Declaration of War

"Someone's reading it."

The words slipped out before I could stop them. The number that had been sitting at zero just a moment ago had clearly changed to one. Someone had opened my work. Right now, they were reading my sentences.

The first line. The scaffold. The Emperor's betrayal. How far had they gotten?

I traced over my own writing, chasing a reader's gaze I couldn't even see.

"Oppa."

I didn't answer. No comments yet. No likes. No tips, either. They didn't just open it and leave... right? What if it wasn't what the title had promised? Was the execution scene too long? Should I have made the opening a little more provocative?

"Oppa, look at me."

Harin called again.

"Hold on. Someone just came in."

"You're more important than that someone. Breathe first."

Only then did the breath I'd been holding burst out of me.

"...I am breathing."

"Liar. You were about to die before your reader even finished the first page."

Harin stared at me. A long, unblinking, thoroughly practiced stare. It was a familiar look — the kind that made you want to apologize even when you hadn't done anything wrong.

"Shoulders. Down."

I dropped my shoulders.

"Unclench your jaw, too. Yeah. Slowly."

Only then did I realize I'd been grinding my teeth. When I moved my jaw, a dull ache bloomed through it.

"Now take a sip of water."

"I don't have any."

"Then swallow your spit. You can't collapse on me."

It was an absurd prescription. But it made me laugh.

"Is my imaginary friend running a welfare program now?"

"Want me to fill your stomach with imagination, too?"

"Can you?"

"Yep. Smell only, though. For the record, I can't actually feed you."

"You're a demon."

"A good demon, watching to make sure Oppa doesn't starve."

The tension drained from my shoulders. My ragged breathing gradually slowed. Once she was sure I'd calmed down, Harin crouched beside me.

Her knees passed through my arm. They didn't touch. And yet I still felt like someone was there.

Harin rested her chin on her knees and looked up at me.

"Readers can leave halfway through, you know."

"...And that's supposed to be comforting?"

"It means some people stay until the end."

Harin pointed a finger at her own chest.

"I won't leave even if you crash and burn."

The way she said it was light enough to be cute. Which made it that much harder to brush off.

"Okay. You can hit it now."

"Hit what."

"Refresh. If you're anxious, check. I'll look with you."

"Genius writers don't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠obsess over reader reactions."

"After hitting it twelve times already?"

"That was a systems check. You never know — tteokbokki could spill and crash the server or something."

"Sure. I'll watch the thirteenth one with you, too."

Harin? You did hear what I said, right?

Instead of answering, I hit refresh.

Still one person. No comments. But strangely, I wasn't as anxious as before.

All I had to do was wait for my first reader to finish. After all, I had someone waiting with me, too.

KRAAAAAAAAH—!!

The sky tore open. Black shapes poured through the rift, each one a disaster-class magic beast capable of leveling a human kingdom in a single night. The roars of hundreds shook the dead forest. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Withered trees were trampled underfoot. One by one, enormous shadows fell across the blackened roots of the World Tree.

And beneath them sat a single girl.

Golden hair cascading to her waist. Skin that would gleam translucent in sunlight. Long, tapering ears, and green eyes drained of all life. The last high elf left in the world.

Even under the crushing aura of disaster-class magic beasts, El was far more absorbed in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the little window floating before her eyes.

Then one of the beasts set its foot upon the wreckage of the World Tree.

CRACK.

A charred branch snapped. One ear, tilted toward the screen, twitched.

"How noisy, for mere vermin. Do not interrupt Our reading."

El lifted her chin belatedly, the way a queen might in some old book she'd read. The dignity arrived a beat too late. She had inherited a great deal of knowledge at birth, but she had never actually heard a queen speak. With no one left to correct her, El was quite certain her imitation was rather perfect.

Her hand flicked, almost lazily. A wind stirred. That was all.

With that single small gesture, every magic beast blanketing the forest vanished. No blood remained. Even their screams never made it to the end. The sky, which had torn open like a maw of black teeth, closed itself once more.

As if nothing had happened, El dropped her gaze back to the gallery window.

Without even this kind of commotion, El had nothing to do. Once she'd finished fending off the regular waves, all that remained was the endless work of filling endless, vacant hours.

At first, she endured it with books. When she finished one, she found the next. When even those ran out, she went searching for new ones herself. At some point, there were no more books left to find.

In that sense, the posts that appeared on the Loners' Gallery were her only comfort. A story of someone who fought a rock. The tale of a knight who removed his armor for the first time in four hundred years. The voyage log of a lost child of the cosmos who, once again, had no idea where she was going.

El closed the last post and scrolled down the list with a finger. That was when a title she'd never seen before appeared at the top of the novel category.

The title was strange. Regression. A word she'd never heard before. What did it mean? Going back, perhaps — though it didn't say where one was going back to. Nor what the avenger in the title was reclaiming. It seemed like a title with something essential left unexplained.

El was about to scroll past, then stopped. An unfamiliar word and a small question. That, in truth, was more than enough to catch her finger.

El tapped the title.

"If it's rubbish, I'll close it immediately. So... steel yourself."

She issued a warning without knowing who it was even for. Having tacked on something queenly after the fact, El nodded, rather pleased with herself. Then she pulled the work window two finger-widths closer. Her long ears tilted, just slightly, toward the screen.

She had read countless works. Pieces called masterpieces. Works that had risen to the ranks of classics. Among them were even great epics said to have defined an era. But no book had ever left her with anything more than admiration. The love, the loss, the lives painted in those pages had all been other people's affairs — things she had never experienced herself.

