Not a replica. Not a hallucination.
The loading screen.
The one I'd stared at for ten years. The one that greeted me every time I logged in. The faded backdrop of a world I thought I knew—except now, it was twisted, darker, wrong. The background shimmered like warped glass, the colors leeched and bleeding at the edges.
I stared, stunned, whispering to no one, "This... this isn't possible."
But there it was.
The title burned across the screen in jagged, red letters I had never seen before, pulsing like a wound:
The Story of Your End.
The place where characters were born, where stories began.
The air was thick—heavy, pressing down on my lungs like the atmosphere itself resented my presence. The familiar void, once a quiet space between sessions, now pulsed with a wrongness I couldn't explain. My instincts screamed: You're not supposed to be here.
I spun in place, searching for something—anything. A menu. A prompt. An exit.
There was nothing.
Just darkness. Still. Watching. Endless.
The old loading zone—once harmless—had become a mausoleum for forgotten code, and now it felt like it was alive.
Then, without warning, something flickered into view. A translucent box, hovering midair like a ghost too tired to haunt.
[Welcome back, Player.]
My breath caught.
Welcome back?
I stared at the message as it hung in silence, glowing faintly, two familiar words that now cut deeper than anything I'd ever read. I had seen them countless times. But now—now—they felt wrong. Warped.
Not nostalgic.
Ominous.
I tried to speak, but my voice caught in my throat. The air around me didn't shift. The message didn't fade. It just waited.
Then came the voice.
Cold. Hollow. Not synthetic—detached. Like it wasn't speaking to me, but through me.
[Initializing System…]
[Loading Story of Your End.]
My heart pounded in my chest. These were just system messages. I knew this sequence. I'd stared at it for ten years. Memorized it like scripture.
But now, every word felt like a coffin lid being nailed shut.
I wasn't playing anymore.
I was inside it.
How?
Why me?
What did I unlock?
My thoughts raced, spiraling through the years of obsessive grinding, secret patches, hidden quest flags. There was no answer that made sense. None that could explain this.
Then the next message blinked into view, slower this time. Heavier.
[The Author begins to choose the plot timeline.]
I froze.
The Author.
A name whispered across forums. The ghost in the machine. The hand behind every impossible ending, every corrupted branch no one was supposed to reach.
The figure no one ever saw.
Until now.
I stood helpless, breath locked in my chest, as a new string of text began to scroll before me—less like code and more like prophecy. Ancient. Final.
[Storyline Unlocked:
The First Shattering and the False Creator
Architect of the First Magic
The Demon Lord and the Fake Hero
The Forgotten Future
Fragment of the Endless Devourer
The Academy of Endstoria
The Treasure of Immortality
The Fall of the Argonaut Empire
Time Breaker of Infinite Cycles
???]
Each one burned like a match inside my brain.
I had chased these names for years. Pieced them together through scraps of dialogue, corrupted files, datamined fragments of lore. These weren't quests. These were archplots—the foundational pillars of the world's design. The myths beneath the narrative.
They were never meant to be active in a single run.
Only the most devoted players ever unlocked them. Even fewer survived the consequences.
Each one could rewrite the game's very structure—its world, its laws, its truth.
And I had just seen all of them.
All at once.
But I wasn't choosing.
The game was choosing for me.
My gut twisted. The control I'd clung to—my pride, my edge—it was gone. I wasn't the player anymore.
I was the piece.
Then, the screen pulsed one last time.
No fanfare. No sound. Just a line etched in absolute finality.
[The Author has chosen: The Academy of Endstoria.]
My heart seized.
The Academy of Endstoria.
One of the game's most monumental arcs—rich, intricate, and lethal. My skin prickled as the title settled into the void, each word pulsing with the weight of irrevocable consequence. This wasn't just another questline. It was a cornerstone of the game's hidden lore—a story within stories.
Then came the next message, sharp and final:
[The Author has chosen your role: New First Year Student.]
I froze.
No adventurer.
No noble.
No cursed bloodline or chosen heir.
Just a student. A blank slate.
Dropped at the very start of the most volatile narrative ever written.
I knew this arc. I had studied it like scripture—every datamined thread, every corrupted event flag, every line of forbidden lore lost to time. The Academy of Endstoria wasn't just another backdrop. It was the core of an entire universe—its beating heart. A setting woven through a labyrinth of shifting allegiances, ancient magics, hidden bloodlines, and betrayals that didn't just change the characters... they rewrote the rules of the world itself.
But no one ever played it as a student.
Not in the game, anyway.
The student role—the first-year perspective—was never released as playable content.
It only existed in a limited-edition tie-in novel, a lore-dense prequel buried beneath the main game's legacy. I had read it—three times, no more. Not because it was boring.
But because it was too much.
For a timeline that spanned only three years, it held enough twists, secrets, and slow-burn horrors to fill ten. And now, I wasn't just reading it.
