Chapter 14 We Meet the Original Protagonist
Liora's eyes were still glowing.
Not the cool glowy that said "chosen one," but the horrifying ancient memory download from a story no one remembers kind.
She stood frozen in the middle of the grove, her voice overlapping itself like ten different versions of her were trying to speak at once.
"She's not glitching," Ashrin said tightly. "She's syncing."
"Syncing with what?"
"An echo. A scrap. A... draft."
That's when the forest bent.
Like a page curling inward.
And something walked out of the fold in the world.
She was beautiful.
But in that overwritten, emotionally-complicated, YA-shelf-cover kind of way.
Flawless hair. Eyes like cosmic regret. A tragic aura that smelled faintly of lilacs and betrayal.
"Hello," she said.
Liora immediately hid behind me.
Ashrin stepped forward, radiating don't-you-dare energy.
The girl smiled.
"I'm Aelith," she said. "The Original Protagonist."
And I said the most reasonable thing I could:
"Oh HELL no."
Let's break this down.
Apparently, before the game was ever launched, before storylines were locked or characters finalized, there was another story.
Aelith's story.
She was the Heroine before the Heroine. The Villainess before me. The everything before anything else.
She was too complicated. Too intense. The devs scrapped her for being "tonally unstable and emotionally unmarketable."
She wasn't deleted.
Just... shelved.
And now?
"I want my arc back," she said simply.
I crossed my arms. "That's not how stories work."
Ashrin, beside me, added: "You were never published."
"And yet here I am." Her gaze flicked to him. "Oh. You're still clinging to your rewrite, I see."
Ashrin glitched.
A little.
"I earned this," he said. "I became something real."
"You're still code," she said sweetly. "You just think you're people now."
"Oh, no," I muttered. "She's smug-coded."
Aelith turned her cosmic stare on me. "And you. The girl who woke up in a story she didn't write. How does it feel knowing you're just... a placeholder for me?"
That hit harder than I wanted.
But I didn't flinch.
"I'm not your placeholder," I said. "I'm my own story."
Ashrin's hand slipped into mine.
"I'm not giving her up," he told Aelith.
She frowned. And for a moment—just a moment—something cracked in her expression.
Then she smiled again.
And said, "Then let's play a game."
I turned to Ashrin.
"...She's trying to out-arc me."
He nodded. "You gonna let her?"
"Not a chance."
He squeezed my hand.
"Then wreck her."
Liora peeked out from behind a tree. "If anyone needs me, I'll be hyperventilating into a subplot."