The city was dying, and the sky bled with it.
Kang Hyun-woo stepped over shattered glass and torn posters fluttering in the wind like forgotten prayers. A reddish hue had crept into the clouds, casting long, surreal shadows across the abandoned street. But it wasn't the sky, or the silence, or even the haunting emptiness that made his skin crawl.
It was the feeling of being watched.
Not by people.
By the world itself.
Then he saw it—no, felt it first.
Reality seemed to warp a few feet ahead, as if heatwaves had settled in the middle of the cold alley. The air shimmered, bent inward, and then, like a page being torn in half, it opened.
Out stepped a creature draped in tattered scrolls and robes of living ink. Its body flickered with constellations trapped beneath translucent skin, as though galaxies had taken residence in its hollow form. A quill floated beside its shoulder, scribbling midair even as it spoke.
"I expected screams," it said in a voice that sounded like rustling parchment. "Or tears. Or perhaps an offering of sanity."
Hyun-woo didn't flinch. He had read of this being before. The Mythkeeper. A creature of lore, it only emerged when the world's narrative was breaking apart. It appeared once in The Final Apocalypse Chronicles, right before the first irreversible divergence from fate.
But that wasn't supposed to happen until much later.
Which meant something—or someone—was pulling the threads of the story far too early.
"You're not part of the system," Hyun-woo said cautiously. "You exist outside of it."
The creature's hollow smile deepened. "Ah. A mortal who speaks with the weight of a page-turner. Interesting."
Hyun-woo's heart raced, but he kept his voice even. "Why are you here now?"
"To offer what I always do." The Mythkeeper reached into the folds of its robe and unfurled a glowing parchment that shimmered with runes too old for language. "A bargain. Knowledge for something... intimate."
Hyun-woo's muscles tensed. "What kind of knowledge?"
The Mythkeeper tilted its head. "A glimpse of deviation. A secret path carved beneath the skin of this world. A name that shouldn't exist, and yet does."
"And the price?" he asked.
"One truth," the creature whispered. "From the marrow of your belief."
Dangerous. The characters in the novel who had traded truths with this creature were never the same. Some had lost memories, others pieces of identity. But all had gained something.
And Hyun-woo had to know what was changing.
He closed his eyes. "Here's my truth: I stopped believing the ending mattered... because I never thought we'd reach it."
The scroll pulsed once, and something intangible left his chest—like exhaling a memory.
"In return," the Mythkeeper said, "I give you this: a silver-eyed girl walks beneath a fractured sky. She is an echo, not of the past nor future. She was never written... yet here she is."
That couldn't be right. The girl with silver eyes appeared late in the story. And she wasn't a major character—she was a catalyst. Her presence now meant the arc had changed... the world had begun to spiral beyond the bounds of the original narrative.
"Why is she here already?" Hyun-woo asked, but the creature was fading, its edges breaking into words and fragments of glowing ink.
"Because the Watchers stir," it whispered.
"And the Celestial Patrons are no longer content with the story as written."
A chill ran down Hyun-woo's spine.
He stood alone once again. But something had shifted. Not in the world—in the story itself.
This wasn't a tale following its author anymore.
It was being rewritten.
And he was the only one who knew what was supposed to come next.