When I woke up, I didn't see the medieval stone ceiling or the velvet canopy that screamed "aristocrat in exile."
Instead, it was a modest white ceiling, fan blades above ticking gently with a faint hum, and walls so painfully familiar that I forgot to breathe for a second.
This wasn't the duchy.
This was my room.
Not Hugo's room.
Mine.
William's.
The teenage me's.
I sat up in a daze, my body oddly light, my hands smaller and leaner.
These weren't Hugo's hands.
I looked around. The tatami floor. The paper sliding doors. The wooden rafters with hanging decorations...little bells and woven ornaments. I knew this place.
I knew it too well.
Stumbling to the mirror across the room, I peered into it and saw the face of a seventeen, maybe eighteen, year-old version of me. The real me. The original me.
"...What the hell," I muttered.
I ran a hand through my hair, checked my teeth like I'd prove to myself I was still real.
And then it clicked.
This wasn't some random place. This was—
"Grandma's house," I whispered.
Mother's side. Rural retreat. Traditional village house with a roof that creaked during storms and a breeze that always smelled like summer.
I used to spend my vacations here, especially after she passed, just sitting out by the fields doing nothing. And it felt like I was on vacation now. No tension in my back. No death flags looming over my breakfast tea.
My voice came out quieter this time. "All that… wasn't a dream, right?"
The silence of the house said nothing.
I shook my head. "No. No, that can't be a dream."
It was too vivid. Too layered. You don't get assassins and tea-brewing maids and the looming pressure of noble etiquette from just REM sleep.
Pushing the sliding door aside, I stepped out.
The sight nearly made me tear up.
Fields.
Green fields stretching into forever. A lazy breeze swept past me, and the hanging decorations on the porch clinked softly...one bell giving a single note, like a memory whispering, "Hey. Remember this?"
I stepped out onto the wooden engawa, barefoot. The wood was warm from the sun, and for a moment, everything felt... whole.
It wasn't just nostalgia. It felt real.
And then—
Ding.
That familiar sound.
Inspect.
I blinked.
And before I could even register anything else, I heard a ruckus above.
Up on the beam, hanging from the roof's edge, was a little grass-straw nest.
A pair of myna birds were bickering violently.
The female myna flapped in distress, but the male shoved something...from the nest. Oh, shit!
A baby bird.
It tumbled, wings too young to flap, just a feathery pebble caught in gravity's grip.
I sprinted and caught it before it hit the ground.
"Whoa, easy, buddy. Gotcha."
It fluttered in my palm, tiny claws skittering. It saw me as a predator, obviously. But with wings half-formed, it couldn't go anywhere.
I looked up. The female myna was perched on a nearby tree branch, chirping frantically but refusing to come closer. The male? Gone. Typical.
"All right," I said to no one, "guess I'm climbing this."
I grabbed the nearest water pipe, found footing on a wooden beam, and pulled myself up—not gracefully, not heroically. Just determinedly clumsy.
I reached the nest, dropped the baby back in, and muttered, "Tell your dad he's a jerk."
As I tried to climb back down, the pipe made a crrrrk sound.
"Oh no."
The pipe gave.
Gravity remembered me.
I crash-landed like a sack of regrets.
"Owwwwww." I rolled onto my side, rubbing the back of my head. "Yep. Definitely not a dream. My dreams don't come with spinal damage."
I looked back up at the nest with a smug grin. "Still nailed it, though."
Dusting myself off, I wandered back into the house, only now noticing something off. There were shoes lined up at the entrance. More than just mine. Several pairs.
People should be here.
But every room I checked, kitchen, hallway, living room, was empty.
No voices.
No Grandma's old radio playing retro enka in the background.
Just silence.
Shrugging, I stepped out of the house and into the village.
It was exactly as I remembered. The crooked signposts, barking dogs, the sleepy torii gate near the rice paddies. Birds chirping, frogs leaping. The Inspect window popped up for each.
Every living thing, except one.
No humans.
Thirty minutes passed.
No one. Not even the grumpy old man who used to shoo me away from his vegetable patch.
Everything was real.
Except that.