I was being written into it. From the very beginning.
Players always started in the aftermath—after the academy had ended.
After the students had already become pawns or corpses.
After the political factions had taken shape.
After the betrayals, the disappearances, the blood oaths—when the fire was already burning and the game just handed you the ashes.
But now?
Now I was being thrown into the origin point.
Into the part of the story no one had ever been allowed to play.
The part buried beneath layers of lore and redacted patch notes.
The part that existed only in whispers and in one obscure, lore-heavy novel that even the fandom didn't finish.
A chapter so dense, so unstable, that it was never adapted into the game—because it couldn't be.
Too many shifting timelines.
Too many variables.
Too many deaths before the rules were even fully explained.
And now… it was mine.
The story wasn't just loading.
It was rewriting itself from the very beginning— And I was its new first sentence.
The world around me shimmered—bending, warping like heat haze rippling off scorched stone. The air itself seemed to glitch, rippling in waves, as if reality was trying—and failing—to load its next phase.
My heart thundered in my chest, each beat like a fist against my ribs. It was too fast, too real. There was no controller to set down. No pause button.
Then, almost mockingly, a prompt appeared—one I had seen a hundred times before.
[Select the Main Character of the Plot]
[Create New Character]
Familiar. Routine. Once exciting.
Now?
It radiated dread.
My hand twitched, hovering instinctively toward the default selection—comfort in routine, even here.
But before I could move, another message blinked into existence.
Clean. Sharp. Quietly invasive.
[Special Reward Unlocked: Impossible Achievement Recognized]
A third option faded in beneath it.
One that had never been there before.
[Load Existing Character]
I stared.
The letters glowed with a subtle pulse—too smooth, too perfect, like something sacred... or forbidden. It didn't feel like new content. It felt like an error no one had ever fixed. A hole in the code carved behind the devs' backs. A backdoor hidden in the foundation of the world.
Something that wasn't meant to exist.
But did.
My breath caught. My chest tightened. I couldn't move.
Was this a reward?
A trap?
A test wrapped in temptation?
The void pressed in around me, cold and expectant, as if the system itself was holding its breath—waiting to see if I would bite.
My hand hovered above the choice, caught between the memory of every hour I'd poured into the game… and the weight of the unknown.
[Load Existing Creation]
It pulsed again.
Not like an option.
Like a heartbeat.
I swallowed hard, throat dry, every part of me screaming with uncertainty. The silence was suffocating now—alive, like a presence watching my every hesitation. Whispering warnings I couldn't hear but still felt, crawling up my spine like ice.
[Load Existing Creation has been selected]
And then it began—slowly, impossibly—
The character creation zone began to take form around me.
But it wasn't the usual grid of sliders and color wheels.
No clunky UI, no stat bars, no placeholder models.
This was something else.
The floor beneath me reshaped into shifting marble, polished to a mirror sheen, reflecting stars that weren't there a second ago. Glass panels hovered midair, rotating lazily in an endless sky too vast to comprehend. The space felt weightless, sacred—like a cathedral built from memory and code.
A sanctum.
A place where only one version of me existed.
The version that had survived the impossible.
Then the names began to scroll.
A slow, flickering cascade of my digital past.
A parade of aliases—each more absurd, more chaotic, more painfully nostalgic than the last:
● Arzane Vornelius Astarte(The ultimate build. My magnum opus – 15,428 hours)
● Sir GiggleFart III(3AM decisions are rarely wise – 264 hours)
● The One and Only Edgelord(We don't talk about that phase – 802 hours)
● Wumbo, Destroyer of Universes(Don't ask. I couldn't tell you – 121 hours)
● Lord Pancake Wrathbringer(I was hungry, okay? – 142 hours)
● ShadowDoomDarknessX(Too much Linkin Park, not enough sleep – 489 hours)
● BlasterMaster69(Look, it was a dare – 355 hours)
● Gary(Creativity died that day – 63 hours)
● ...…
● ...…
● ...…
I couldn't help it.
A breathless, half-strangled laugh slipped from my throat.
These names—these identities—were ridiculous. Cringeworthy.
And yet… they were mine.
Snapshots from a thousand nights I barely remembered.
Fractures of myself, stitched together with energy drinks, bad sleep, and a burning need to escape.
A digital scrapbook of who I had been.
And maybe, who I wanted to be.
But among them—one name stood apart.
Untouched. Untarnished.
No joke. No meme.
Arzane Vornelius Astarte.
It glowed with quiet gravity. A title forged not from impulse, but obsession.
Fifteen thousand four hundred twenty-eight hours.
Of wins. Losses. Builds and resets. Lore paths and theorycraft.
Arzane wasn't just a character.
He was the result of everything I had ever done right in that world.
He was me, perfected.
Not the dropout. Not the burnout.
