The box was empty.
But the emptiness had weight.
Sometimes I caught myself staring at the mirror with no reflection for hours, waiting... for what? For it to give something back? To project a future? Or finally reveal the truth I refused to see?
I didn't know. But I heard things.
Voices.
Whispers.
Songs that didn't exist and names I'd never learned.
And among it all, one word repeated again and again:
"Listen."
—
—What do you hear? —I asked Sera that night, when we were both pretending to sleep.
—My guilt —she answered without hesitation—. It has a metallic tone. Like dragging chains.
Pause.
—You?
—Laughter... that isn't mine. But not entirely foreign, either.
—
For days we didn't move forward. We just orbited the same point in the forest, deeper and deeper. The trees seemed to shift when you weren't looking. The sky... didn't always have the moons in the same place.
The world was unraveling.
And so was I.
—
I found something.
It was a monolith, covered in lichen and spiraling carvings. It hadn't been there before.
When I touched it, the entire forest fell silent.
The wind. The insects. Even Sera.
And then I heard… my voice. But different. Older. Tired.
> "Don't dare break what you don't yet understand."
I looked around, shaking.
But no one was there.
> "It's not the system that traps you, Ryouhei… it's you."
—
—There's something here —I said aloud, walking with Sera between twisted roots—. Something that's testing us.
—What if it's not a test? What if it's a warning?
—Why warn me?
—Maybe because you can actually change things. And that's frightening.
—
That night, the fourth moon returned.
Bigger. Lower.
And it spoke to me.
Not with words.
With raw emotions: despair, fury, longing.
And something else: a distant echo, like the cry of a child trapped in a place without time.
The journal opened on its own.
Blank pages began to fill with letters that weren't mine.
And at the center of the page:
> Name: Seraphina Veyl
Original fate: Sacrifice in Chapter 40
Current status: ANOMALY
—
I closed the journal.
My hands trembled.
—Sera…
—What did you see?
—You. Dying.
She said nothing. She just took my hand.
And for the first time since arriving in Eclipsia… I felt real fear.
Not of dying.
But of losing her.
—
But then I understood:
> The system knew I was rewriting the story.
And it had begun to strike back.