Time. The most important factor of all of humanity. The remedie, the mere concept of time flowing throughout the existence of us humans. Us? I've always thought, there is never an us. Just simply an "I" or "you." Why? There's no reason at all. Whether or not you're human is up to you. I've chosen to lose that humanity.
This was the prologue in Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse. Never could I have imagined that there would be a fourth and final rule. This is a story. A story among many, though, this is the prologue for this story. A story for one special reader. Will you keep that humanity? Or will you throw everything away, for your readers? This is the fourth rule.
Readers, authors, protagonists will never be torn, they will only forget.
***
Nezha hurriedly searched through the data of the Time Instance. It was nearly impossible to ever find anything in this forsaken place.
'Where is it..'
Nezha asked himself, his angel white hair obstructed his vision, falling into his eyes. He didn't have long hair, but in the last couple months, his hair has grown a considerable amount.
Without being summoned to stories, no anomalies, its been quiet. Until, he heard about a new occurrence. Perhaps the biggest one the Time Remedie has seen so far. An anomaly too big to be fixed alone.
Nezha cursed. Without this file, he would surely fail to go through with his plan. Without the right information.. Nothing would work.
Surely, he's seen this story before. However, within the millions of years he's lived his life, he's forgotten. Knowledge was the one thing he soley held on his shoulders. The secrets of the universe. A god like him shouldn't be so forgetful.
Alas.. He couldn't find the damn file.
'Perhaps Jujao took it. They're always up to no good..'
He thought. Jujao worked with him in the Time Instance. Just as a simple side gig for Jujao. They were a star. More specifically, a constellation. An entity very similar to Nezha himself that watched over every world, every story. Only the ones they wanted to, ofcourse. Nezha had no choice.
To put this frankly, the world was made up of stories. The universe. Expanding to the edge of wherever time tells. Nezha was The Time Remedie. His one sole purpose was to watch over every story. Every fiction. Every short- tale made in a small, cold home. Made to bring joy to the callousness of human life.
Whether that be fixing any anomalies caught by the great primordial, or going to the story himself from the Time Instance, to fix it himself. It was tiresome. Centuries of preforming the same thing was lonesome.
He was a character outside the stories, safe from their perilous plots. A god. Aswell as a constellation, but he hated being called one of them. He hardly considered himself one.
He never engaged with the work of them. Streaming stories, gifting packages to characters. It all seemed blasphemous to him. Juajo especially confused him.
The idea of fun for Jujao was to terrorize characters of different stories through gifts and stream it to gain more star viewers.
Gifts are something stars can gift to characters within any story, as long as they obey the rules of the plot. Or else, they'll be destroyed by probability. A punishment for not following the 'rules'.
Even gods have restrictions.
He eventually closed the ones of millions of drawers in the light place that was the Time Instance. Looking up at the huge columns of white drawers extending up to nothingness.
With Nezhas wings, he could easily fly up, but there was rarely a use for any of these files.
His official name was, "Demon of Time." His constellation name. Your constellation name changes your appearance if you're a high ranking star. The things that changed about him once he was bestowed with this cursed name.. was a pair of Black wings, feathers as black and shiny as night, aswell as color matching horns with golden, as if sparkling spirals.
These features made him intimidating, sure, but aswell as seen as inhuman. A demon. He might as well have been, with how long he's been alive, and the things he's done, and have long regret.
He looked down at his black clothing. His black cloak reaching his ankles, expanding over his frame of 6,0. He sighed.
'I need to get back on track.'
His footsteps echoed through the long, white expanding hallway that seemed to stretch for miles. His white hair matched the smooth tile of the walls. His black clothing a rare thing to see in the Time Instance.
He could practically see his reflection on the surface as he turned to look at the white abyss. His face stared back at him. His eyes were a deep hazel, atleast one of them was. The other was completely black. The abyssal color spread over the familiar white and over the Iris. Swapped with a golden cresent moon. The gold matching the swirls on his horns.
Aswell as a straight, healed scar on his left eye through the eyebrow all the way down to his cheek. He'd rather not think about the time he was cursed with this scar. Nor did he remember too much, as it was so many years ago.
As a god, there was only power. He had a luxury of going down to the stories, so many people was rare for him to see. The Time Instance was only him, and occasionally Jujao visted him. Even with how much he hated him, he secretly enjoyed the stars' rare visits to his domain.
It felt as if he was a human. With human emotion. "Strange," Jujao would call it. Though he rarely ever expressed these feelings. He wasn't supposed to. Maybe perhaps it was because he was once a human himself. With a story of his own. Though, that was long lost in time.
He dismissed his reflection and kept walking, not wanting to look at himself any longer.
He quickly came to a huge white opening within the space. There were floating clocks that ticked accurately and fluffy clouds that were almost as white as the interior, but not quite. Doors of all different sizes spiraled upwards to what seemed like an eternity.
'A door to every story.'
Nezha thought. Though, they were practically useless since he could never find the right door to enter a story. He simply used a time wheel. A magical wheel that took you anywhere. No matter what time. Something only a god like him can use.
Perhaps some stories had a plot that allowed such an object to be used, but anything that is written on a peice of paper, a screen, anything, stays within that story. Nothing can reach the outside boundaries of the story.
It was often that Nezha thought about being in a story right now, which could be very true. Though, deep thought like that only distracted him.
He walked in even steps to the monitor of hundreds of screens, his footsteps echoing through the vast space.
