POV: Reader (⬜⬜⬜)
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The wind in this district didn't howl.
It whispered.
Not like wind passing through hollow stone. No — it whispered in words. Fragmented phrases, half-familiar voices. Like ghosts trying to finish prayers they'd never believed in. Each gust carried hymns long since buried beneath centuries of ash.
We entered the cathedral.
The floor groaned beneath our weight, old wood rebelling against new footsteps. Jiwoon was behind me, fingers resting on the hilt of his curved blade, his stance tight. Ereze walked to my left, her aura flickering in silent warning as she scanned the walls.
Light passed through stained glass windows, casting fragmented rainbows across cracked pews. But the glass didn't depict saints or salvation.
It showed kings dying.
Crowned in red. Screaming into silence.
> "It's not real," I muttered.
None of it.
Not the constellations above — flickering like decaying memories rather than stars.
Not the golden chandeliers swaying in air that didn't move.
Not the throne that sat untouched at the end of the cathedral — silent, empty, breathing.
> "⬜⬜⬜," Ereze whispered, eyes never leaving the murals. "You feel that too, right?"
> "Yeah," I said. "This place isn't a trial. It's a… lie pretending to be history."
---
At the heart of the cathedral stood the dais — a circular platform of cracked obsidian, stained by something darker than time.
The throne atop it wasn't carved from stone.
It was made of bone and ink.
Bones of kings, maybe. Words that no longer had authors. It pulsed, gently, as if waiting to be sat upon — or to feed.
Around its base, a ring of shattered blades formed a crown that had fallen to the floor. No two were the same — all of them rusted with time, or blood, or both.
Above the throne, written in trembling lines across the fractured ceiling:
> "THE CROWN IS A SEAL.
NOT A PRIZE."
Jiwoon stepped beside me, his breath fogging the cold air.
> "Seal?" he murmured. "Seal of what?"
A voice echoed from the shadowed arches.
> "Not what," it said.
"Who."
---
The illusion flinched.
Air twisted. Light pulled inward. Dust retreated from the figure that stepped forward — not walking, but existing like a fixed point that the cathedral bent around.
Kira.
He stepped into view with deliberate calm, each footfall a statement. His coat untouched by the grime of this place. His white hair framed one cold eye, and the other — obscured, unreadable.
He wasn't part of the illusion.
He was what made it crack.
He stopped at the edge of the dais. His gaze went past us. Toward the throne.
> "Seven cycles ago," he said softly, "they tried to trap a god."
No theatrics. No dramatic pause. Just the truth — dropped like a knife on a table.
> "They called it the Unwritten One. A being so vast, so chaotic, no narrative could bind it. So they tried something else."
"They fed it stories."
"Sacrifices. Conflicts. Trials. Thrones."
Ereze's voice broke the tension.
> "So every King's Game... every war... the whole Selection... was just—"
Kira finally looked at us.
> "Feeding you to it."
Silence fell.
Not stunned. Not reverent.
Terrified.
---
And then…
I felt it.
A blink behind the throne. A presence forming — not as something new, but as something that had always been there. Watching.
A gap in the world.
A hole that wasn't black, but blank — shaped like a mouth that only remembered.
It didn't roar.
It didn't speak.
It just… knew me.
And suddenly, I wasn't just ⬜⬜⬜.
I was all the ⬜⬜⬜'s who had stood in this place before.
The ones who knelt.
The ones who died.
The ones who screamed and shattered.
All devoured.
All part of the story it rewrote over and over.
---
Jiwoon grabbed his blade, instincts screaming. But before he could move, Kira raised a hand.
> "If you attack it," he said, "it wakes."
He pointed to the throne.
> "If you sit," he continued, "it devours."
Then he looked directly at me.
> "If you try to break the cycle…"
"It resets."
He took a step closer.
His voice dropped to a whisper that vibrated with power.
> "So. What will you do, ⬜⬜⬜?"
---
My pulse pounded in my ears.
I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. I wanted to burn this place down.
But I couldn't move.
Then —
The interface glitched.
A line of text stuttered across the corner of my vision like corrupted code.
---
> [Decision Point Unlocked]
This choice will influence all future routes:
🩸 Claim the Throne
Take control. Become the architect of the chaos — the feeder of the Unwritten One. Rule, knowing every breath feeds the cage.
⚔️ Refuse the Throne
Shatter the cycle. Free the seal. But risk total collapse — of world, self, meaning.
🔥 Rewrite the Narrative
Burn your identity. Sacrifice your name. Forge a story powerful enough to weaponize belief.
---
My fingers trembled.
Each choice glowed red — not with light, but cost.
Kira watched me, unreadable.
> "Only one path leads to truth," he said.
"And it isn't survival."
---
I stepped forward.
Past the swords.
Past the ghosts of kings who'd chosen wrong.
I stood before the throne carved from everything I'd feared — and made my choice.
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