He was what I could've been, if I'd written the world myself.
Arzane Vornelius Astarte.
His name glowed with a quiet, unmistakable gravity.
A title not born from impulse or boredom—
But forged in obsession.
Fifteen thousand four hundred twenty-eight hours.
Of victories and defeats.
Of resets, rerolls, theorycraft and perfect execution.
Of diving into lore so deep, it felt like scripture.
Arzane wasn't just a character.
He was the product of every choice I got right.
A monument to control, to mastery.
He was me—perfected.
Not the burnout.
Not the dropout.
Not the sleepless, twitching guy behind a screen.
Arzane was who I could've been,
If I had written the world myself.
A chill crept down my spine.
I had stood here before—countless times.
Selected him. Loaded him in.
Watched the polished animation begin, the screen fading into triumph.
But this time…
something was wrong.
The air thickened—dense with a pressure that felt sentient.
Like something unseen was watching.
Waiting.
My fingers hesitated, hovering over his name.
But only for a moment.
I swallowed the dread, forced my hand to steady.
And I selected him.
[Assessing Creation...]
[An anomaly detected.]
The response was immediate—violent.
The world lurched sideways. The ground cracked beneath me.
And then—I felt it.
A tearing.
Not digital. Not graphical.
Real.
Heat surged through my veins, wild and burning.
My body ignited from within, limbs stretching, twisting, cracking—
Bones snapped and realigned with sickening precision.
Sinew pulled tight, muscles bulging and reshaping.
Every nerve lit up in screaming defiance.
This wasn't a transition.
It was metamorphosis—brutal and uninvited.
I staggered, barely able to stay upright.
My knees buckled. My vision blurred.
And then came the weight—his armor—layering over me in pulses of molten steel.
Arzane's armor.
It didn't just appear—it manifested. Forged itself across my skin in jagged plates, locking into place like a living machine.
Each segment slammed down with brutal force, suffocating and far heavier than I remembered.
The metal burned cold. It pulsed with mana.
It gripped my body like it was claiming me.
My breath hitched—ragged, frantic.
Instinct screamed.
I tore it off.
Clasp by clasp, I ripped the armor from my frame, letting the plates crash to the ground with deafening thuds. The impact left glowing cracks in the floor beneath me. My body was shaking, lungs gasping for air.
This wasn't a cutscene.
I could still move. Still feel.
This was real.
Too real.
Because I didn't just log in.
I got pulled in.
Sucked into the game—or maybe isekai'd in the worst, most cursed sense of the word.
I collapsed to one knee, my fingers clawing at the ground as it warped beneath me—shimmering like broken glass caught in a storm.
A hollow, breathless laugh slipped past my lips.
"What the hell is this?"
I forced myself upright, swaying like a drunk just barely holding onto consciousness.
"I'm fine," I muttered.
But even I didn't believe it.
My voice cracked, barely audible, trembling under the weight of everything that had gone wrong.
Nothing was fine.
Everything about this was wrong.
My eyes darted across the space, desperate for something familiar—
A status bar.
A level indicator.
A menu.
Anything.
But there was no UI.
No interface.
Just me, standing alone in a place that shouldn't exist.
Then—movement. A flicker of light.
I turned and caught my reflection in the glassy surface of a blackened wall nearby.
And I stopped breathing.
That wasn't the Arzane I knew.
That wasn't the towering war-god I had spent over fifteen thousand hours perfecting.
That was… someone else.
The snow-white hair was gone—now replaced with jet black, save for faint traces of white sparks dancing through the strands like dying embers.
The sharp, seasoned face of a battle-worn champion had softened into something far younger.
Too young.
My jaw was narrower. My shoulders leaner. My frame—slimmer, barely filled out.
I looked like… like I could still be in high school.
I took a step back, hand rising to my cheek.
Smooth skin. No scars.
No burn marks.
No signs of the fights I remembered so vividly.
"What… what is this?" I whispered.
Absolutely—this is a powerful moment of dread and loss of control. Here's an enhanced version that sharpens the tension, strengthens the writing, and reinforces the psychological punch of watching a perfect creation unravel:
"Why do I look like this?"
The answer didn't come in words.
It slithered into my thoughts like a whisper of something ancient and cruel.
Because I didn't just load Arzane.
I became him.
But not the one I built.
Not the perfected warrior forged through thousands of hours.
The one the story needed.
Then—another message blinked into existence, cold and clinical:
[Error: Character stats do not match plot timeline.]
[Resetting everything.]
My breath caught.
"Wait—what do you mean, resetting everything?!"
I shouted into the void, my voice ricocheting through the infinite space like glass shattering against concrete.
But there was no answer.
The system didn't care.
It never had.
More text flickered into view, fast and brutal:
[Balance Needed.]
The ground trembled.
The air constricted, closing in like invisible chains wrapping around my lungs.
