Xavier stared at his phone as he reached the final line of the webnovel he had been faithfully reading for almost a year.
> "And with the fall of the last hero, the Demon King's shadow erased Etheoria forever."
He blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Then he let out the kind of exhausted sigh only a reader who'd been emotionally scammed could produce.
"…Author. What in the name of catastrophic storytelling was THAT?"
His voice wasn't loud, but the bitterness behind it could have leveled civilizations.
He didn't fling his phone. He didn't scream into a pillow. But he did drag his hand down his face like he was trying to physically wipe away the disappointment.
"Everyone died? Seriously? The main cast, the supporting cast, the random merchant who sold apples—WHY did the apple guy have to die?!"
He scrolled violently through the final chapters, jaw tightening with each line.
The protagonist party:
– Kyle, the Fate-Chosen hero? Dead.
– The saintess? Vaporized.
– The strategist? Gone.
– The baby dragon that took 400 chapters to hatch? Dead before it could even chirp.
"Four years of in-story buildup," Xavier muttered, "for an ending that looks like the author ran out of serotonin and deadlines."
He kept scrolling, disbelief rising like a storm.
"And Kyle—this idiot—confesses to the saintess while dying. Bro, that's not romance, that's trauma!"
He snatched a pillow and hurled it at the wall.
"And the princess who trained for world peace? Crushed by a collapsing tower. Not even a magic spell—just bad architecture. AMAZING."
His eyes narrowed at another line.
"And the necromancer teased for the final arc? Did he even show up? Nope. The Demon King turned him into glitter. GLITTER. WHY?!"
Xavier shut the app with a flick so aggressive the screen clicked.
"…Who hurt you, author? Honestly."
He set his phone beside him and collapsed backward on the bed, staring at the ceiling like it had betrayed him.
His chest felt hollow — the emotional emptiness only a reader who had invested too much time into fictional characters could understand.
He exhaled softly as sleep tugged at him.
"Whatever… It's just fiction," he murmured.
His eyes drifted closed.
His breathing slowed.
He didn't see the phone screen flicker—light rippling across it like something alive, reaching for him.
He didn't see the glow spill over the edges, slowly engulfing the room.
By the time the light swallowed him whole, Xavier was already unconscious.
All he felt was a distant pull—
Something vast.
Something unfamiliar.
Something waiting.
And then—
Darkness