Alex Veyra hated endings.
Not the kind in books—those were safe, predictable, and blessedly over. No, Alex hated the endings life kept shoving at them: the screeching halt of foster care case files ("Aging out! Congratulations!"), the death rattle of their laptop mid-NaNoWriMo sprint, and now this—the wet thunk of a cardboard box hitting the floor of their studio apartment. Inside: 237 unsold copies of The Hollows of Eden, their self-published debut novel. The cover glared up at them, a dragon silhouette they'd traced from stock art. Pathetic.
"At least dragons don't ghost you," Alex muttered, kicking the box under their thrifted IKEA desk. They collapsed into a creaky chair, glaring at the glowing Webnovel tab on their screen. The homepage taunted them with top-ranked stories: I Married the Demon Emperor's AI Clone! and Apocalypse Bingo: My Cheat Skill is [Plot Armor]. Garbage. All of it.
But garbage sold.
Alex's fingers hovered over the keyboard. Maybe they'd cave and write isekai smut too. Trapped in a Dating Sim? I'll Grind This Harem's Stats to Max Level! The title alone would trend. But their stomach churned. They'd rather eat their own ISBN barcode.
A notification popped up:
> User @Storyweaver_Prime commented on your webnovel:
> "You call this storytelling? Your 'deconstructive critique' reads like a toddler smashing Legos. You know nothing of true narrative."
Alex snorted. Trolls were part of the game, but this one had been dogging them for weeks, hijacking every post about tropes. They fired back:
> @AlexVeyra_Writes replied to @Storyweaver_Prime:
> "Says the anon who probably thinks 'enemies to lovers' counts as character development. Come at me when you've written something that isn't ChatGPT-generated slop."
The room flickered.
Not the screen—the room. The walls warped like wet paper, peeling into strings of glowing text. Alex recoiled as letters rained down, forming a figure in the center of the apartment: a towering silhouette woven from paragraphs, its face a shifting collage of punctuation marks.
"You. Are. Tedious." Its voice was a chorus of audiobook narrators—Morgan Freeman crossed with a GPS. "You critique stories yet cling to your precious humanity. Let's see you survive a tale of your own."
Alex's desk dissolved. Their apartment bled away like ink in water, replaced by a moonlit forest reeking of copper and gasoline. A title card burned in the air:
CHAPTER 1: FINAL GIRL
GENRE: HORROR // TROPE COMPLETION GOAL: SURVIVE THE NIGHT
"Wait—what?!" Alex stumbled back, pine needles crunching under their Converse. This wasn't happening. They'd been sleep-deprived before, but hallucinations didn't smell like blood.
A twig snapped.
In the shadows, something shifted—a hulking shape, glinting metal in its hand. The air thickened with the static buzz of a jump scare waiting to happen. Alex's writer-brain autopsied the scene: Slasher film. Isolated location. No weapons. FMC dies first unless…
They froze.
Wait. Final Girl rules. Don't run upstairs. Don't investigate the noise. And for god's sake, don't—
A scream tore through the trees.
Alex's legs moved on autopilot, sprinting toward the sound. Idiot! You're literally following the tutorial for getting gutted! But the scream came again—human, young, real. Bursting into a clearing, they found a girl in a bloodied prom dress, crawling backward from the killer.
He was… wrong. Not a man, but a thing of jagged pixels and flickering film grain, a glitching VHS tape given claws. The girl locked eyes with Alex.
"Help me!"
The Storyweaver's voice hissed in Alex's skull: "Save her, and you lose your only shield. Let her die, and you keep her speed boost. Choose."
Alex's pulse roared. This wasn't a story. It was a game—and he was the playable character.
The killer lunged.
Alex grabbed the girl's arm, yanking her sideways as the blade sank into dirt. "Run. Now."
But the girl didn't move. Her face went slack, her voice flatlining into a monotone: "Why do you hesitate, Author? She's not real. None of us are."
Alex's breath hitched. The killer's head swiveled toward them, its grin a jagged tear across the screen.
"Welcome," it rasped, "to your first draft."
***
The blade plunged.
Alex screamed—but not from pain. Their vision shattered into fragments of other stories, other themselves. A flicker of a memory not theirs: A sci-fi warzone. Smog-choked skies, a mech's claw crushing their left arm. A voice (the Storyweaver's?) hissing: "Replace it. Adapt. Or this world will discard you."
They'd blacked out. Woke with cold metal fused to bone, circuitry snaking up their shoulder.
Skill Acquired: Cybernetic Override (Tier 1)
The system had droned. But when the mech fell, the arm stayed.
Now, in this horror-drenched forest, the prosthetic glitched—flesh one moment, steel the next.
"Focus," Alex snarled, staggering backward. The killer's grin widened.
Survive. Adapt. The arm's mantra. Even if it costs you.