The air in the Grand Hall smelled like floor wax, old parchment, and the collective sweat of three thousand nervous teenagers. It was a suffocating, dry heat that seemed to press against my temples, made worse by the drone of a voice so monotonous it could probably sedate a dragon.
"…and thus, the seven pillars of magic were not merely erected as conduits of power, but as moral compasses for the soul of every citizen in Aethelgard," the voice intoned.
I blinked, fighting the urge to rub my eyes. I was sitting on a hard wooden bench, squeezed between a guy who smelled aggressively of raw onions and a girl who was chewing her fingernails down to the quick. My back ached. My legs were numb.
Right. Okay. Focus.
I looked down at my hands. They were pale, slender, and slightly calloused on the middle finger of the right hand. I was wearing a uniform. Grey trousers, a grey vest, and a white shirt that was starch-stiff around the collar.
Standard issue. Not the white and gold silk of the nobility in the front rows. Not the deep crimson of the Combat Track or the azure of the Arcane Specialists.
Grey. The color of pavement. The color of overcast skies. The color of nothing.
I reached into my breast pocket and pulled out a thin metal card.
Name: Ren
Class: 1-C (General Studies)
Magic Affinity: None
Combat Potential: F
"Wow," I whispered, the word lost in the shuffling of the crowd. "I really am nobody. I'm not even a cannon fodder villain. I'm an extra."
"Did you say something?" the onion-smelling guy next to me whispered, wiping sweat from his round, red face.
I glanced at him. In the novel, this guy doesn't have a name. He's part of the 'crowd noise.' He exists solely to fill a seat.
"Just admiring the architecture," I mumbled back, giving him a polite, empty smile. "The vaulted ceilings are… impressive."
He grunted, satisfied with the small talk, and looked back at the stage.
Step one complete: casual conversation. I wasn't hyperventilating. That was good. But my brain was racing like a carriage with cut brakes. I knew where I was. I knew who that old man on the podium was—Headmaster Eldric. And I knew exactly what was supposed to happen next.
I was inside The Chronicles of Aethelgard.
It was a webnovel I'd finished reading recently. I remembered the plot, the twists, the waifus, and the ending. But being here? It felt heavier. Realer.
I shifted my position, trying to see over the sea of heads. Being in Row 43 had its disadvantages, but it gave me a vantage point. I was elevated, looking down the slope of the auditorium toward the stage.
There they were. The Golden Rows.
The sunlight from the massive eastern window seemed to conveniently spotlight a girl in the front row. She had hair like spun gold, falling in perfect waves down her back. Her posture was impeccable—straight enough to use as a ruler, yet graceful.
Lysandra. The Heroine Protagonist.
She looked even more perfect than the official illustrations. She was the embodiment of light, the daughter of the Duke, and the strongest Holy Magic user of her generation.
Sitting next to her, slouching slightly and looking bored out of his mind, was a guy with messy dark hair and a jawline that could cut glass. He was spinning a pen between his fingers, ignoring the Headmaster completely.
Kaelen. The Main Hero.
They were the centers of gravity in this world. Everyone else was just debris caught in their orbit. Including me.
"…and so, we look to the new generation," Headmaster Eldric continued, pausing to turn a page of his speech. The sound echoed through the silent hall.
I checked my internal clock. This was it.
In the original text, as the Headmaster finishes his speech, he calls the top students to receive their crests. Lysandra stands up. As she walks to the stairs, the minor villain, Vance, casts a subtle Trip cantrip. Lysandra stumbles. Kaelen catches her. Their eyes meet. Sparks fly. Vance gets caught and humiliated later.
It was a classic trope. A harmless cliché to establish the romantic subplot and the class conflict.
I scanned the row behind the golden couple.
There he was. Vance of House Thorne. He had slicked-back brown hair and an expensive velvet cape that looked too heavy for the weather. He was smirking, whispering something to his lackey.
But as I watched him, my eyes narrowed.
In the book, Vance holds a wand under his sleeve to cast the trip spell. But his hands were empty of wood. Instead, he was clutching a small, jagged stone in his left hand, concealing it against his thigh.
The stone pulsed with a faint, angry orange light.
A Fire Shard?
My blood ran cold. The ambient noise of the hall seemed to drop away.
Wait. That's not in the script.
A Fire Shard wasn't a prank. It was an unstable condensed mineral used for starting campfires or, in larger sizes, explosives. Even a small one, if thrown at a person wearing silk and lace…
It wouldn't just trip her. It would burn her dress. It would cause a panic. At this range, it could scar her face.
I ran the simulation in my head instantly, panic rising in my throat.
