The sun above Seoul flickered like a dying bulb.
Do-hyun stood on the edge of what used to be the Han River bridge, the city stretching endlessly before him — half-ruin, half-mirage.
Every few seconds, the skyline would twist, buildings bending unnaturally before snapping back, as if reality itself couldn't decide whether to exist.
Behind him, Seong-wu was pacing, sword drawn but sheathed in restraint.
Every step he took left a faint trail of gold in the air — the remnants of what had once been divine light. Now, it only served as a reminder that the gods had stopped watching.
"Anything?" Seong-wu asked, his voice low.
Do-hyun shook his head. "Nothing. No traces, no aura, not even his chains. It's like he never existed."
At that, Arin turned sharply.
Her robes were no longer pure white — streaks of gray had begun to seep through the fabric, dulling her divine glow. She'd only just returned from Heaven, but something in her eyes had changed. They were calmer. Colder.
And infinitely heavier.
"He existed," she said quietly. "He still does."
Seong-wu frowned. "How can you be sure?"
"Because the world is trembling," she said, and her voice was almost reverent. "He's rewriting something again."
A faint pulse rolled through the ground, subtle but unmistakable — the same vibration that used to accompany Hae-won's chains. It was slower now, less violent, but denser, more deliberate.
Each pulse felt like a heartbeat echoing from beneath the earth.
Do-hyun crouched and pressed a hand to the cracked pavement.
It was warm.
He remembered the last thing Hae-won said before disappearing — or maybe before dying.
"If I can't rewrite it… then I'll remember it."
That wasn't a farewell. It was a promise.
The others didn't believe him when he said that. But Do-hyun had seen it — the look in Hae-won's eyes when he faced the chains. That wasn't the face of someone who'd given up.
That was the face of someone who'd decided to bear the world.
"Where would he go?" Seong-wu muttered, half to himself. "If he was really alive…"
"He'd go where the story began," Do-hyun said.
They all turned to him.
He looked up, eyes narrowing toward the north — toward the higher levels of Seoul, where the air shimmered faintly like heat haze.
It wasn't natural. It wasn't even real.
A structure loomed faintly there now, just barely visible through the distortion — a tower that hadn't existed yesterday.
"Is that… new?" Seong-wu whispered.
Do-hyun nodded grimly. "The Tower of Seoul. The System called it the 'Ascent-Descent Gate.' Dual paths. One climbs, one falls."
"And Hae-won?" Arin asked.
He met her gaze. "If he's alive… he's already inside."
Silence stretched between them.
They all remembered what the Tower represented.
The first descent had broken their world.
The second one might erase it.
Arin stepped closer, her faint divine aura brushing against Do-hyun's shoulder. "Then we go after him."
Seong-wu looked at her sharply. "After Heaven stripped you of purity? After you killed a narrator and barely returned with your soul intact?"
She didn't flinch. "Yes. Because if he's down there, the chains will call to me eventually. And when they do… I have to be ready."
Her words were steady, but the faint tremor in her hands betrayed her.
Do-hyun sighed and turned toward the distant shimmer. "Fine. But we'll need supplies, information, and access keys. That place isn't going to let us walk in."
"The Tower won't stop us," Arin said, almost to herself. "It wants us to enter. It wants witnesses."
The wind picked up suddenly, carrying with it a faint metallic sound — like distant clanging.
Chains. Moving fast. Too fast.
Do-hyun's heart leapt.
He stepped to the edge of the bridge, staring into the distortion. For a fraction of a second, he saw something — or someone — falling through the air. A blur of motion, silver and crimson. The outline of a man surrounded by two searing chains cutting through the skyline like lightning.
Then it vanished.
Do-hyun whispered, "Hae-won…"
The air snapped with tension, and the System's voice roared across the sky:
[ New Scenario: The Convergence. ]
[ Objective: Locate the Descender of Chains. ]
[ Warning: Reality Divergence Exceeds Threshold. ]
Seong-wu's grip tightened on his blade. "He's not hiding anymore."
Arin's eyes glowed faint blue as divine fire began to spark around her again. "No. He's calling us."
Do-hyun stared at the sky one last time — where the shimmer of chains had burned holes through the clouds.
And for the first time since the scenarios began, he smiled. A grim, broken smile.
"Then let's answer."
⸻
[ System Notice: The Ascent-Descent Gate will open in 12 hours. ]
[ Entry optional. Consequence unavoidable. ]
The chains in the distance screamed once — and the city answered back.
The descent had no light.
Just fire.
And screaming.