I sat on a stone step and muttered to myself, "If dreams can have animals… then why not people?"
A voice answered from behind me.
"Because I didn't bother creating them."
I froze.
No footsteps.
No Inspect warning.
Nothing.
Just a voice.
I spun around, expecting to see trees, fields, houses.
But everything was gone.
Just endless white.
I stood alone in the void.
"Who's there?" I called.
The void shifted.
The white turned to blue.
Footsteps echoed, but no figure appeared.
And then… a shadow.
No body, no face...just a shadow cast without an object.
It had four heads. And multiple hands.
It was seated.
Writing.
Always writing.
Then, from the head on the right came a voice, calm and too casual for the situation:
"How's it going in the new world?"
I was frozen stiff, but I knew. Conversation was the only way forward.
"Barely hanging in there," I replied. "Though I do have… a few ambitions."
The third hand stroked the beard of the fourth head.
The pen didn't stop.
The main head didn't lift.
The voice came again, this time amused. "Not even a year, and already ambitions, huh?"
I smirked faintly. "They're old ambitions. Just repackaged for a new reality."
"Mm. Half the reason you're there," the voice replied.
Silence followed.
The scratching of the pen echoed. Like it had always been there.
I looked closer. "You seem to know me well. Are you… God?"
Three of the heads laughed.
Not mockingly...more like someone hearing a child ask if the moon has feelings.
The fourth head, still laughing, answered calmly, "Well, if you consider yourself a god, then yes. I am one too."
I blinked. "I don't consider myself a god."
"Then I'm not one either."
Said with the kind of simplicity that makes your brain fold in on itself.
Another silence.
I tried again. "Where am I?"
The fourth head glanced around. "Dunno. Didn't name it. You can, if you want."
I sighed. "And… what are you writing?"
"Everything."
I narrowed my eyes. "Everything?"
The fourth head nodded. "Everything. The past. The present. The future."
I frowned. "Past? Are you… recording it?"
"No, no," he replied. "I'm writing it. If I don't write it, it doesn't exist. Not the past. Not the future. Not the now."
I scratched my head. "That doesn't make sense. The past already happened. The future's gonna happen anyway. You're just sitting here scribbling."
The third head gestured. "Oh? Then who's that?"
I turned.
A scene played beside me, clear as day.
A ten-year-old kid sneaking away from his nanny, buying ice cream from a vendor in the park.
"…That's me," I whispered. "That's me when I was ten."
"That event is happening right now," he said.
"I'm writing it, exactly as it happened."
His quill scratched louder.
"Not just for you, but for everything."
I just stood there, still trying to wrap my head around the fact that the ice cream–sneaking kid in the distance was me and also, somehow, right now.
Past. Present. Future. All of it apparently happening on the same timetable for this four-headed weirdo.
And then a thought hit me. One so random and absurd I blurted it out before my filter could kick in.
"Wait… are you the Four-Headed God? The God of Light, Combat, and Nature... they call you Father?"
The heads paused. Then the fourth one, the main talker, gave an exasperated sigh, like a teacher realizing their student had finally, finally opened the textbook.
"Ah… if you're talking about Calleous, Narsimha, and Sylviora… then yes. They call me 'Father.'"
He waved a hand like it was no big deal.
"After all, I'm the one who created them. Back when you thought of a world such as that."
I blinked. "Wait...when I thought of a world like that? I didn't come up with any of that until, what, eight months ago?"
"And the supposed history of creation in that world goes back, what, a few billion years?" I added, arms crossed. "Math's not mathing."
The fourth head raised an eyebrow. "Didn't I just tell you that for me, the past, present, and future exist at once? Even this conversation… has already happened. Infinity times. This is the future for some, past for others, and present for people like you. Welcome to the cosmic spaghetti."
I stood there, mouth partway open. "Wait… then that world...the one I'm reincarnated into… is that the world I created?"
The fourth head tilted. "That depends on your definition of 'created.' If by creation you mean bringing something into existence... then I'm afraid the credit goes to me."
I pointed a finger, unsure if it was accusatory or just deeply confused. "So you created the world that I thought of?"