I felt it—the system recalibrating, rewriting the very soul of who I was.
A sound began to rise, low and mechanical—the thrum of calculations, rewriting code, the unmaking of everything I had earned.
[Loading Character Stats…]
No.
No, no, no.
Then the window appeared. And I watched—helpless—as everything I had built was torn down line by line.
Name: Arzane Vornelius Astarte
Class: God of War, Conquer, Glory, and Plunder → Hybrid
Rank: Cannot Be Measured → Dormant
Shard: Eclipse (Bounded)
Level: MAX → 1
Age: Ageless → 17
Background: Chosen One → Randomize
Stats:
Strength: MAX → F
Agility: MAX → F+
Endurance: MAX → F-
Mana Control: MAX → F+
Mental Fortitude: MAX → D
Charisma: MAX → F+
Traits:
[Spellbreaking Insight]
[Adaptation]
[Mana Instability]
[???]
I stared. Numb. Horrified.
Every maxed-out attribute… gone.
Every class advancement… stripped away.
Every victory I had earned, every trial I had endured—reduced to nothing.
The system didn't just reset my character.
It rewrote my worth.
"No... this can't be happening," I whispered.
But it was.
Because the Arzane I had created—the war-god, the legend—didn't belong in this timeline.
He was too powerful. Too complete.
The narrative needed vulnerability.
It needed struggle.
It needed balance.
And so, the story took everything away—
and left me with a shell.
A younger version of Arzane, yes…
but one starting from scratch.
Then the final message appeared:
[Ready to transfer to the world.]
[In… 3… 2… 1…]
"Wait, wait, not again!"
"Oh, fuck—not again!" I shouted, panic clawing at my chest.
Without warning, the void lunged forward—an inky tide that surged and swelled with unnatural hunger.
Tendrils of shadow burst from the darkness, coiling up my legs, slithering around my waist and chest like chains made of ice. A bone-deep cold seeped into me, slow and merciless, crawling through my skin into my marrow.
I thrashed, trying to escape, but it was like fighting against a collapsing ocean.
My lungs burned. My muscles locked. I tried to scream, but the void stole even that from me. The sound died in my throat before it could escape.
Then the final line whispered like a curse, straight into my mind:
[Welcome to the real story, Arzane. And may the story break you.]
The darkness consumed everything.
I was falling again—relentlessly, mercilessly—dragged into a depth I couldn't measure.
My limbs went numb. My thoughts splintered. I was no longer falling through space but through myself, pieces of my identity unraveling with every passing second.
The cold gnawed at my bones. Not the chill of winter, but the cold of absence—of something that was meant to be there, now hollowed out.
The world I had known—the game, the screen, the safety of fiction—faded into static.
The harder I fought, the more distant it all became.
Like chasing a memory I wasn't sure was ever real.
I wasn't just losing control of the game.
I was losing control of me.
My name.
My voice.
My sense of self.
Who was I now?
Arzane, the character I had built?
Or just a broken player, rewritten into a story I never agreed to play?
The line blurred. Reality twisted.
I opened my mouth to protest—
but no sound came.
Only light.
A blinding, searing light burst through the void, swallowing everything.
My thoughts. My body. My identity.
And then—
a world unfolded before me.
I gasped.
Air tore into my lungs like fire.
Dirt. Grass. The scent of earth and something ancient.
I was lying face-down on damp soil, surrounded by towering trees whose branches clawed the sky like skeletal fingers. The forest was quiet—too quiet. No birdsong. No breeze. Just the soft rustle of leaves and the distant, low hum of magic thrumming beneath the world.
My fingers curled into the moss. Real. Coarse. Cold.
I pushed myself upright, muscles aching, head spinning. The last thing I remembered was light—blinding and absolute. Now the light was gentler, bleeding through the canopy above like liquid gold.
I staggered to my feet, body still adjusting to this new weight, this unfamiliar form.
Then I saw it.
Through the trees, rising from the horizon like a relic of the divine.
Vast. Immense.
Terrifying in its stillness.
Towering spires pierced the clouds, shaped like arcane monuments to forgotten gods.
Massive stone structures sprawled across a distant mountainside, their silhouette outlined against a sky too crystalline to be natural.
Parts of it shimmered like it was being held together by time-worn spells. Others looked like ruins reclaimed by magic, beautiful and broken all at once.
It was just as I remembered it from the novel cover—
And yet, it wasn't.
It felt alive.
It felt aware.
And it was waiting for me.
The Academy of Endstoria.
A place I had explored behind a screen—after it was already broken.
After the blood had dried.
After the betrayals were history.
Countless times.
But now…
There was no keyboard.
No HUD.
No mini-map.
No quicksave.
No reset.
Only the cold, unshakable truth:
I wasn't the player anymore.
I was inside it.
And the story hadn't started over.
It had just begun.