This work would likely be no different. Still, she had nothing else to do for a while. And besides, if she didn't like it, she could simply leave.

El dropped her gaze to the first sentence, unconcerned.

The novel's opening was fresh. No — from El's perspective, it was, in truth, an unfamiliar beginning. It had a different grain from the literature she knew.

The stories she had read mostly began with a hero's birth, or a prophecy of fate. They explained first who the character was, and what path they would walk. But this writing skipped every step and dropped the reader into the middle of the ending.

The reason Leon was kneeling had not yet been given. And yet that single first sentence made her want to know what came next. Why was this man on his knees here?

Her ears fluttered once, of their own accord. El read on.

Leon was a founding hero who had made a fallen prince into an emperor. On the battlefield, he had led armies. In the court, he had eliminated enemies. One by one, he had placed into the prince's hands everything the prince could never have obtained himself. A crown. An empire. A continent. And peace.

El propped her chin on her hand, affecting nonchalance.

"Hmph. How trite."

Thinking it a rather queenly assessment, El even gave a small nod. Her ears, however, were fluttering even more eagerly than before. The hand supporting her chin had, at some point, begun pushing up her cheek. One side of her otherwise expressionless face was slightly squished. The ear tilted toward the screen showed no intention of returning.

A high elf's brilliant mind began mapping out the next development. A capable retainer who had raised an incompetent king. The king, fearing his retainer's power, steals the credit and then eliminates him. She could predict what followed, too. Leon would cry out at the injustice. The Emperor would sneer. He would hurl a curse with his dying breath, and the story would end.

She planned to confirm that much and then close the work. That was certainly what she thought.

Her finger kept moving to the next sentence.

The Emperor stripped Leon of his military command. His title. His lands. The comrades who had fought beside him. And last of all, even his name. Every victory of the empire was recorded as the Emperor's. All that remained to Leon was the charge of traitor.

El's finger stopped. Sentences she had been skimming without a thought came back to her with an entirely different weight.

When she recalled the sentence about his military command being taken, the strength left her hands.

At the sentence about his comrades dying, El's breath caught for a moment.

When even his name was erased from history, it felt as though something in her chest had gone hollow.

The more it happened, the faster El's finger moved to the next sentence. There was no special language. No exaggerated screams. No long, winding flashbacks. It simply listed, one by one, everything that had been taken from him. And yet she could not bear not to read what came next.

The Emperor climbed onto the scaffold. Wearing the crown Leon had placed in his hands. Smiling with the same face he had worn when he took everything.

El's dangling legs, hooked over a root of the World Tree, went still.

What would he say?

Leon lifted his head. He did not wail. He did not beg for his life. He smiled, bloodied mouth curling at the corner.

The Emperor's gaze, meeting Leon's eyes, wavered. El's breath grew thin along with it. Every nerve in her body turned toward Leon.

Both ears stood straight up, making no attempt to hide it.

The Emperor knew those eyes. In wars everyone had been certain they would lose. In every moment an impossible enemy stood before them. Leon had looked at his foes with those eyes. And he had never once been defeated.

"Execute him already!"

The Emperor's command came out rushed. The axe rose. El's gaze locked onto the sentence, as if she would not miss a single character.

She had only been concentrating lightly, at first. But at some point the sound of the wind vanished from El's ears. The smell of the forest, too. She forgot where she was sitting. All that remained before her eyes was the scaffold.

The axe-blade caught the sunlight and flashed. Leon did not take his eyes off the Emperor, even at the last.

The sentences blurred before her eyes.

Cold stone touched the soles of El's feet. A coppery ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠smell stabbed her nose. Blood going stiff. Sweat and rotting flesh soaked into old wood. The hot breath of a crowd gathered to watch a man die.

"Kill Leon, traitor to the empire!"

"He's a traitor who tried to assassinate His Majesty the Emperor!"

"Offer that filthy neck to His Majesty!"

The roar bursting from thousands of throats hammered against El's skin. No — the air itself was shaking. The vibration rode the air and rattled through her entire body.

"Eh?"

The crowd's bloodlust, hungry for a death. The Emperor's terror, stoking that frenzy even as he failed to hide it. And the killing intent of one man who would not break, even with death in front of him. Even the chill shadow of the axe-blade hanging over the nape of a neck was vivid.

The landscape of the novel became real, and swallowed El whole. She was standing below the scaffold.

"What is this...?"

She noticed something strange. No one could see her. Not the cheering crowd. Not the terrified Emperor. Not Leon, either. El's voice did not even mix into the roar. She existed here, and did not exist.

Her ears shot straight up in alarm. But the confusion did not last. There was no time to hold onto it.

El's gaze was seized by the man on the scaffold. The Leon she had only imagined was right in front of her. Blood going stiff ran down his jaw. His knees had been forced to the stone. Both hands were bound. And over the nape of his neck hung an axe-blade about to fall.

And still, Leon did not bow his head. From beginning to end, his gaze was fixed on the Emperor.

That man knew he was going to die. He knew, and he was not afraid. Having lost everything, he was already looking at the next fight — the one beyond death.

The crowd's roar receded. The Emperor's twisted face, too. The flashing axe-blade, too. In El's eyes, only Leon's eyes remained.

Without meaning to, El held her breath. What would he say? Would he curse the Emperor who was killing him? Would he demand back everything that had been stolen? Or would he say nothing at all, to the very end?

She didn't know. For the first time, El could not predict the words that would come next.

The blood-soaked corner of his mouth rose, slowly. His lips parted. And El's heart gave a great, violent beat.

Thud.