"Precisely," the fourth head nodded. "Because the world is formed through your thoughts, I had to bring it into existence."
I rubbed my temples. "No, no… that doesn't add up. There are tons of things that don't match up with what I had in mind about my fantasy! Deviations everywhere!"
SLAM.
One of the arms smashed the invisible table so hard I jumped.
"Exactly!" he shouted. "That's why I brought you here! Do you know how many damn adjustments I had to make? Inconsistent plot threads! Sloppy mechanics! Contradictory lore! Tsk tsk…"
He clicked his tongue, shaking his head like a frustrated editor.
I blinked. … Am I getting scolded right now?
"Finally, he gets it," muttered the third head.
Then I took a breath. "So… why am I reincarnated? I mean, I don't think just daydreaming about a fantasy land gets people free second lives. If that were the case, half the internet would've been reborn by now."
"Yeah, about that…" the fourth head scratched his chin. "There's a little… problem… in that world. One that needs your intervention."
"Of course there is," I muttered. "Such a great way to ask for help."
"You're not doing it for free," he said coolly. "Remember what I said? Half the reason you're there is your ambition. And as the one who knows how everything ends, let me remind you: you can't fulfill your goals when you're dead."
"Which I was."
He raised a hand. "So I gave you another shot. Forced? Maybe. But still, what you wanted."
The third head turned to the fourth. "He's kind of ungrateful, huh?"
"Right?" the fourth nodded. "I literally gave him a second life."
"Okay, okay, I get it," I sighed. "What am I supposed to do then?"
"Nothing," the fourth head said, shrugging. "Just do what you think is right. Like you always did."
"Except don't die this time," added the second head.
I frowned. "Hey...heart attacks aren't exactly on a timer I control."
"No, I meant like last night."
I paused. "Last night?"
"You and your fiancée died."
I blinked. "What?"
"You heard me. You and Sylvia. Dead. Kaput. Terminated."
I stared at him, throat dry. "We're… dead?"
"I just said that."
I took a step back. "Wait, wait, wait...how? What happened? Who killed us?"
The fourth head leaned forward, annoyed. "Should I spoon-feed you? Figure it out yourself. It's your life...though second one."
The world around us trembled...like digital static tearing at the seams.
"....what's happening now?" I asked.
The blue cracked, threads of white bleeding through.
"Where am I going?!"
The fourth head finally smirked. "Where do you think, William?"
I opened my mouth to respond, but the voice I hadn't heard until now, the voice that had stayed silent, always writing... finally spoke.
It came from the main head.
The one that never looked up. The one always, always writing.
"You are the final possibility, William," it said.
And the voice…
It was familiar.
Too familiar.
It felt like it had always been with me, behind every instinct, every moment of clarity, every breath in a burning battlefield.
"Don't let the world down."
Then the blue shattered entirely.
And I fell.
As I slipped, the world spun, a blur of wind, leaves, and that goddamned broken water pipe. I hit the ground with a loud thud and an even louder groan.
"Oww...son of a…"
I sat up, rubbing the back of my head like that would fix the humiliation, and glanced up at the nest with a triumphant grin, proud of my half-assed heroics.
That's when I saw it.
The chick. The same one I'd just saved.
Lying on the ground again.
But this time… it wasn't struggling.
It wasn't moving at all.
And hovering over it...was the mother.
Pecking.
Eating.
"What the hell…" I whispered, frozen.
It wasn't fear. It wasn't confusion. It was something worse.
Recognition.
The image burned into my eyes, and then—his voice echoed in my mind.
"I write the past. The present. The future. Anything I don't write—doesn't exist."
I felt something cold crawl up my spin.
And then...clink.
The soft sound of a spoon against glass. Distant. Familiar.
My vision wavered.
I blinked.
Suddenly, I was seated.
Upright.
A dining table stretched in front of me.
Sylvia sat to my left, her posture pristine as ever.
And across from me is Orion.
The same smiling orion, right where he was that night.
The air tasted of wine and tension.
No.
No no no.
I looked around. The candles. The way Sylvia's hair caught the amber glow. The silverware.
It was all the same. Every damn detail from the night after the meeting with Eldrin.
The night before I died.