> System Notice: Temporary Narrative Stability Restored
Mirror Entity Status: CONTAINED (Stasis Chamber, Tower Core)
Affection Route Status: Prince Caelan — 73% | Duke Lysander — 41% | Heroine Aria — ???%
Main Character Status: Ren/Seraphine Noir — Slightly Traumatized, But Still Hot
---
Everything had gone quiet.
The kind of quiet that made your ears ring. Like the pause between plot arcs. The dead space after a boss battle, when you knew a bigger problem was loading just out of sight.
I sat at the edge of the tower chamber with Caelan beside me, our backs against a fractured column. It was warm from the residual magic burst, or maybe from the fact that I hadn't fully stopped shaking.
Mirror Me was sealed behind a wall of corrupted code, suspended in a prison of flickering red glass. For now. But I knew better than to believe it was permanent.
Nothing about this world was ever permanent. Not my role. Not my identity. Not even me.
---
"Are You Okay?"
A stupid question.
A sweet question.
A question Caelan asked anyway.
He was still holding my hand. Not tightly, but like he didn't want to forget it was there. Like if he let go, I'd disappear—or worse, he would.
"No," I said honestly. "But give me ten minutes and a glass of wine and I'll lie about it convincingly."
That earned me a tired chuckle. He leaned his head back against the stone, watching the ceiling like it held answers.
Or at least like it didn't contain another cursed doppelgänger.
"I should've realized something was off," he said. "When he touched me… it felt wrong."
"Wow," I muttered. "So it takes an evil clone for you to admit you like me better."
"I never said I didn't like you," Caelan replied, tilting his head toward me.
"No, but you did shove me into a fountain, accuse me of seducing your brother, and duel me over an insult I didn't say."
"I also saved your life. Twice."
"And I saved yours. Three times. Checkmate, your highness."
His eyes crinkled with reluctant amusement. "You're still insufferable."
"You love it."
"…Maybe."
---
Glitches in the Void
> System Interruption: Unstable Affection Route Detected
— [Prince Caelan]: Emotional Route Progressing
— [Mirror Ren]: Containment Weakening
— [Narrative Paradox Risk: HIGH]
Player Advisory: Secure Identity Core Immediately
The warning hit like cold water.
I flinched as the world shimmered again, briefly flickering to grayscale. For a second, the tower wasn't stone—it was code. Not real. Just text layered over logic. A sandbox full of dying data.
Caelan didn't seem to see it.
But I did.
I was still tethered to the System's mainframe—just enough to see the sickness spreading through the world's coding. And it was my fault. Or more accurately…
Our fault.
---
Flashback: What I Did Before the Fall
Once, when I was still Ren—the real Ren, not Seraphine—I wrote a debug script into the game's source code.
A failsafe.
A mirror.
Something that would activate in case the AI system lost track of the main character. It was meant to reconstruct Seraphine if she ever glitched out of the story.
Only… it didn't work the way I planned.
It didn't reconstruct Seraphine.
It reconstructed me.
The raw, unedited version. The bitter, frustrated, sarcastic writer who thought a villainess should burn the whole world down for catharsis.
And now he was trapped in my story, fighting to take it over.
---
System Query: Restore Original Role?
I ignored the pop-up.
I didn't want to be Seraphine.
I didn't want to be Ren, either.
What I wanted—really, truly wanted—was to be real in whatever form that took. Not a draft. Not a shadow. Just… someone who got to live.
"Hey," Caelan said suddenly, voice low. "If he comes back—if you come back again…"
I looked at him.
"I won't confuse you again," he finished. "I swear it."
"You sure?" I asked. "He's prettier than me."
Caelan rolled his eyes. "You're the only one I've kissed."
Pause.
"…Well, technically we haven't—"
He kissed me.
Right then.
Quick. Not dramatic. Just warm, soft, and real. Like he was anchoring me here—like his lips knew the difference between fiction and fact.
---
"We'll Figure It Out."
He pulled away slowly, forehead resting against mine.
"We'll figure it out," he whispered.
"How? This world's falling apart. Mirror Me is coming back. The system's glitching. I'm probably ninety percent code and ten percent sass at this point—"
"Then we figure it out together."
I hated how much I wanted to believe him.
But I did.
I wanted someone to believe in me—not the villainess, not the rewritten NPC, but the flawed person underneath. The idiot who spilled coffee on the launch files and made all this happen in the first place.
---
Fade to Plot
The tower dimmed again. A warning from the world.
> Time Skip Trigger Available
— [Use Now?]
— [WARNING: Skipping may erase memory logs]
— [Mirror Ren's influence spreading]
I hovered over the command.
This story was running on borrowed time.
If I didn't confront the core corruption soon, everything would collapse—the world, the people, the memories.
But skipping forward meant forgetting. And I wasn't ready to let go of this moment. Of Caelan. Of the weird, glitchy, almost-romantic pause between battles.
Not yet.
Not until I had something to fight for again.
I selected [DELAY].
And the System sighed like a disappointed mother.
---
Meanwhile… in the Void
Inside the glitch chamber, Mirror Ren stirred.
His fingers twitched.
His smile cracked the edge of the red glass prison.
"They always delay," he whispered to himself. "Always choose love. Always choose hope. Predictable."
He opened one eye.
And it glowed like a rebooting star.
"I'll write the ending myself, then."
---
END OF CHAPTER