment, he thought he was gone too.
But the card had worked.
[Plot Fragment - 'False Death' has been consumed. You are considered 'Deceased' by active scenario participants for the next 3 hours.]
His body trembled. It wasn't just a teleport or a shield — it had ripped him from the story. Like cutting a character out of a scene and pasting him somewhere else.
He stood slowly, finding himself on the rooftop of a building far from the battlefield. The city stretched before him, fractured and burning in the red glow of the scenario. He could still hear the chaos, but it felt distant — like background music to a drama he'd momentarily exited.
And she was there.
The girl — still unnamed — was leaning against the edge of the rooftop, watching the horizon.
"You're alive," she said without turning.
"Barely." Dokja wiped soot from his face. "That thing… It doesn't just hide you. It erases you."
She glanced over. "A temporary death. The narrative thinks you died in the explosion. That means we have time. Not much, but enough."
"Enough for what?"
"To find the pen."
Dokja blinked. "Come again?"
She looked at him, eyes reflecting firelight and stars. "The tool that writes the story. The one thing that can alter the scenarios from within."
Dokja laughed once — sharp, unbelieving. "You're serious. There's an actual pen?"
She nodded. "The Pen of the World Creator. A construct buried in the Fifth Library, hidden from the constellations, guarded by a fragment of the original narrative."
He stared at her.
"How do you know this?"
"Because someone told me." She hesitated. "Someone you know. Someone who used to write."
His breath caught.
There was only one person she could mean — the author of Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse. Yoo Joonghyuk's original enemy. The man who had orchestrated the story from beyond the curtain: tls123.
"He's real?"
"He's… broken. Trapped outside the main thread. But he found me, showed me glimpses. The scenarios weren't supposed to go this far, Kim Dokja. Something — or someone — hijacked them."
Dokja's mind spun. "You're saying the Scenarios were altered?"
"Corrupted," she corrected. "By entities beyond the constellations. Readers from other stories. Voyeurs who feed off our arcs. They want more than entertainment — they want control."
Dokja gritted his teeth. The feeling of being watched had never gone away — from the first scenario to now. But this made it worse. He wasn't just a protagonist anymore. He was a performer in a cage designed to burn him alive for an audience he'd never see.
And he was tired of it.
"Where is this library?"
She handed him something — a torn page, its edges glowing faintly.
A map. Or rather, a plot outline. Location markers danced across the parchment, rearranging themselves with every glance.
"It moves," she said. "Because it exists between chapters. We need to catch it at the right moment."
Another system message flashed before them:
[Time Remaining: 3 hours 2 minutes.]
[Participants still hunting 'Prey': 11.]
Dokja cursed. "If they find me before this ends—"
"They won't," she said. "Because you're not going to be Kim Dokja for a while."
He stared. "What?"
She pulled a card from her pocket — black with crimson ink. Its title shimmered:
[Narrative Mask: The Wandering Supporting Role]
"Wear this. You'll be invisible to the script — just a side character in the crowd. Until the time is right."
He took it, unsure whether to laugh or scream. "You've planned this."
"No," she replied. "I'm improvising. That's what readers do."
A beat of silence passed.
Then Dokja smiled — not his usual bitter smirk, but something sharper, more dangerous. "Fine. Let's improvise."
They moved fast. Through alleyways and broken streets, over debris and through shattered homes. The city's core pulsed with Scenario energy, buildings reforming as if the world itself was rewriting to trap them.
But with the mask on, no one noticed him. Not the hunters, not the system's eyes. For the first time in days, Kim Dokja wasn't being watched.
And he liked it.
At the stroke of the second hour, they reached the old subway station — its entrance crumbling, hidden behind a billboard advertising a long-dead drama series. Beneath it, a stairwell descended into darkness.
The Fifth Library.
The air grew heavier the deeper they went. Text covered the walls — flowing sentences in dozens of languages, some human, some not. Every step echoed like a turning page.
Finally, they arrived.
A vast chamber of floating books and spiraling ink. And at the center, suspended in a glass pedestal, was a single pen. Simple. Elegant. Radiating power.
Kim Dokja stepped forward.
And the voice came.
"So you've come to steal the script."
A figure emerged from the pages — shifting, faceless, made of broken dialogue and half-told tales.
The guardian.
"You think knowledge gives you the right to change fate?" it hissed.
Kim Dokja didn't flinch. "No. But ignorance doesn't give you the right to write mine."
And then the battle began.
Blades of words. Shields of plot. The chamber exploded in a storm of narrative fury.
And as the girl stepped beside him, her eyes gleaming, she whispered:
"Time to rewrite everything."
End of Chapter 3