"For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."
***
Dawn light crept across my windowsill. I leaned against my door, feeling the old wood creak under my weight.
The [Rune of Diminishment] sat in my pocket. Still warm. Still pulsing with that weird energy.
I did it. I actually did it.
Broke into the archive. Dodged the guards. Squeezed through a window that should have been too small for any human body. Got the artifact. Got out alive.
PlotDeviceHunter69's random forum comment had just saved my life. Probably. Hopefully.
I stumbled toward my bed. The adrenaline crash was hitting me hard now. My legs felt like wet noodles. My hands wouldn't stop shaking. The mattress looked like paradise after a night of stone floors and rusty iron bars.
I pulled the rune out and looked at it one more time in the morning light. Smaller than I remembered. Barely bigger than a coin. The patterns on its surface almost seemed to move when I tilted it.
A rune that hides your real stats from the System. Perfect for someone who needs to pretend to be weak while actually getting stronger.
I wrapped it in a spare handkerchief and stuffed it into the false bottom of my jewelry box. Buried it under a pile of worthless copper rings the original Kaelen had collected over the years. Good enough for now. I'd find a better hiding spot later.
My body hit the bed. The silk sheets felt incredible after hours of crawling through dust and debris. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to take me.
It didn't.
My brain wouldn't shut up.
What am I forgetting?
I rolled onto my side and stared at the wall. The novel had been over a thousand chapters. Main plot following Leo's rise to power. His perfect party. His victories over increasingly ridiculous threats. Standard hero stuff.
But there were dozens of smaller stories woven through the narrative. Side characters. Subplots. Tragic endings designed to make readers feel something between power-up arcs.
Minor characters who existed just to die and make Leo look sad for a few pages.
That's why her name was familiar.
Lyra.
The realization hit me like a bucket of ice water.
Lyra Ashford. Red eyes. Black hair. The maid who'd brought me breakfast yesterday with actual kindness in her voice.
She'd appeared in maybe six scenes across a thousand chapters. Background decoration. A name mentioned in passing. A face in the crowd.
Until she became the center of a tragedy that made half the forum cry and the other half complain about lazy writing.
Oh no.
I scrambled out of bed. Nearly tripped over my own feet. Made it to my desk where I'd been keeping track of dates since I woke up in this world.
The confrontation with Leo was on the twelfth. Today was the fifteenth. Which meant...
The fifteenth of Harvest Month.
The day Lyra gets framed for theft.
The day Lord Blackwood's missing heirloom, some priceless emerald necklace that's been in his family for generations, gets "discovered" in her quarters.
The day she gets executed in the town square as an example to other servants.
My hands gripped the edge of the desk hard enough to hurt.
I remembered this subplot now. Classic fridging. A side character dies horribly so the protagonist can have a moment of tragic reflection. Leo would arrive too late to save her. He'd brood about injustice for a few paragraphs. He'd use her death as motivation to become even more righteous.
Lyra Ashford wasn't a person in the original story. She was a plot device. Her entire existence was to die and make Leo feel bad about it.
She's going to die today.
Unless...
The thought trailed off into territory I'd been avoiding.
What could I actually do? I was Kaelen Leone. Pathetic third son. Known coward. Walking punchline of noble society. I had no political power. No allies. No resources beyond what I'd just stolen from my own family's abandoned wing.
But I had knowledge.
I knew what was going to happen. When it would happen. Who was really responsible.
The steward. Marcus Grundy.
The guy had been skimming from Lord Blackwood's accounts for months. Cooking the books. Pocketing the difference. And today he was going to pin the theft of Lady Blackwood's necklace on an innocent servant girl. Cover his tracks. Shut down any investigation before it started.
The theft would be discovered this morning. Lady Blackwood would notice her necklace missing during her morning routine. Grundy would suggest searching the servants' quarters. Start with the newest employees. The most vulnerable ones. The ones with no protection.
The necklace would be found under Lyra's mattress.
Planted there last night during the shift change. The same shift change I'd used to break into the archives.
While I was playing treasure hunter, someone was setting up an innocent girl to die.
I sat back in my chair. Stared at the ceiling.
What do I do?
The smart play was nothing. Keep my head down. Focus on my own survival. Lyra's death was tragic, sure, but it wasn't my problem. I had enough to worry about without adding "save random servant girl from corrupt steward" to my to-do list.
That was the logical choice. The safe choice.
The choice the original Kaelen would have made without a second thought.
But I'm not the original Kaelen.
I was Alex. College student from another world. Guy who spent too much time on forums arguing about fictional characters. Who wrote angry comments about how Lyra's death was lazy writing and how the author should have done better.
"If I were in that story, I'd save her."
How many times had I typed something like that? How many times had I criticized characters for standing by while bad things happened?
And now I was actually in the story. With actual knowledge of what was coming. And the choice was mine.
Damn it.