The city never slept, but Nyx had long stopped noticing.
From the rooftop, the skyline looked like a field of blades of glass towers cutting into the clouds, their tips gleaming silver beneath the restless glow of advertisements and electric rain. The world below pulsed in color: headlights bleeding into puddles, smoke curling through air that tasted faintly of metal and regret.
It was loud. Alive. Beautiful in a sterile kind of way.
And yet, to Nyx, it was all painfully quiet.
He had lived through enough nights to know that silence wasn't the absence of sound, it was the absence of purpose.
The phone in his pocket vibrated once, then fell silent again. He didn't bother checking it. Somewhere in one of those towers, his name was probably being whispered. A hostile takeover here, a missing official there, the typical business. The world would keep moving as it always did: blindly, obediently, without him needing to lift a finger.
It was almost disappointing.
Once upon a time, he had found this kind of power entertaining.He'd been a kingpin, a businessman, a man whose empire stretched across both the boardroom and the underworld. To the righteous, he'd been the monster beneath the marble floors. To sinners, he'd been their patron saint.
And the world, the so-called hero, had always danced exactly where he wanted.
That was the trick, really. People talked about power like it was some hidden truth to be uncovered, but power was nothing more than rhythm. Control the rhythm, and you control the story.
He'd learned that early on.He'd learned how to smile while twisting a knife, how to draw blood without dirtying his hands.He'd learned that morality was flexible, that chaos could be elegant if handled correctly.
He'd learned that gods were overrated and systems were worse.
The first time it happened, he'd assumed he was dreaming.
He'd been standing in another city, but with a different skyline and the same starlight, when the world folded in on itself. Time stopped, the air turned to glass, and a voice, clean and toneless, had told him his existence was "noncompliant." That he was being "relocated."
He remembered laughing. The absurdity of it had been almost refreshing.
He woke in another world, a world of swords, politics, and men playing gods with titles and thrones. They told him he was a villain there, too. That he was meant to fall.
He didn't.
The heroes came, bright-eyed and shining with conviction. They died the same way as anyone else.
After that, the Systems stopped pretending to be merciful. They didn't ask anymore. They tore him from his worlds, rewrote his identities, threw him into new stories each time, expecting him to play his part. To be defeated. To die neatly so the world could move on.
But Nyx didn't die neatly. He never had.
He adapted. Learned their language. Learned their patterns.
He learned that every world had rules.And he learned how to break them.
[You were supposed to die.]
The voice came again—this time closer, clearer. Not from the city around him, but through it. A vibration that ran through the bones of the world itself.
Mechanical. Cold. Impatient.
Nyx didn't look up right away. He let the words settle, tasting the weight of them.
"You're late," he said finally, his voice soft, almost lazy. "I was starting to think you'd forgotten me."
There was a pause, as though the voice hadn't expected him to respond.
[Anomaly detected. Previous termination incomplete.][Host integrity—unauthorized.][Correction in progress.]
Nyx chuckled. The sound was low, amusing. "Ah. So it's you again."
He tilted his head, letting the rain touch his face. The cold grounded him, a small reminder that he still existed here for now.
"And yet," he murmured, smiling faintly, "here I am."
It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last. He'd lost count somewhere between the fiftieth world and the hundredth. Time had stopped meaning anything. Life, death, rebirth, those were just transitions now. Different names for the same story.
He exhaled slowly. The smoke from his cigarette drifted upward, curling into the night sky like a dying prayer.
Every system he'd encountered wanted the same thing: compliance. Redemption. Repentance. They wanted him to act as the villain, to die beautifully, and to entertain the script.
He had other plans.
For decades or centuries, the lines had blurred—he had studied the architecture of worlds. He had watched how stories twisted under pressure, how protagonists bent when the script snapped. He had seen how gods used mortals as puppets, and how mortals eventually learned to pull the strings themselves.
He'd learned how to break the story.How to walk off the page and still be real.
That was his crime—the one the Systems could never forgive.
They could erase him from records, destroy his worlds, delete entire timelines, but they could never delete what he'd become. He wasn't their creation anymore. He wasn't even part of their design.
He was an anomaly.A flaw they couldn't fix.
And the systems hate flaws.
[Reinitializing containment protocol.][Preparing transfer.]
The rain stopped.
Sound vanished from the city all at once. No hum of traffic, no flicker of neon, no human heartbeat.
Even the wind froze mid-motion.
The world around him split, clean and silent, like glass under tension.
"Really?" Nyx sighed, flicking away the last of his cigarette. "You could at least let a man finish his smoke."
Light spilled through the cracks, white, sterile, almost holy. It filled his reflection in the nearby glass, turning his dark eyes to silver.
It was always like this.Always the same ending, the same reset.
He wondered, idly, if this was how mortals felt right before enlightenment, when the world stopped making sense and the only thing left was clarity.
He had stopped feeling afraid of it long ago.Now, he just found it amusing.
[Host Nyx – Transfer Complete.][Designation: Villain Host.][Rehabilitation Commencing.]
"Rehabilitation," he repeated under his breath, almost laughing. "You make it sound so noble."
The light swelled, swallowing the skyline whole.
He didn't resist. There was no point.He had learned that resistance wasn't about fighting, it was about understanding where to bend.
Still, as the world dissolved into brilliance, a thought passed through his mind:
This time, I'll make it interesting.
Every hero thought they were the protagonist.Every world thought it knew its ending.
Nyx, smiling faintly into the consuming light, decided that if he must play again, he'd at least enjoy himself.