I should've stopped reading when the comments section disappeared.
The novel was called Heaven Falls Twice. A pretentious title, but I was hooked. It was one of those web novels where the world suddenly collapses, monsters pour out, and the main character just happens to know everything because he read a novel about it.
Cliché, right?
Most people thought so. The story was slow, the author inconsistent, and by Chapter 10 the readership plummeted. Everyone else dropped it — except me.
I was the only one who stayed.
I read all 3,186 chapters.Every death. Every reset. Every impossible twist.
It took me six years.
Except last night, the author posted the final chapter:
"The world you're reading about is about to begin again. Look up."
I laughed. Thought it was some creepy pasta marketing thing. I even screenshot it to share in my group chat. But when I refreshed the page, the site crashed.
A few minutes later, I got an email.
The sender name was "HF2_author." The subject line just said "Thank you."
The body of the email was short:
"You were the only one who finished it. Thank you. I mean that.
When it starts, remember — ███ ███ ████ ███ ████ ████."
I tried to reread it, thinking it was a formatting bug, but the blacked-out words wouldn't copy. When I hovered over them, the cursor flickered like static. Then the whole message vanished from my inbox.
And when I looked up…
The sky was wrong.
Not broken — not yet — but the blue looked thin, like paper stretched over something glowing. I thought I was hallucinating from lack of sleep. But then the message appeared in midair, just like in the novel:
[Scenario 1: Proof of Existence will begin in 30 minutes.]
I froze. That exact phrase had appeared in Chapter 3 of Heaven Falls Twice.
Which meant —
Somewhere out there, Jin Do-hyun, the protagonist of that novel, was realizing his world had turned into his favorite novel, The Tower Descends.And now my world… had turned into his.
I should've felt excitement, maybe awe. Instead, I felt the sort of horror you only get when fiction stops being entertainment and starts being prophecy.
Because I knew something Do-hyun didn't.I'd read his ending.
He wasn't the hero. He was the prelude.His world wasn't saved — it was overwritten.
And if my world had become his story…Then whatever came after his ending was about to start with me.
The sky cracked. Paper peeling off a lamp.Light spilled through.The message flickered again.
[Welcome, Reader.]
And I realized something even worse.
This wasn't his apocalypse.It was mine.