The Third Reader
For most people, Heaven Falls Twice was just another web novel.
A messy apocalypse story with broken pacing, an overpowered protagonist, and a comment section that died before Chapter 10.
For Han Jiho, it was something else.
It was an obsession.
He read it from the first word to the last — all 3,186 chapters. Six years of late nights, empty coffee cups, and silent comment threads.
He was the last reader left.
And on the night the final chapter was posted, the author sent him an email:
“You were the only one who finished it. Thank you.
When it starts, remember — ███ ███ ████ ███ ████ ████.”
At first, Jiho thought it was a strange goodbye.
Then the sky began to peel like paper.
Then the messages appeared.
[Scenario 1: Proof of Existence will begin in 30 minutes.]
The same words that appeared in Heaven Falls Twice.
But this time, Jiho isn’t reading the story.
He’s inside it.
And the world he’s trapped in isn’t just the novel’s setting — it’s the second layer of another world’s fiction. The “hero” of the novel, Jin Do-hyun, once faced the same apocalypse after reading his favorite book, The Tower Descends.
Now Jiho stands on the third rung of an endless spiral — a story devouring story, reality consuming reality.
He knows every scenario, every event, every death that’s supposed to happen.
But he also knows something Do-hyun never learned:
The story isn’t repeating.
It’s evolving.
And it’s starting to notice the one who kept reading.
When the systems collapse, when monsters crawl out of forgotten pages, and when the “narrator” itself begins to whisper his name — Jiho realizes the final truth behind the author’s message.
He was never just a reader.
He was being read.