If Lysandra gets burned, she goes to the infirmary. She misses the selection trials tomorrow. If she misses the trials, she doesn't get assigned to Kaelen's team. If she's not on his team, they don't bond in the Forest of Whispers. If they don't bond, she doesn't unlock her second affinity during the ambush in Chapter 12.
The plot wasn't just deviating; it was about to drive off a cliff. The butterfly effect would be catastrophic.
"This is bad," I breathed. "This is really bad."
I looked around frantically. No one else noticed. The teachers were half-asleep on the stage. The students were zoning out. Kaelen was busy balancing his pen on his nose.
I couldn't yell. "He has a bomb!" would get me arrested for inciting panic, and by the time security moved, Vance would have thrown it. I couldn't run down there; I was forty rows back. Security would tackle me before I made it past Row 30.
I was Row 43. I was invisible. I was powerless.
No, I corrected myself, my eyes darting around my immediate vicinity. I'm an observer. And observers see things others don't.
I needed a projectile. Something innocuous. Something that wouldn't look like an attack but would cause a disruption.
I looked at the girl next to me—the nail-biter. She had a heavy canvas bag at her feet. Sticking out of the side pocket was a thick glass bottle of water. It was corked, but it was sitting loose in the pocket.
Vance was three rows ahead of me and slightly to the left. The floor of the auditorium was slanted downward toward the stage to allow for better viewing.
I did the math in my head. It wasn't high-level physics, just simple geometry. The angle of the floor. The gap between the seats.
If the bottle rolled...
I turned to the girl. I needed her to move. I needed a reaction.
"Hey," I whispered, leaning in slightly, putting a note of genuine urgency in my voice. "Don't scream, but is that a spider on your bag?"
"What?!" She gasped, her eyes going wide.
She jerked her leg back in a reflex of pure terror. Her heavy combat boot slammed into the side of the glass bottle.
Clink.
The bottle tipped over. It hit the wooden floorboards with a heavy thud, then began to roll.
It didn't break. It picked up speed.
Rattle-rattle-rattle.
The sound was distinct—heavy glass rolling on hollow wood—cutting through the Headmaster's droning voice. It wasn't loud enough to stop the speech, but in the bored silence of the back rows, it was rhythmic and annoying.
The bottle zipped under the seat in front of me, then the next. It gathered momentum on the decline, bouncing slightly over the uneven floorboards.
Vance was focused on Lysandra's back. He was tense, his thumb rubbing the rough surface of the Fire Shard. He was grinning, anticipating the flames, the scream.
He heard the rattle a second too late.
He turned his head, irritated, distracted by the noise approaching from behind. "What the—"
The heavy glass bottle didn't hit him. That would have been too obvious. Instead, it slammed into the metal heel of the unsuspecting orc student sitting directly behind Vance.
The orc, who had been dozing with his legs sprawled out, jerked awake at the sudden impact on his foot. His massive knee shot upward in a violent spasm.
Thwack.
The orc's knee slammed into the back of Vance's chair with the force of a battering ram.
Vance yelped. The impact jarred his entire body forward. His arm, poised to throw the shard, jerked wildly.
The Fire Shard flew out of his grip.
It didn't go forward toward Lysandra. It arched high into the air, spinning like a fiery coin, soaring over the heads of the front row.
"And now, I present—" Headmaster Eldric looked up just as the glowing orange stone landed squarely in the lap of a severe-looking woman sitting on the edge of the stage.
Lady Sera. The Head of the Disciplinary Committee.
The shard landed on her velvet robes and flared with a loud POOF of black smoke and sparks, instantly singing a hole in the expensive fabric.
Silence.
Absolute, terrifying silence descended on the hall.
Headmaster Eldric stopped mid-sentence.
Every head in the auditorium turned. Even Kaelen stopped spinning his pen, looking interested for the first time all morning. Lysandra looked back, her blue eyes wide with confusion, completely unharmed.
Lady Sera stood up slowly. She didn't look panicked. She looked like a volcano deciding whether or not to erupt. She brushed the ash off her lap with a gloved hand, then lifted her gaze. Her eyes locked onto Vance, who was currently frozen in a throwing pose, his face draining of all color.
"Vance of House Thorne," Lady Sera said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it was magically amplified to carry to every corner of the room. It was cold enough to freeze hell over. "Care to explain why you are playing with combustion minerals during the Headmaster's Opening Address?"
Vance stammered, his hands shaking. "I… I didn't… it slipped… I was just holding it!"
"Attempted arson? Or merely gross incompetence?" She stepped off the stage, the crowd parting for her like the Red Sea. "Possession of Class-C hazardous materials in the assembly hall is an immediate suspension. Come with me. Now."
Two senior disciplinary students materialized from the shadows, grabbing Vance by the arms. He was dragged out, protesting weakly, his heels dragging on the floor.
