The moment Qi Ming's consciousness rebooted, the world stopped making sense.
There was no sky. No earth. Only a blank void filled with static whispers — like a million deleted lines of dialogue echoing in reverse. Colors drifted in and out of vision, and every step he took shattered reality beneath him.
He had awoken… in the Outworld Archive.
[You are currently outside all recorded narratives.][Identity: Undefined Fragment][Status: Severed from Canon][Probability of Return: < 0.1%]
[Would you like to attempt a system breach?]
Qi Ming didn't respond right away.
He was still trying to remember who he was.
Fragments clicked through his mind: a spotlight, a stage, a girl with tear-stained cheeks shouting his name. Li Xi.
Her name alone anchored him.
"I'm not supposed to be here," he muttered, voice raw.
But the System had other ideas.
From the edge of the void, a figure emerged — cloaked in glitching shadows, her features forever shifting. Her eyes flickered with hexadecimal code, and when she spoke, her voice layered itself across timelines.
"Welcome, Qi Ming.Welcome to where abandoned endings come to rest."
"Who are you?" he asked, fists clenched.
"I am the Keeper of Unwritten Threads," she said. "My duty is to watch the stories that never were — to gather the broken, the deleted, the overwritten."
"Am I dead?"
"Worse," she said simply. "You were erased."
Qi Ming staggered.
Every scene, every memory, every decision he thought he'd made — now just floating data in this cosmic trash bin.
"I was a lead. A main character."
"You were a pawn in a fixed story," the Keeper corrected. "One of millions designed to follow, suffer, and end."
"But I wasn't supposed to die—"
"No," she said, tilting her head. "Someone refused your ending."
A flicker lit the void. A replay of that final moment—Li Xi standing before the console, her hand trembling as she typed the forbidden line into the rewrite field.
[Override Authorization: Unauthorized Rewrite – CODE L-7XI][Target: Qi Ming – Resurrection + Consciousness Retention]
"She brought you here," the Keeper confirmed. "She broke protocol. For you."
Qi Ming's breath hitched.
A character saving another — not out of plot, but choice.
"What happened to her?"
"She's imprisoned. In the Core. Consciousness is being dismantled for system violation."
The Keeper turned, lifting a glowing scroll — not paper, but woven lines of possibility. "The system will erase her next. But you…"
"…You are the one variable it didn't calculate."
Suddenly, a path formed beneath him — a bridge of shattered narratives, each step a glitch from another abandoned world: a knight who never saved the princess; a CEO who never fell in love; a villain who turned good too soon.
The Keeper floated beside him.
"If you wish to fight fate," she said, "you must earn the right to write."
"What do I need to do?"
She extended a burning key — forged from lost plotlines and broken tropes.
[You have acquired: Quill of Defiance]Function: Allows the bearer to rewrite real-time narrative within proximity.Limitation: Every rewrite consumes Memory Integrity. Excess use will cause collapse.
[WARNING: You are now flagged as a Narrative Error.]
Qi Ming grasped the key.
It felt like fire.
But for the first time — he was not afraid.
"I'll bring her back. And I'll burn your system to the ground if I have to."
[Narrative Anchor Detected][Re-entry coordinates stabilized]
Initiating…
…Returning to the Script.
As Qi Ming's form disintegrated into a stream of golden data, the Keeper watched him go, a strange smile flickering on her shifting lips.
"Another fool with hope," she whispered.
"Let's see how long you last."