Something has been terribly wrong, ever since an anomaly showed up in the story, Arnicda. The reason he was searching through the catalogs. It was very troublesome. He would have to watch the story himself since he didn't have much information on it. He was aware that this anomaly was too big, and he would have to go to the story himself.
'How annoying..'
He thought bitterly. He was about to pull up the story when he heard a voice behind him.
"Hey, Demon. You seem rather lonely."
Nezha spun around at the voice, on gaurd, only to be met with annoyance.
Jujao.
He looked at the long white hair and white skin that adorned the star's appearance. Jujao was drained of all color. Wearing a Chinese style clothing, all white, ofcourse. Jujao was almost opposite of Nezhas black clothing choices.
Jujao didn't have a gender. Atleast as far as Nezha knew. He never asked them about it, not entirely interested in the topic, but Jujao said to address them with they/them, so he respected their wishes.
Although, they had a slight elegance to them. A slim body and eyes that had the slightest blue tint to them.
"I'm not. What do you want?"
Nezha asked indifferently, looking up at the star who was perched on a floating clock above him. Jujaos lips curled up at the sight of his annoyance.
'Great.. here they go..'
He thought exasperatly.
"Aw, you really did miss me! Sorry, N. I was too busy taking this from the catalogs. Can never seem to find anything in there!"
Jujao said dramatically, pulling out a file.
'Is that..? The file! What are they doing with that?'
He said internally, glaring at Jujao.
"You had it? You knew I was looking for it. Hand it over."
He replied, a hint of anger in his voice. Nezha wasn't usually the type to lose his cool, which he hasn't, yet, but Jujao seriously pissed him off.
"Hm. Arnicda, huh? Whatever, I don't care."
Jujao said casually, tossing down the file. Nezha caught it with one hand, his elegant fingers brushed against the sharp edge of paper. It was too often he got papercuts from these troublesome files.
'With this, I won't have to spend an eternity watching the story.'
He sighed with relief silently. He opened the file, to be met with information about the story, such as the plot.
[Arnichda]
[With the world fallen, Choi Kiyoung only had his friends to survive with him against these monsters that had emerged mysteriously. Choi Kiyoung always wanted a normal life after with what happened. Though the world would prove different..]
Nezha didn't want to read the rest of it. It seemed the same as every other apocalyptic story. He was about to move on when one part caught his eye...
[There were occurrences called disasters, ran by dokkaebi that occurred after the apocalypse started. Aswell as a strange system that gave characters attributes and skills. The disasters had every character participate, and every one had to be passed in order to go to the next. There was a total of 100.]
'Hm. So an evolving story. How basic.'
He looked around the file more, until he finally stumbled upon the anomaly listed. The sentence was red and glitchy, supporting the fact that it wasn't meant to be there.
[A st@r destroyed the pl0t of the 0rginal story. The author of Arnįcda now takes the plæe of Choi Kiy0ung.]
Nezha frowned at the haywire sentence. It seemed a star gifted something to the story to have to have the author transfer into their own work of writing, creating the anomaly. The stoey was never meant to be an isekai. But now, the author was the main protagonist..
'This is bad. This might be the worst I've dealt with yet. Who's the star who gifted the request to bring the author there?'
He thought, conflicted. His eyes went to where it would say the cause of the anomaly, or in this case, the constellation name, it only said,
[-Unkown-]
He sighed. This would be harder than he thought. Within a world of thousands of stories, it had to be an apocalyptic base. He hated stories like that. Interesting, but troublesome to navigate through when there was an anomaly.
Since he was not becoming a character, he didn't have a script. Not like he needed one. It was easier without having to follow the lines of a page. He would just have to hide himself as much as possible, until he had to interfere. His main goal was to get the author out of the story, and reset it, having the Main character, Choi Kiyoung, back to his rightful place.
His eyes drifted to another description.
[Author- Jung Hayeon]
'Jung Hayeon, hm? I suppose I'll be meeting him soon.'
Nezha thought silently. He turned to Jujao.
"Do you have the time wheel? I know you took it with you last visit."
He said, holding his hand out. Jujao groaned and dug the familiar wheel out of their robes and threw it down. He caught it, looking at it.
The wheel was more of a big clock than a wheel, though as if mixed together. He sighed.
Jujao watched him with amusement.
"Gonna do the job, huh?"
They asked, jumped down from the huge clock, nearly knocking it off balance. Nezha glanced at him.
'I seriously need to kick him out of here for good..'
"I don't have another choice. Do you mind looking after this place while I'm gone?"
He asked, tucking the wheel into his cloak pocket. Jujao shrugged, trying to look indifferwnt but was most definitely excited to have the privilege to watch over his domain.
Every star knew of The Time Instance, aswell as Nezha himself. He was a powerful being to them. To everyone. Just below the primordial themselves.
He didn't entirely trust Jujao to do the job correctly. He gave a suspicious look.
'This star better not mess anything up..'
He thought before speaking,
"Don't get into any trouble. Please."
He said. Jujao laughed, wiping a tear from the corner of their eye, they grinned.
"How ironic that a god of your power is saying please to me. Very well, your majesty, I'll keep good care of this white as hell place."
Jujao said arrogantly.
Perhaps that was true. Nezha himself always found it strange himself that he acted so human-like. Most stars and gods had only a shred of humanity and a whole lot of cruelty.
It was quite ironic that he was different from them. He could feel.
Perhaps that's what made the millions of years in this Time Instance..
So lonely.