[The exclusive skill 'Fourth Wall' is activated!]
The darkness didn't last forever.
It rarely did for Kim Dokja.
Consciousness returned not with a gasp of air or the sting of pain, but with the smell. The dry, dusty scent of old paper. The smell of ink that had dried centuries ago. The smell of stories.
He opened his eyes. He wasn't in the sterile, terrifying white room of the Upgrade Center. He wasn't on a surgical table with robots dismantling his soul through Advance Chip. The cold metal and the hum of machinery were gone, replaced by a sensation of warmth and wood beneath his feet.
He was standing on a polished wooden floor, surrounded by towering bookshelves that seemed to stretch infinitely upward into a haze of warm, lantern light.
"The Library," Dokja whispered, his voice echoing in the vast stillness.
It was a space he had visited before, a manifestation of his own mind and the Wall that protected it.
It looked like a university library from an old movie—endless rows of mahogany shelves, sliding ladders, and the soft, comforting glow of gas lamps hung between niches. It was the archive of his existence.
Every memory, every sentence he had ever read, every moment of Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World, was cataloged here.
It should have been comforting. But it was silent.
"Hey!" Dokja called out, stepping forward. "Nirvana? Is anyone here?"
Usually, the 'Librarians'—the existences eaten by the Wall—would be here.
Nirvana Moebius would be quoting some mandala nonsense about the cycle of life, or the Simulation would be organizing the shelves with mechanical precision. Even the Eater of Dreams might be lurking in a corner, grumbling about the quality of the stories.
They were the caretakers of this place.
Now, there was nothing.
Just the echo of his own voice bouncing off the spines of a billion books. The silence was heavy, oppressive. It felt like walking through a graveyard where the tombstones were books.
He walked through the aisles, his footsteps loud on the floorboards.
The signs on the shelves were familiar, marking the epochs of his favorite story.
[000~100]
[101~200]
Records of Ways of Survival.
The story that made him.
The story that saved him.
He ran his fingers along the spines.
They felt warm, vibrating with the history contained within. Just touching them settled his erratic heartbeat. This was his domain. No matter what the Star Will called him, here, he was just a Reader.
As he turned a corner near the section for the 41st Regression, his eyes caught a book that seemed... out of place. It wasn't a standard, leather-bound regression record. It was a thin, haphazardly bound book, shoved carelessly between The 41st Turn: The Regressor's Despair and The 41st Turn: Shin Yoosung's Beast. It looked like a doujinshi or a fanfiction pamphlet.
Dokja frowned. "What is this?" He pulled it out. The cover was bright pink, clashing horribly with the somber tones of the library. The title was written in a font that looked suspiciously like Dokja's own handwriting—messy, rushed, and aggressive.
[Kim Dokja and the Mysteries of Sex]
Dokja stared at the cover. His brain, which had processed the apocalypse, the Outer Gods, the destruction of worlds, and the fusion of Angel and Demon, stalled completely. He blinked. He rubbed his eyes. He looked again. The title remained.
"...What the hell is this?" He looked around, half-expecting someone to jump out from behind a bookshelf and mock him. This felt like a prank. "Is this... why the Wall wouldn't let me see certain sections? Because it was hoarding... this?"
"Why is this in the library? I never wrote this. I never read this."
Unless... the Library didn't just record what he read..? A chill went down his spine. If that were true, the contents of this library were far more dangerous than he thought.
With trembling fingers, driven by a morbid curiosity he couldn't suppress, he opened the first page.
Page 1:"The Squid," book said, "is a creature of mystery. Its reproductive habits are unknown to science, but theorized to involve..."
He slammed the book shut.
Dust flew into the air.
"I'm burning this," he muttered, his face burning hot.
He shoved it back onto the shelf, wedging it behind a heavy volume of The 100th Regression.
"If I ever get out of here, I'm deleting this from the universe."
He turned away, walking briskly to escape the vicinity of the cursed book. The comical interlude faded as he moved deeper into the library, replaced by a growing sense of unease. The silence returned, heavier than before. Where were they? Where were the Librarians?
Time didn't exist here. He walked for what felt like hours, or perhaps seconds. The numbers on the shelves climbed higher. [600]... [700]... He stopped at the section marked [800~900]. This was the era of exhaustion. The era where Yoo Joonghyuk had become tired of regressing, tired of losing.
He pulled out a volume. [The 874th Regression]. The binding was worn, the leather cracked. It looked like a book that had been read and re-read a thousand times. He sat on the floor, leaning against the shelf, and opened it.
It was a turn where Yoo Joonghyuk had tried to save everyone. He had gathered a massive party—hundreds of incarnations. He refused to sacrifice anyone. He refused to be the cold-blooded regressor. He pushed forward with pure, stubborn idealism, trying to prove that a happy ending was possible without tragedy. It ended in the 56th Scenario. They all died. Not because of a grand betrayal, but because they were too weak. They starved. They ran out of coins. They broke under the weight of carrying too many burdens. Yoo Joonghyuk died holding the corpse of Lee Seolhwa, apologizing that he wasn't ruthless enough. Apologizing that he couldn't be the monster they needed.
Dokja read every word. He read the despair, the hope, the inevitable failure. He traced the lines of dialogue with his finger. "Next time," the 874th Yoo Joonghyuk had said. "Next time, I will be alone."
