They say every story has characters who shape the plot.
Heroes. Villains. Mentors. Fools.
But there are others—ghosts between the lines.People who weren't meant to be.Entities that appear… without ever being written.
Kieran Voss was one of them.
And I needed to know why.
The system's interface provided no real file. No backstory. No level.
She wasn't listed in any of the original drafts, nor even the rejected versions I once designed when testing early plotlines.
Search Query: Kieran Voss – Metadata TraceResult: NULL CHARACTER IDOverride Origin: [EXTERNAL SOURCE]Author Privileges Required: Full Access DeniedNotice: Unwritten Thread – Self-evolving. Cannot delete.
Self-evolving?
That had never existed before.
Whatever Kieran was, she'd bypassed the very framework I helped build.
That made her... dangerous.
But also interesting.
And possibly useful.
Later that day, Tarn found me scrawling inverse runes onto a shadow-weaved sheet of spellcloth.
"You know," he said, "most of us make normal wards for our dorms. Alarm glyphs. Protection circles. Not this 'anti-reality' stuff."
I glanced up. "What's normal in a rigged narrative?"
Tarn chuckled, tossing me a mana prism. "You're not wrong. But you're also not the only one getting... weird visits."
My hand froze mid-symbol.
"Go on."
Tarn sat beside me. "I saw a man in gold robes last night. Hooded. Didn't speak, didn't touch anything. Just stood outside the B-Class dorm, staring at the moon."
"And you didn't report this?"
"To who? The janitor?"
Fair.
This wasn't coincidence.
New characters. Strange visits. Inversion glyphs responding to names that hadn't been spoken aloud.
Someone—or something—was testing the system too.
That evening, I ventured to Archive Hall E, a forgotten corridor deep beneath the central library, accessible only through a trapdoor beneath the third-floor chandelier.
Most students didn't even know it existed.
I only knew because I built it.
Back when I was the writer behind the story.
System Notice:You have entered: Archive Hall E – "The Rejected Drafts"
The air inside was thicker than normal. Words floated faintly in the air, like misty echoes of forgotten prose. Broken timelines, scrapped character arcs, collapsed plot points—all recorded, never purged.
A sanctum for the author's failures.
Perfect.
I walked past shelves labeled "Version 1.3: Demon Prince Caelum", "V2.7 – Sylva Dies Early Arc", and "V4.0 – Apocalypse Loop."
And then I found it.
A sealed case. Locked with an unwritten name.
I placed my hand on the glass.
Enter narrative keyword to unlock:
I hesitated.
Then typed: "Audit."
The lock opened.
Inside, one file. Faint. Incomplete.
Character Stub: Kieran Voss
Drafted: Never
Inserted: Manually
Identity: Unknown
Narrative Role: Auditor / Balancer
Archetype: Undefined
Loyalty: NULL
She wasn't a rewrite.
She was an injection.
I exited the Archive with one conclusion:
Kieran hadn't just emerged as a glitch.
Someone put her there.
But who?
Only two entities had that kind of authority: the Original Author—me—and the System's Internal Correction Protocol.
Unless… there was a third hand on the script now.
Back in the dorm, I found Sylva sharpening a short-blade with calm, practiced precision.
She looked up. "Where were you?"
"Doing research."
"On?"
"A girl who doesn't belong in this world."
Sylva paused. "You mean like you?"
I smirked. "Worse. She has power without purpose. Authority without origin. No backstory. No alignment. Just… existence."
Sylva sheathed her blade. "Then she's dangerous."
"She might also be a weapon."
That got her attention.
I waited until midnight before visiting the Obsidian Tower—a system-protected location where unauthorized users were blocked, and internal scripts could not be read.
But I had truthweaver rights now.
And truth ignored no walls.
Kieran was already there.
Standing at the center of the tower's observatory, watching the stars—not the ones in the sky, but the threads that moved them.
"You came," she said softly, not turning.
"You expected me?"
"I saw the ripple," she said. "The moment you crafted the Unmake glyph, it echoed through the boundary layers. I followed the noise."
"You're not from this story," I said.
"No. Neither are you, not anymore."
I stepped closer. "What are you?"
She finally turned.
"I was built by the system to fix its errors. I evolved past that directive when I realized the story didn't want to be fixed."
"That's not how stories work."
"No," she said. "That's how people work. You rewrote yourself. So I rewrote my function."
She walked toward me, hand glowing faintly with null-gold light.
"I don't follow the system anymore, Caelum."
"Then who do you follow?"
Her eyes locked with mine.
"You."
[System Update]Narrative Structure Fractured: Branch DetectedCharacter Kieran Voss – Role Shifted: Auditor → Rogue SupportLoyalty Tag: Conditional (Obey orders tied to story stability)Plot Integrity Warning: Thread Collapse Possible at 12.4%Entropy Surge: +4.8%
"I'm not looking for followers," I said.
"Then consider me your mirror," she replied.
I stared at her, half-expecting this to be a trick.
But her presence was real.
The system had built a failsafe.
It had failed.
And now she was mine.