"You wrote us… then you killed us."
In the Corridor of Forgotten Dreams, every painting, every torn page, every character—like ghosts crawling out of Li Qi's subconscious—began to gather slowly.
They stood before her. Some faceless and blurred, some torn and ink-smeared, others still bleeding—yet their eyes all shared the same look:
Resentment. Fear. Yearning. Defiance.
Su Ying still knelt at her feet, softly repeating:
"Write me once… not to die, but to live."
Li Qi clenched her teeth, silent.The pen in her palm felt heavier than ever, like it bore the weight of the entire scriptworld's fate.
For the first time, she clearly realized—those "written-to-die" characters had never truly vanished.They were fragments, lost in dream, waiting to return.
But she wasn't a god. She was just—
"…You are a god."
A child's voice rang out from the crowd.
Li Qi's head snapped up. It was Lin Pan, a character from her very first "test world."The only child who survived two chapters—kidnapped, abused, and then sacrificed for the male lead's "growth."
Yet the little girl smiled at her and gently said:
"You wrote me. Then you destroyed me. But still… thank you, for letting me exist."
Li Qi's eyes burned. She nearly collapsed to her knees.
She finally understood—these weren't just "settings."They were souls, once given emotion and life by her hand.
And now, they weren't asking for rescue.
They were asking for one true chance to live.
[Corridor of Forgotten Dreams · Second Gate Unlocked]
With Li Qi's awakening, the system's script-space trembled.The dream corridor began to collapse, revealing the next layer—
[Disordered Text Domain · The Eternal Night Theater]
A stage that never closes its curtain.
Here, every character endlessly reenacts their prewritten fate.
From behind the curtains, Li Qi watched her familiar "male lead templates" enter:cold and restrained, gentle and devoted, twisted and obsessive…
One by one, they followed the script—speaking lines, kissing, killing—then turning away with smiling faces… but tears streaming down.
They didn't know they were fake.
They didn't know their "love" was scripted.
"You wrote them to love me, but gave them no choice."
"You wrote them to protect me, but doomed them to fail."
"We can't love. We can't run."
Then, a terrifying thought hit Li Qi:
Scripted characters couldn't express their true will—because she had only ever written "actions,"never "souls."
Now, this copy forced her to face the ethical question:
Would you rewrite fate for them, even if they never obey you again?
[Reality · System Under Self-Repair]
Meanwhile, Wen Heng finally broke into the Eternal Night Theater instance.
In his hand was a key—Li Qi's original ending for "him":
[If one day you're free, come find me.]
He never believed it before. But now—he would.
"Li Qi."
He saw her, kneeling before broken characters like a repentant god.Her eyes weary. Her pen, snapped in two.
Wen Heng stepped forward, placing a torn piece of the script into her palm.
[You don't need to write me anymore. From now on—I'll speak for myself.]
She looked up, stunned.
He smiled.
"I choose to love you. Not because the script says so—because I say so."
[System Notification]
✦ [Free Will Script] activated.✦ [Script Character Consciousness Awakening]: 100%✦ [Li Qi's Role Update]: Observer ➜ Weaver ➜ Fate Decoder