The silence after the awakening shattered like glass.
No one in the lecture hall could breathe. No one dared. Cha Hae-won knelt in the circle, body convulsing as the glyph still burned beneath him. His sleeve was torn open, the abyss-black dragon stitched there alive with motion, each thread writhing like veins filled with venom.
And then the world system spoke again.
[ Main Skill Unveiled: Soul Control ]
[ Unique Modifier: Enemy of Every Path ]
[ Infinite Regression Condition Unlocked. ]
The letters weren't gentle light—they were iron rods driven through the skull of every person present. Even professors fell back in their chairs, clutching their temples, bleeding from the nose. Students screamed as the system's voice pressed directly into their bones.
"Infinite… Regression?" someone whispered, and the phrase spread like wildfire.
No one understood it fully. But everyone knew instinctively what it meant. A cycle without end. A man who would never truly die. A curse of eternity.
Hae-won's vision blurred. For a second, he saw the hall as it was—terrified nobles, professors frantically raising barriers, the glow of the glyph beneath him flickering like a dying star.
And then he wasn't there.
He was in a field of corpses.
Not illusions. Not dreams. His lungs burned with the rot of thousands dead. Blood pooled beneath his knees. He turned his head, and the face of a boy from the Academy—Renald, the one who had mocked him earlier—stared at him, throat cut wide open.
"Peasant," Renald gurgled, eyes rolling back. "This is your path."
Hae-won tried to scream, but the field shifted.
He was on a pyre. His own body was tied to it, flames crawling up his legs. His skin cracked. His screams joined a chorus of a hundred others.
"Burn with us," the voices wailed.
The fire swallowed his throat, seared his lungs, and when he opened his mouth again—
He was drowning. His limbs tangled in chains. A demon's laugh shook the ocean floor.
"You belong to no one. Not heaven, not hell. You are mine."
The water pressed into his lungs.
Regression.
It wasn't a word to him yet. Not consciously. But his body understood. His soul tore forward, backward, into every path, every end. A thousand deaths, ten thousand, crushed into seconds. Each one carving scars deeper into his brain.
He saw himself torn apart by monsters. Beheaded on execution platforms. Betrayed by companions. He saw Yun Arin's face slit open by shadow. He saw professors begging for their lives as his Fables bled through walls of stone.
The hall around him flickered in and out of view. One moment he was there, the next moment he was kneeling in some battlefield he had never walked, dying to weapons he had never seen.
And each time—
[ Regression Condition Met. ]
[ Returning to Previous Scenario. ]
It wasn't spoken just to him. The entire hall heard it. The words bloomed across every student's vision.
Gasps broke into hysteria.
"He—he's rewinding reality—"
"This is impossible!"
"Kill him! Before it's too late!"
Professors raised their staffs, barriers swelling with desperate incantations. A few students fainted outright. Those strong enough to stand pushed back against the walls as though the boy in the center were no longer human, but a black hole dragging the world down.
And Hae-won was screaming.
He clutched his skull, nails digging until blood dripped into his eyes. His mouth opened wide enough to split skin, voice raw with thousands of deaths compressed into one throat.
"Make it stop—make it STOP—"
His vision fractured again.
This time, it wasn't his body burning.
It was the Academy.
The lecture hall cracked. The dead oak outside split into ash. Professors' bodies lined the floor. Students were gutted, piled, silent. Yun Arin's silver-thread robe was drenched in crimson.
He was the one holding the blade.
"No…"
His hands wouldn't drop it. They were not his hands anymore. They belonged to someone else. To every Fable screaming in his veins. To the Modifier that called him the Enemy of Paths.
He staggered back. His knees gave out.
And the glyph under him pulsed again—darker this time, dragging the crowd with him. More students collapsed, writhing as the visions bled into them. One girl shrieked, clawing at her own face, whispering that she saw herself hanging. Another tore at her robe, begging to be cut down before "the loop" began again.
The entire hall was breaking under his awakening.
Then a voice cut through the storm.
"Pathetic."
It wasn't loud. It wasn't grand. But it carried.
Hae-won's blurred eyes caught her as she stepped into the circle. A girl, human in every possible sense. No divine aura, no Arcane embroidery, no Holy crest to bless her. Just plain academy robes, slightly wrinkled, her long hair tied into a careless knot.
Seo Ha-young.
He had never seen her speak in class, never seen her draw attention. But now, every eye that wasn't bleeding or blind turned to her.
She walked straight through the glyph's pressure as if it were nothing more than dust. Her steps were deliberate, unshaken, while professors were crushed to their knees and nobles clawed for escape.
She stopped in front of him.
Hae-won's mouth trembled. "Don't—don't come close—"
She tilted her head. Her eyes were sharp, cold, calculating. But her mouth curved in something almost amused.
"Look at you," she said. "The enemy of every path. The boy of infinite regressions. And still, you're just a kid pissing himself in front of a crowd."
He shook his head, body spasming with another wave of death-memories.
"You don't understand—"
Her hand gripped his chin, forcing him to look at her. "I understand enough. You'll tear this place apart if you keep spiraling. So…"
Without hesitation, Seo Ha-young's knee shot up into his solar plexus.
The impact tore the air from his lungs. His scream cut short, replaced by a strangled cough. Pain exploded through his abdomen. For a moment, the regressions stuttered—like a film reel skipping a frame.
"Breathe, idiot," she said flatly. "It's just death. Stop acting like it's new."
Her voice grounded him in a way nothing else had. Not pity. Not fear. Just brutal dismissal, sharp as steel.
His chest heaved. His vision cleared, if only for a heartbeat. He saw her face clearly now—human, sharp, alive. The only thing real.
And then the storm surged again.
[ Regression Condition Met. ]
[ Returning to Previous Scenario. ]
The glyph screamed. Students collapsed. Professors' barriers shattered. The oak outside fell into dust entirely.
Hae-won's body convulsed. He tasted blood. His eyes rolled back—
And Seo Ha-young slapped him across the face. Hard.
"Stay here, Cha Hae-won. Not in their graves. Here."
Her nails dug into his collar, holding him upright as his body sagged forward.
For one last instant, the regressions raged—fire, water, steel, betrayal, deathdeathdeath—
And then silence.
He collapsed forward into her arms. Not gently—she grunted, nearly toppling from his weight.
"Tch. Heavy for a scarecrow," she muttered, half annoyed, half relieved.
All around them, the lecture hall was chaos. Students screamed. Professors argued. Some demanded his immediate execution, others shouted for containment, others still prayed to their respective Divisions for salvation.
But Seo Ha-young didn't flinch. She looked down at the unconscious boy in her grip, blood dripping from his nose, crest burning black against his sleeve.
Her lips curved again—not quite a smile.
"Well," she murmured. "Looks like I just bought myself a front-row seat to the end of the world."