Hae-won dragged himself through the molten corridors of the lower floors — each one worse than the last — each one forcing him to remember what he'd tried to bury.
Every step was accompanied by the clink of his two surviving chains, each moving like a predator at rest, their glow dull and sickly.
The air shimmered with heat, turning his breath to smoke.
He'd stopped counting the bodies hours ago.
They weren't enemies anymore — not really. Just obstacles.
The Tower didn't need monsters. It made humans into them.
A notification flickered before him, half-burnt, half-broken.
[ Current Rank: 45 ]
[ Floor: 23 — "The Furnace of Intent" ]
[ Soul Condition: Withered ]
[ Emotional Stability: Declining. ]
[ Humanity: 12%. ]
He laughed — a hoarse, cracked sound that didn't sound like him anymore.
Humanity: twelve percent.
He wondered if that was too generous.
The last opponent he'd faced had called him "The Flame Emperor."
He hadn't chosen the name — they had.
He didn't command flame in the way mages did.
He was the flame — consuming, aimless, eating through everything to find meaning in the ash.
The flame burned, not because it wanted to, but because it had to.
Hae-won flexed his fingers. Blisters cracked open on his skin, healing almost instantly — a cruel reminder that the tower wouldn't let him die that easily.
[ Death Restricted until Completion of Descent Objective. ]
He hated that line.
He'd seen it too many times.
He stumbled against the wall, the heat searing his bare palm.
Everywhere around him, whispers clawed at his ears — not from the dead, but from himself.
"You were supposed to be the protagonist."
"The son of gods."
"Why did your story fail?"
"Why did you write a world that hated you?"
His fist smashed into the stone, leaving a deep crater.
"I didn't write this," he hissed. "I lived it."
The chains stirred behind him — one curling protectively near his shoulder, the other dragging across the floor like a snake.
They were slower now. Restricted.
But not dead.
Every time he died, a chain broke.
Every time one broke, something inside him woke up.
Something old. Something that wasn't human.
He wasn't sure which was worse — the pain of dying or the memory that came after.
The Tower had changed his regression rule.
Now, each death showed him someone else's suffering.
A child freezing in an alley.
A mother's prayer unanswered.
A man begging for one more day.
And when he opened his eyes again, those memories were his.
He wasn't sure where he ended and where they began anymore.
That was the price of being both narrator and incarnation.
To remember everything.
To burn through everyone's story until nothing was left but silence.
He looked at his hands again — faint red veins pulsing beneath his skin. The divine and demonic blood warred endlessly, whispering their opposing truths.
One said, protect them.
The other said, burn them first.
Both voices sounded the same now.
He tore a strip of his burned coat and tied it around his wrist.
There was no use patching himself anymore. The wounds were inside, not outside.
"Forty-five out of a thousand," he murmured. "Guess I'm still lucky."
He said it like a joke. It wasn't.
Somewhere above, he knew the others would be preparing for entry.
Do-hyun, still too loyal for his own good.
Seong-wu, desperate to prove himself worthy of divine favor again.
And Arin…
He stopped breathing for a second.
Her name was still dangerous to think about.
Every time he did, the world seemed to twist, as if Heaven itself wanted to rip her memory from him.
He closed his eyes. For a moment, he could almost feel her voice — soft, steady, distant.
"Then maybe I'm meant to stop you."
He smiled faintly, though it didn't reach his eyes.
"Try me," he whispered.
The Tower rumbled — as if in answer.
⸻
He reached the door of the 24th floor.
The inscription on the gate was written in a language that looked like fire frozen mid-dance.
[ Challenge: The Mirror of Creation. ]
[ Objective: Face the Author. ]
Hae-won's breath caught.
The Author.
No — his author.
He gripped the chain in his hand, and for the first time, it pulsed not with obedience, but anticipation.
"Guess we're finally doing this," he said under his breath.
The chain shimmered, faint light tracing its length.
Then he stepped through.
The air inside the 24th floor felt… wrong.
It wasn't the suffocating heat anymore — it was silence.
Not the stillness of peace, but the kind that happens right before something breaks.
The floor was empty, yet it stretched endlessly — black glass beneath his feet reflecting a hundred versions of himself.
Each reflection moved a fraction too late. Each one stared with accusing eyes.
[ Challenge Initiated: The Mirror of Creation ]
[ Objective: Confront the Source. ]
A faint wind stirred.
It smelled like ink.
Like burnt paper.
Then the mirror rippled — and someone stepped out.
He was barefoot.
Young.
