The last thing William felt was paper cutting into his skin.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The corner of the book dug into his palm as his fingers spasmed, strength draining from them. The weight slipped. Pages fluttered, brushing his cheek as the novel fell open on the floor beside his bed.
Echoes of Ruin.
The title stared back at him.
His favorite novel.
His obsession.
His escape.
Blood pooled beneath his ribs, warm at first—then terrifyingly cold.
William tried to breathe.
His lungs refused.
The ceiling fan above him spun lazily, squeaking with every rotation. The sound felt distant, muffled, as though he were underwater. His phone buzzed once on the bedside table, a notification he would never read. Outside, somewhere in the real world, traffic horns blared, life went on, utterly indifferent to the fact that one insignificant nerd was dying alone in a rented room.
He laughed.
Or tried to.
"Of course," he whispered, voice barely audible. "I die… before the ending."
His eyes burned —not from pain, but from frustration.
He had followed Echoes of Ruin for six years.
Six years of weekly updates. Six years of theories, timelines, character arcs memorized down to the smallest detail. He knew which demigod families would rise. Which would fall. Which heroes would be celebrated—and which monsters history would conveniently forget.
He knew how Fantasia would end.
Or rather, how it was supposed to end.
The Dark King.
The Endless Journey.
The true protagonist—born into one of the four demigod families, destined to burn his way through fate itself.
William had been rereading the early arcs again, the ones everyone skipped. The early time before the world truly changed. Before demi gods bled. Before continents shattered.
Before the Blade Family was erased.
A violent cough wracked his body. Red splattered across the page, staining the printed words.
He forced his eyes open one last time.
"If I could just—" His vision blurred. "If I could see Fantasia… even once…"
Darkness swallowed him whole.
There was no tunnel of light.
No divine music.
No gentle voice welcoming him to the afterlife.
Instead—
Pain.
Existence crashed back into him like a blade slammed into flesh.
William gasped, lungs flooding with air so violently it felt like he was being torn apart from the inside. He screamed—but the sound that came out was thin, weak, and… unfamiliar.
Too small.
Too high-pitched.
Panic surged.
I'm alive.
That thought should have brought relief.
It didn't.
His body felt wrong.
Tiny.
Heavy.
Uncoordinated.
He tried to move his arms and was rewarded with flailing limbs and a wail that was definitely not his own voice.
The world was a blur of light and shadow. Shapes moved above him. Strange, melodic speech filled the air, syllables bending in ways no human language ever had.
Then—
A pressure behind his eyes.
A sudden, intrusive presence that did not belong to him.
⟨ Infinite Reincarnation System Activated ⟩
⟨ Soul Anchor Confirmed ⟩
⟨ World: Fantasia ⟩
⟨ Timeline Displacement: -3000 Years ⟩
William froze.
No.
No, no, no.
This wasn't possible.
A crazy thought poured into his mind — I am reincarnated into Echoes of Ruin.
Information poured into his mind, cold and absolute.
⟨ Core Authority: Infinite Reincarnation ⟩
Upon death, host will reincarnate into the Blade Family bloodline, one generation after the previous incarnation.
⟨ Condition ⟩
Reincarnation continues until the Blade Family is erased from history.
⟨ Warning ⟩
Memory retention is absolute.
Pain is not mitigated.
Death is irreversible only when the bloodline ends.
William's thoughts shattered.
Blade Family.
Out of all possibilities—
That name alone was enough to chill him to the bone.
The Blade Family was one of the Four Demigod Families of Fantasia.
But it was also—
The weakest.
The newest.
And the one destined to be annihilated by the future protagonist.
He remembered it clearly.
In the novel, the Blade Family barely lasted hundred chapters. A stepping stone. A tragic but necessary sacrifice to show how cruel the world truly was.
Their downfall marked the protagonist's rise to glory.
Their blood watered the roots of legend.
And now—
I'm one of them.
No.
Worse.
He wasn't just one of them.
He was trapped in them.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until the end.
Vision slowly sharpened.
The world came into focus.
Stone walls etched with glowing runes. Curtains woven from silver-thread silk. The air itself hummed with mana—thick, ancient, alive. Outside, distant mountains pierced the sky like the teeth of sleeping gods.
Fantasia.
Not a story.
Not fiction.
A world where demigods ruled, where power mattered more than morality, where destiny was a weapon wielded by those strong enough to grasp it.
He was being held.
William looked up—into a face that made his soul tremble.
A man stood over him, tall and broad-shouldered, black hair tied behind his back, eyes sharp enough to cut through steel. Power radiated from him effortlessly, bending the air around his presence.
A demigod.
No—
The demigod.
Aurelion Blade.
Founder of the Blade Family.
First Patriarch.
The weakest demigod among the four—but a demigod nonetheless.
The man who was spoken in legend in the first chapter of Echoes of Ruin
William knew this man.
Knew his techniques.
Knew his failures.
Knew exactly how and when he would die.
Aurelion looked down at the newborn in his arms and smiled faintly.
"My son," he said, voice deep and resonant. "You were born beneath a broken constellation."
The words hit William like a prophecy carved into his bones.
A healer beside them spoke nervously. "Patriarch… the signs are strange. The mana around the child—it fluctuates unnaturally."
Aurelion's smile sharpened.
"Good," he said. "A Blade should never be ordinary."
William wanted to scream.
You don't understand.
This family wasn't meant to survive.
The Blade Family's ultimate art—the Seven Infinite Blade Technique—was flawed. Incomplete. A shadow of the perfected legacies held by the other demigod families.
The Skyfall Family commanded the heavens.
The Everflame Family ruled destruction.
The Abyssal Crown controlled death itself.
And the Blade Family?
They chased infinity with broken steel.
In the novel, their ultimate technique killed more of its own users than their enemies ever did.
William felt it.
Deep in his blood.
A resonance.
As though countless blades were whispering inside him, screaming to be forged, sharpened, perfected.
The system stirred.
⟨ Notice ⟩
Host is the First Reincarnation.
⟨ Objective ⟩
Survive.
Strengthen the Blade family.
Challenge the inevitability of erasure.
Aurelion turned toward the open balcony.
Beyond it stretched the capital of the Blade Domain—vast, proud, and fragile. Towers of steel and stone gleamed beneath the sun, banners bearing the sigil of a single broken sword fluttering in the wind.
It was beautiful.
And doomed.
Three thousand years from now, this land would be ash.
Its name erased from history.
Its people remembered only as footnotes in a hero's rise.
William clenched his tiny fists.
"So this is it," he thought, eyes burning with something far darker than fear.
"I'm early."
Three thousand years early.
Too early to meet the true protagonist.
Too early to challenge the Dark King.
Too early to rely on destiny.
But not too early to change things.
If fate demanded the Blade Family's destruction—
Then he would live through it.
Die through it.
Be reborn through it.
Again.
And again.
Until either the world broke—
Or destiny did.
When the true characters appear, he will be the final boss of this world.
High above Fantasia, unseen by gods and mortals alike, something ancient stirred.
A future that was never meant to exist had just taken its first breath.
And somewhere, far in the unseen flow of time, the true protagonist took an unconscious step closer to a fate that was no longer guaranteed.