Webnovels are to be read and forgotten.

Or…

So I thought.

Until, I stumbled upon a tragedy.

It started innocently enough - just another title in my endless reading list.

* * *

An unoriginal name, with an even more unoriginal premise - A Hero fighting the Demon King.

Talk about creative liberty…. Or rather, the complete lack of it.

Or so we thought.

'It had us all fooled.'

We had dismissed it as just another addition to our ever-growing pile of forgettable stories. 

Yet somehow, without any of us realizing when or how, we found ourselves engrossed.

It wasn't the premise - heavens knew we have had enough stories about Heroes and Demon Kings to last lifetimes.

No, what caught our attention was its brutal approach to 'kingdom building.'

The pattern was simple but devastating.

The Hero, our protagonist, would reach a kingdom.

There he would... Gather allies. Build power. Fight the demon king. And then…

Everyone would die. 

The kingdom would burn.

The Hero would flee.

And it would start again.

Six kingdoms had fallen this way.

Each kingdom's fall drove some readers away, unable to stomach another tragedy. Yet paradoxically, each devastation drew in new readers, attracted by the growing infamy of the story..

Now only the Last Kingdom remained.

"Come on… upload already."

And here I was at 3 AM, lying in bed like an idiot, staring at my cracked phone screen, waiting for the daily chapter to drop.

Swipe.... Swipe...

I refreshed the page again. And again.

Still nothing.

"Hnn… What should I do? It's not up yet."

To kill time, I scrolled through the comment section. The usual mix of theories, complaints, and desperate pleas filled my screen:

⟨DON'T GO TO THE LAST KINGDOM! PLEASE STOP!⟩

⟨They are all going to die just like the others...⟩

⟨How tf does the Hero not see the pattern by now?? Like bruh, 6 times wasn't enough to learn??⟩

⟨The author is such a psycho for doing this...⟩

⟨Highland Throne gonna get destroyed worse than the others...⟩

The comments told their own story. 

Most casual readers had dropped off after the third kingdom fell - the pattern had become too painful, too consistent. 

Only the dedicated remained.

Either clinging to hope for a different ending or morbidly curious about how it would all conclude.

I fell somewhere in between.

I think so.

Not obsessed enough to join the theory groups, but too invested to quit now.

Brr…

A notification cut through my thoughts, startling me. 

Slip—

My phone slipped through my grasp and—

"Ouch…"

—slammed right into my face.

The pain was sharp, immediate, and somehow made me feel like even more of an idiot than I already did.

"These fucking spammers!"

I grabbed my phone, ready to curse whatever promotional message had caused this embarrassment. 

"Mnn… what?"

But what I saw made me forget the throbbing pain in my nose.

This wasn't spam.

[ Final volume released ]

"What?! The whole volume?!!"

My eyes darted across the screen, hardly believing what they were seeing.

Click. Click.

-OPEN!

"OH! SHIT! IT'S LEGI—"

Oops. 

Too loud.

I caught myself mid-shout, but it was too late.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP! IT'S 3 IN THE MORNING!! LET US SLEEP!!!"

My sister's voice thundered from the other room. I winced at her fury, though a stray thought crossed my mind:

'Wait… How does she know it's exactly 3  AM? …Ah never mind that!'

Phew…

My attention returned to the screen, heart still racing from both the discovery and my sister's outburst.

The website's interface hadn't improved with age - it remained a relic from when webnovels were just starting to gain popularity.

Small icons, confusing layout, ads popping up in all the wrong places. After months of reading, I had learned to navigate it's quirks, but still—

"Damn it."

My excited fingers betrayed me. Two misclicks in succession.

Loading…

But eventually, I found my way to the chapter.

The words I have been waiting for appeared before me:

And now, standing before the gates of the final kingdom, the Hero smiled.

"This time will be different," the Hero announced to the gathered council.

'Not again...'

I sighed.

I have read variations of these words six times before. Each kingdom had its own version of this scene. Each time the Hero believed. Each time they failed.

But something was different about this chapter. The loading bar at the top kept spinning even after the text appeared. And was it just my imagination, or was my screen getting… brighter?

Swipe. Scroll—

I checked my brightness settings. Still on night mode. Yet the light grew stronger, impossible even, until—

I wasn't in my bed anymore.

No.

I was floating.

No…  falling.

"WHAT THE—"

The world twisted around me. My stomach lurched as gravity seized me, pulling me down through what seemed to be an endless void.

Then—

Crash... Crash...

Before I could process what was happening, branches whipped past my face. Leaves rushed by in a green blur. My body crashed through the canopy of some massive tree, twigs snapping around me until—

Thud.

I landed in a thick bush. Pain shot through every part of my body, but the dense foliage had cushioned what could have been a far worse fall.

"Ow… Ow…"

This wasn't my room anymore. 

Darkness pressed in from all sides, broken only by patches of starlight filtertering through the canopy above. 

As my eyes adjusted, I could make out the silhouettes of trees stretching endlessly in every direction.

'What the…'

Through my daze, I looked up and froze.

"...!"

There, just a few meters above where I had crashed through the branches, hung a hole in the sky. Through its edges, I could clearly see the ceiling of my bedroom, complete with that old water stain I had been meaning to get fixed.

And it was closing fast.

The hole in the sky was!

"No, no—"

I wasn't yet sure what was happening, but instinct took over. I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the protests of my bruised body, and jumped toward the rapidly shrinking portal.

"Shit! Shit! Shit! I can't reach it like that."

It was too high—even an Olympic high jumper couldn't have made that leap.

Panic induced, I turned to the tree that had broken my fall. 

If I could climb it…

But reality quickly reminded me that I was no athlete. My hands scraped against the bark as I struggled to find purchase. Years of modern living hadn't prepared me for scaling trees in the dark.

Still, desperation drove me upward, inch by painful inch.

"Just… a little… more…"

But I was too slow. Too late.

"No—"

The hole sealed itself with a soft whisper, taking with it my last glimpse of home.