Jiyoen Lee's POV
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The ink didn't stop.
It poured from my fingers like blood,
like regret,
like every word I'd written that should've stayed unsaid.
Not poetic. Not metaphor.
Real.
Warm, pulsing ink.
It streaked down my wrists and soaked into the earth like unspoken apologies.
Arien didn't speak.
She just held me.
And for the first time in what felt like a thousand chapters,
I wasn't the Author.
I was the one being read.
---
My mind—
Fractured.
Not broken in the dramatic sense.
But unraveled — like a scroll unrolling too fast.
Pages fluttered in all directions.
Characters leaked from the seams of my soul.
Jiwoon's laughter — the one that used to annoy me but secretly grounded me.
Ereze's fury — the kind that carved justice into stone.
Aisha's silence — not quiet, but filled with everything I couldn't bear to hear.
Arien's sword.
The weight of memory swung like a pendulum over me.
Time didn't rewind.
It reflected.
And it judged.
---
> "I can't hold it together," I whispered.
My voice shook, more ink than air.
My body trembled as fractured plot threads lashed against my ribs.
Each heartbeat erased another layer of ego.
> "Then don't," Arien said.
> "Let it break."
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And so I did.
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I didn't scream.
I didn't struggle.
I released.
The world I had rewritten — the Fractureworld — began to collapse inward.
Not with a bang.
Not even with a whimper.
Just…
Like a book being shut.
One final time.
---
And in the silence left behind, I spoke the truth.
> "My name is…"
I coughed.
Thick streams of ink splattered across Arien's clothes, staining them black.
It spilled into the soil, pooled in the cracks of the ground where dreams had once grown, and bled into the world I had over-written.
---
> "Xianlung Lee."
There.
The pen name.
The mask I wore.
As I observed.
As I commented.
As I judged.
The name I hid behind when I didn't want to be vulnerable.
> "No…" I smiled, bitter and tired.
"That was the safe name. The false one."
A pause.
> "The one I chose when I wanted to narrate the world… not live in it."
---
Arien didn't flinch.
Didn't offer sympathy.
She just was.
Still. Steady. Present.
A better mirror than any I had ever written into existence.
> "My real name is…"
I forced myself to breathe.
> "Jiyoen Lee."
And the world —
The Script —
The very essence of the Fractureworld —
Accepted it.
---
The system didn't reply with fanfare.
No golden banners.
No music.
Just a line.
> [AUTHOR IDENTITY CONFIRMED: JIYOEN LEE]
[WORD SOURCE: BROKEN]
[NARRATIVE REINS: RELEASED]
---
The air shifted.
Not dramatically.
Just gently.
Like grief finally taking its last breath.
Like memory deciding to stay — not as a wound, but as a lesson.
---
The bleeding stopped.
My hands were still covered in ink.
But now it was dry.
No longer a punishment.
Just… residue.
The sky uncurled like a page turned slowly.
And then — it rained.
---
But not water.
Not fire.
Books.
Blank ones.
Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands.
It rained books.
They fell without impact.
Each one landing softly on the dirt, the stone, the broken bones of the rewritten.
No titles.
No endings.
Just beginnings.
---
I looked up, blinking through blurred eyes.
And there they stood.
Jiwoon. Ereze. Kana.
Even some of the husks I thought I'd lost.
All looking skyward as the stories descended.
No one reached for them.
Not yet.
As if we all knew:
These stories weren't gifts.
They were responsibilities.
---
Arien stood slowly.
Her sword still dripped.
But not with blood.
With memory.
Liquid truth trailing down the blade I once tried to overwrite.
---
I didn't move.
I had nothing left to write.
And maybe that was the point.
---
She looked down at me.
Not as a rebel.
Not as a rival.
Not even as the girl I tried so hard to delete.
But as the one who once said:
> "If we ever forget who we are, we don't deserve to write what comes next."
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I remembered.
The day she said that was the day I made my first selfish rewrite.
The first irreversible deletion.
The first time I crossed the line from reader to dictator.
---
Now, she didn't need to say anything else.
Because I finally understood:
I had become the god of the story.
And she made me human again.
---
I lowered my head.
The last command faded from my lips.
Not in failure.
Not in regret.
In relief.
---
No more omniscience.
No more systems.
No more revisions.
Just a boy with a name.
And a world that could finally move on without him.
---
> [SYSTEM TERMINATED]
[SCRIPT DELETED]
[CHARACTERS SET FREE]
---
"Arien," I whispered.
She paused.
> "Thank you… for remembering me."
She didn't smile.
Didn't cry.
But her silence was softer than any line I could write.
She remembered.
And that was enough.
---
I sat beside the fallen manuscript.
It no longer glowed.
It no longer bled.
It just existed.
Like a heart that had finally stopped beating after a life too long lived.
---
And above us…
The blank books kept falling.
Untouched.
Unwritten.
Waiting.
---
Because the ending was never mine to give.
It was ours to begin.
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