"But I didn't mean to throw it! Someone hit my chair!" Vance screamed as he was hauled through the side doors.
No one listened. The doors slammed shut.
I slumped back in my seat, letting out a breath I didn't know I was holding. My heart was hammering so hard I thought the onion guy might hear it.
Crisis averted.
Lysandra was safe. The plot was... well, Vance was gone earlier than intended, and the "Trip Event" never happened, but the Heroine was intact. The timeline could recover from this.
Suddenly, a sharp pain spiked behind my eyes.
It wasn't a normal headache; it felt like static noise blasting directly into my brain, a screech of digital interference amplified a thousand times. I grabbed my head, wincing, shutting my eyes tight.
[Narrative Deviation Detected.]
The words didn't appear on a screen. They were seared directly into my optic nerve.
[Correction Attempt Failed.]
[Observer Status: Active.]
The text floated in my vision, translucent and grey, like cigarette smoke. It wasn't the clean blue game interface of a system novel. It looked... broken. Glitchy. The font flickered, sometimes changing languages for a split second before resolving back to English.
As the pain subsided to a dull throb, I opened my eyes. I looked down at the floor where the glass bottle had rolled.
I needed to see it. It was physical evidence of my interference. If someone checked the angle, they could trace it back to Row 43.
But it was gone.
I blinked. I leaned forward, checking under the seats. Nothing. No glass. No water stain.
"Hey," I whispered to the girl next to me. "Did you pick up your water?"
She looked at me, confused. "What water?"
I stared at her. "The bottle. In your bag. You kicked it."
She frowned, checking her bag pocket. It was empty. "I… I didn't bring a water bottle today. I forgot it in the dorm. Why?"
I sat back slowly, a cold chill settling in my stomach.
The world hadn't just removed the object; it had removed the memory of the object. It was like the universe had realized the bottle wasn't supposed to be part of the scene and had simply deleted the error code to save memory space.
"Weird," I muttered, rubbing my temples. "Very weird."
"And now," the Headmaster continued, clearly annoyed by the interruption but too old to let it ruin his day, "Students will proceed to the courtyard for the Affinity Assessment. Dismissed."
The tension broke. The three thousand students began to stand up, the sound of wooden benches scraping against the floor filling the hall.
I merged into the flow of grey uniforms, keeping my head down. I had saved the Heroine, ruined a minor villain, and apparently broke a rule of the universe in under ten minutes.
But the text in my vision didn't fade. It hovered in the bottom right corner of my eye, displaying a new line that chilled me more than the Fire Shard.
[Current Story Stability: 99.8%]
[Target for Ending: 0%]
"Zero percent?" I whispered to myself as I was pushed through the double doors into the blinding sunlight of the courtyard. "I have to destroy the story to finish it?"
I needed to find a quiet place to think. I needed to figure out why the "Trip Event" had turned into an assassination attempt. But as I stepped onto the cobblestones, shielding my eyes from the glare, I bumped into someone hard.
"Watch it, Grey-coat," a voice sneered.
I stumbled back, looking up.
It wasn't Vance. Vance was gone.
Standing there was a tall, broad-shouldered student. He had the standard uniform, but he'd popped the collar and was wearing a heavy silver ring on his index finger—a sign of minor nobility. His eyes were sharp, looking for a fight.
I racked my brain. Who is this?
I had memorized The Chronicles of Aethelgard. I knew the family trees. I knew the shopkeepers. But this guy? He was a blank space. A generic background extra.
In the original story, right now, everyone should be buzzing about Vance. The hallway chatter should be about House Thorne. But I had deleted Vance from the scene.
The narrative vacuum was empty. And nature abhors a vacuum.
"My bad," I said, stepping to the side, keeping my voice level. "Sun glares off the cobblestones. Didn't see you."
The guy didn't move. He stepped into my path, blocking me. His eyes weren't just aware; they were hungry for conflict. "You didn't see me? Do I look transparent to you, 1-C trash?"
Ah. I see.
The story was trying to self-correct. I had removed the "Initial Antagonist," so the world was frantically promoting an extra to fill the quota of "First Day Bully." This guy wasn't important five minutes ago, but now the plot needed friction, and he was the closest warm body with an ego.
"No," I replied, forcing a nervous chuckle. "Definitely solid. Very solid. I'll just go around."
I tried to sidestep, but his hand shot out, grabbing the shoulder of my cheap grey jacket. The grip was tight.
"Name's Jareth," he said, and I could feel the universe writing his character sheet in real-time. "And I think you need to learn your place before the assessments start."
This wasn't in the script. And judging by the smoke-like text flickering in my vision, the story wasn't happy about me rewriting it.