"You Sunfish idiot," Dokja whispered to the text, his voice thick with emotion. He obviously knew that in the 999th Regression he will take the exact same path, quite successfully sacrificing himself for the sake of his companions.
Reading grounded him.
It reminded him of who he was.
He wasn't an Incarnation.
He wasn't a Demon King. He wasn't an Angel in the Star Will.
He was just a reader who loved a story.
"I won't let this happen," he promised the book.
He closed the book and placed it gently back on the shelf.
He walked toward the end of the library.
The infinite shelves finally stopped.
The polished wooden floor began to fracture.
The warm lantern light gave way to a cold, encroaching gray mist.
It was the edge of the Library.
The place where the Library collapsed into the void of his subconscious.
But something was wrong.
The wall at the end of the room wasn't just fading; it was broken.
There was a jagged, ugly crack in the reality of the room, tearing through the floorboards and the ceiling. It looked like a wound. Through the crack, he could see the swirling static of the 'outside'—the raw void of the universe.
And sitting on the edge of that crack, legs dangling into the nothingness, was a figure.
It wasn't a Librarian.
It wasn't Nirvana or the Simulation.
It was a small creature with soft white fur.
A Dokkaebi.
But unlike the Dokkaebis of the Star Stream, who wore little suits or floated with arrogance and malice, this one looked... pure.
It wore a small, old-fashioned fedora that shadowed its eyes. Its white fur was ruffled, as if it had been in a fight. Its shoulders were slumped. It looked incredibly small against the backdrop of the infinite void.
Dokja approached slowly, his footsteps silent on the broken floor. "Hey."
The boy-Dokkaebi didn't turn around. He just kept kicking his legs over the abyss, staring into the static.
"They're gone," the boy said. It sounded like the rustling of pages of the Fourth Wall, soft and sad, and yet, his voice didn't sound like a system message. It didn't have the mechanical ring of the Fourth Wall's usual narration.
"The Librarians?" Dokja asked, standing beside him. He looked down into the void. It was terrifying.
"Yes," the boy replied. He raised a small, furry hand and pointed to a section of the library behind them. Dokja looked. There was a massive gap in the shelves. A section where hundreds of books should have been was now just rubble and dust.
"The 'Star Will' tried to erase you. The conflicting energies of Good and Evil tried to tear your 'Self' apart. The Wall..."
The boy turned his head slightly.
Under the brim of the fedora, Dokja saw large, dark eyes filled with a sorrow that spanned epochs.
"They used themselves as mortar," the boy whispered. "Nirvana. The Simulation. The Eater of Dreams. Even the fragments of stories you haven't read yet. They threw themselves into the cracks. They held the walls together with their own existences while the universe tried to delete you."
Dokja felt a pang of guilt so sharp it nearly brought him to his knees.
"They knew," the boy said. "They are stories, Kim Dokja. Stories exist to be read, and they exist to protect... They chose to end so you could continue."
Dokja looked at the crack. It was slowly knitting itself back together. He looked at the boy. The fedora. The white fur. The storytelling voice. It felt familiar. It reminded him of someone…
The Dokkaebi King who sat on the throne of the Star Stream. But this boy felt... older. Or perhaps, younger. More fundamental.
"And you?" Dokja asked. "Who are you?" He crouched down so he was eye-level with the Dokkaebi.
"You're not a Librarian. You're not a character Fourth Wall ate. Are you... the Fourth Wall? The ego of the skill?"
The boy finally looked up fully. His face was unmarred by the cruelty of the Star Stream.
It was the face of a child who had just opened their first book.
"I don't know," the boy said softly. He looked at his own hands, flexing the white fingers. "I am the one who watches the library. I am the one who records the story. I am the one who decides what is written on the Wall. But... I don't know my name."
"You don't know?" Dokja frowned. "How can you not know?"
Suddenly, the crack in the floor widened.
RUMBLE.
A violent wind erupted from the void.
The library began to shake.
Books rattled on the shelves.
The connection to the subconscious was being severed.
WHOOSH.
The vortex pulled at Dokja. Gravity reversed. He was lifted off the floor, dragged toward the tear in reality. "Wait!" Dokja yelled, grabbing the edge of a bookshelf to anchor himself. His coat whipped around him.
The vortex grew stronger. His fingers slipped. The boy remained sitting on the edge, unaffected by the wind. He smiled. It wasn't a happy smile. It was a sad, knowing smile.
He waved his small hand.
"Go, Kim Dokja. The story is waiting."
The force of the vortex multiplied. Dokja lost his grip. Dokja screamed as he was sucked into the crack.
He flew backward, tumbling through the kaleidoscope of his own mind. He saw the Library receding into the distance. He saw the cracks in the walls sealing up, gold light repairing the damage. He saw new books appearing on the shelves—The 7th Floor Upgrade, The War of Convergence—writing themselves into existence in real-time.
And he saw the boy in the fedora standing up. The boy dusted off his pants. He looked at the flying Dokja, his gaze piercing through the dimension. His voice echoed, not in Dokja's ears, but in the text of the world itself.
"I don't know who I am..."
The boy tilted his fedora.
"...Yet."
Darkness swallowed the vision.
***
['Star Will' is deporting Constellation 'Demon King of Salvation'...]
[Error: No such constellation exists.]
[Re-attempting search protocol.]
[…'Watcher of Light and Darkness'...]
[Error: Entry not found.]