When I woke up, the night was still there.
Sera was sleeping beside me, wrapped in her battered cloak. Her breathing was soft, barely a whisper among the leaves. For a second, I allowed myself the illusion that we were in another world. One without cursed moons. Without voyeur gods. Without a system that corrected love like a line of faulty code.
But the journal was still open.
And something new had been written.
> "Anomaly Veyl. Anomaly Ryouhei. Emotional bond confirmed. Stage 2 initiated: Narrative Reformatting."
I frowned.
The system wasn't just watching us.
It was rewriting us.
—
When we resumed our march, the forest was no longer the same.
The paths we had walked the day before curved in impossible directions. A river that once flowed north was now pouring into the sky, as if gravity had forgotten its duties.
"Do you feel that?" Sera asked, alert.
"Yes. The story… is coming apart."
—
In the distance, we saw a floating village vanish into the air like smoke. Not a single scream. Just the silence of a canceled possibility. The system was erasing alternative routes.
Everything that deviated from the script… was being reabsorbed.
"This is because of us," I muttered, more to myself than to her.
Sera didn't reply. She just looked at me.
Her eyes no longer asked for permission to feel. They no longer needed to deny themselves.
—
We took refuge in an abandoned windmill while ash rained from the sky.
There, I found something unexpected: a torn piece of paper, handwritten in penmanship that wasn't mine… or Sera's.
> "If you've made it here, it means the system can no longer predict you. But it also can't destroy you… yet.
Seek the Terminal.
There's a way to rewrite the world without becoming a villain.
Signed: S."
I froze.
"S…?" I murmured.
Sera came closer. She read the message and frowned.
"Do you think it's…?"
"I don't know. But they were already hunting us. Maybe now… they want to recruit us."
—
Night fell again. This time, with no stars.
Only three moons, watching us like witnesses to a crime we hadn't committed yet.
And as the fire faded, only one thought pounded in my mind:
> We were no longer extras.
We were anomalies with names.
And the world… was about to break because of it.