Wearing the same clothes Hae-won had worn years ago in that small, cracked apartment where he'd written the novel that started all this.
The boy's hair was messy, his eyes red from sleepless nights.
He held something in his hand — a pen, trembling between his fingers.
"…So it's you," Hae-won said quietly.
The boy tilted his head, his voice soft but steady. "You made me, remember?"
Hae-won didn't answer.
"You gave me purpose. Gave me pain. Gave me stories." The boy smiled, faint and bitter. "But you forgot to give me an ending."
The floor shuddered — each reflection now moving on its own.
Whispers echoed, lines from a story that never made sense, fragments of his past regressions bleeding into this unreal world.
"Every time you died," the boy said, walking closer, "you rewrote a sentence. Changed a comma. Added a death, a regret, a scream. And you called that salvation."
Hae-won flinched.
Because he remembered.
Each regression had been a draft.
Each one, another attempt to perfect a story that could never be written right.
"Why are you still trying?" the boy asked. "You've already burned the book."
"Because they're still in it," Hae-won whispered. "Because I can't leave them behind."
The boy's expression softened for a fraction of a second — before twisting into something cold.
"Then let's see if you can still save them."
The mirrors around them exploded — shards of reality spinning outward.
And from each fragment, illusions bled into life — ghosts of his past companions.
Do-hyun, bleeding from the leg, screaming his name.
Seong-wu, eyes hollow, golden light dimmed.
Arin, standing beneath a white sky, her expression unreadable.
Each one a moment. Each one a failure.
He wanted to scream, but the sound wouldn't come.
Instead, his chains responded — one lashing forward, striking through a phantom before he could stop it.
It shattered into glass.
"See?" the boy whispered. "You don't save people, Hae-won. You rewrite their deaths."
⸻
The mirrors bent inward. The illusions began to speak.
"You used us."
"You forgot us."
"You watched us die so you could learn how to live."
Hae-won's breathing hitched, ragged. His humanity — already thin — began to peel away.
The System's text flickered in front of his eyes:
[ Humanity: 5% ]
[ Emotional Stability: Corrupted ]
[ Regression memory bleed: 89% saturation ]
[ Warning: Soul structure destabilizing. ]
The boy raised his pen.
"This is the last draft."
And then the floor cracked beneath them.
⸻
He barely saw the flash before something massive collided with the floor from above — shattering the illusion.
The mirrors fell apart into thousands of burning fragments, and from the light, they emerged.
Do-hyun first, swinging his blade through falling debris.
Seong-wu close behind, golden aura blazing against the dark.
And Arin — descending like a falling star, her eyes faint blue, wrapped in the glow of Purification (Soul).
"Hae-won!" she shouted, spotting him amidst the wreckage.
He turned.
And they froze.
The man before them was barely recognizable.
His coat was burned through, his chains coiled around him like serpents made of lightless steel. His eyes were dim, flickering between red and grey — not human, not divine.
The air warped around him, pressure so thick that even the sound of their breathing seemed to distort.
Seong-wu raised his guard instinctively. "Is that—?"
Do-hyun's voice cracked. "No. That can't be—"
But Arin didn't move. She just looked at him — the same way she had before she'd ascended.
The System reacted to their reunion, text spilling across the air like ink across paper.
[ Divergent Event Detected: Rejoining of Splinter Timeline Entities. ]
[ Synchronization: Imminent. ]
[ Warning: Chainbearer's Humanity below functional threshold. Risk of narrative collapse imminent. ]
Hae-won exhaled, slow. The sound scraped against his throat.
"So," he murmured, voice like rust. "You finally caught up."
Do-hyun took a step forward. "Hae-won—what happened to you?"
He looked at his reflection in a shattered fragment nearby — saw the hollow cheeks, the veins like cracks of magma, the eyes that didn't quite belong to a man anymore.
"Everything," he said simply. "Everything that ever went wrong."
Then he lifted his gaze.
His chains uncoiled — two streaks of burning steel slicing through the air at near-sonic speed, wrapping around the broken gate behind him.
"I'm not the hero anymore," he said quietly. "I'm just cleaning up what's left."
The others didn't know what that meant.
But when the ground trembled, and the next gate began to open — revealing the distorted city skyline of Seoul beneath — they understood.
⸻
[ Tower Event: The Reversal. ]
[ Descend or Ascend. Choose your direction. ]
[ Both paths lead to the truth. Only one leads to survival. ]
Hae-won smiled faintly, like a man remembering something he shouldn't.
"I already fell once," he whispered. "Let's see what's waiting below."