For the first time in what felt like forever, Kim Dokja walked with the others without feeling the weight of an unwritten page behind his eyes.
The subway tunnel had returned to its post-scenario state — cracked walls, flickering lights, the smell of dust and blood and a little bit of ozone. But this time, there was laughter. Grumbling. Familiar voices echoing across the cracked tile.
It felt like home — or the closest thing they had.
"So what was it this time?" Han Sooyoung asked, bumping her shoulder against his. "Some secret final scenario? An author war? Let me guess: a personality test but the loser dies?"
Kim Dokja didn't answer right away.
How do you explain that you just barely won the right to remain real?
"Something like that," he murmured.
Yoo Joonghyuk grunted. "Took you long enough."
Kim Dokja glanced at him. "You waited?"
"I didn't have a choice," Yoo Joonghyuk replied, but he didn't deny it.
Lee Hyunsung approached with cautious relief in his eyes. "Are we… done for now?"
Kim Dokja opened his mouth to say yes.
But then the ground shivered — a faint tremor, like a shudder in the air itself. None of the others seemed to feel it.
Except for Han Sooyoung. She stopped walking.
"Wait."
"What is it?" Kim Dokja asked.
She frowned. "That wasn't you, was it?"
Before he could ask what she meant, a window flickered in the corner of his vision.
But it didn't look like the usual system message.
It was handwritten.
Scribbled ink across digital space.
"You shouldn't have let my ending in."
"You still don't understand how stories work."
Kim Dokja's mouth went dry.
Han Sooyoung swore. "Something's bleeding through."
Yoo Joonghyuk narrowed his eyes. "Explain."
"She was integrated," Sooyoung said, her tone clipped. "But that doesn't mean her intentions were erased. Some of her story wasn't just passive narration. It was—" She stopped. "It was designed to overwrite."
Kim Dokja felt a coldness crawl up his spine.
He remembered her face. The page she tore. The one she said he'd never read.
"A scene you never read."
"Dokja," Sooyoung said urgently, "do you remember what exactly she gave up before the Judge erased her?"
He shook his head. "She tore the page."
"Not that," Sooyoung snapped. "What was on it?"
Before he could answer, the world blinked.
Not a visual effect.
A hiccup in reality.
Kim Dokja blinked — and the walls of the subway shifted slightly. The graffiti was different. The cracks weren't in the same places.
Even Joonghyuk's sword looked… newer?
[ALERT: Narrative Instability Detected.]
[A Fragmented Scene Has Attempted Integration.]
[Unrecognized Character Detected in Timeline.]
Kim Dokja froze.
"Someone just entered the story," he whispered.
And then they heard the voice.
"Well," it said, casual and unhurried, as if it had always belonged, "that took longer than I expected."
A figure stepped out of the tunnel's far end. Cloaked in a jacket too modern for their world. Holding a pen like a blade. Their face was partially obscured — but unmistakable.
The girl.
Not exactly her.
Not alive.
But written in.
A narrative remnant.
"You weren't supposed to exist," Kim Dokja said.
"No one ever is," she replied, smiling softly. "That's what makes us interesting."
Han Sooyoung stepped between them. "I knew it. A seed. You left a damn seed in the core."
Kim Dokja's thoughts raced.
He had accepted the merger.
The Judge had approved it.
But her final page — the one torn — hadn't been destroyed.
It had been planted.
"I don't want to overwrite you," she said. "I just want… to be remembered."
She stepped closer.
"And maybe to finish my ending, just a little bit."
The system flared.
[New Scenario Fragment Initiated: The Lost Chapter]
[Difficulty: Unknown]
[Status: Hidden Scenario]
Kim Dokja took a step back.
Yoo Joonghyuk drew his sword.
Sooyoung hissed, "Dokja. You idiot. You let her narrate again."
He didn't deny it.
But he also didn't regret it.
Because sometimes the stories we bury are the ones that grow the fastest.
And maybe this time… they'd all have to survive someone else's ending.
End of Chapter 20