Chapter 16 – "The First Rewrite"

Riven jolts awake, heart pounding. He's… home.

His apartment is exactly as he remembers it. The city skyline beyond the window, the familiar hum of distant traffic—it feels real. More real than anything he's experienced since the world began unraveling. The weight in his chest, the exhaustion in his limbs, all of it is gone. For the first time in what feels like years, there is silence—no whispers, no distortions, no horror.

But something is wrong.

The clock on his bedside table ticks backward every few seconds. His phone screen flickers, glitching between a normal display and a static-filled void. His reflection in the mirror looks… off, the movements just a fraction out of sync. And then there's the note on his bedside table, written in his own handwriting: "Don't believe it. Find Vera."

He rushes out into the city, heart hammering. Something tells him he needs to see her—to prove this world is real. But the moment he steps into the streets, dread curls in his stomach.

Nobody recognizes him.

People pass him by without a second glance. The billboards, the newsstands, the buildings—they all feel just a little too clean, a little too perfect, like a world freshly constructed. His name is missing from old newspaper articles. The Hall of Heroes doesn't exist—it's a vacant lot. Even his own reflection in a storefront window looks like it's studying him, rather than simply reflecting him.

When he finally finds Vera, his chest tightens. She's alive, unharmed. But when he calls her name, she looks at him like a stranger.

"Do I… know you?"

The words cut deeper than any wound. Riven tries to explain, tries to remind her of everything they've been through, but she doesn't remember. Worse—she has a new life, one that has nothing to do with being a hero. She has friends, a career, a life untouched by loss, untouched by war. It's too perfect. Too clean.

He grabs her wrist in desperation, searching her face for something—anything—that proves she's still in there.

"Vera, it's me. You have to remember."

She pulls away, frowning. "I think you have the wrong person."

The world around them shifts. The sky flickers like a glitching screen. The ground beneath his feet shudders.

Then, the voice comes. Soft, smooth, insidious.

"What if this is better?"

Riven's breath catches. He knows that voice. The Hollow Monarch.

"What if you were never meant to exist?"

His blood turns to ice. He looks down at his own hands and sees something new—a mark burning into his skin. Not a wound, not a scar, but something deeper, something woven into him.

A mark of the Rewrite.

His head throbs. Memories twist and blur. The more he fights against this reality, the more it pushes back. His past feels slippery, uncertain. Did he really fight against the Monarch? Did he really survive the Hollow City? Or was that just—

No. No, he won't let this happen.

He forces himself to move, to search. He has to find something that proves this world isn't real. A crack in the illusion. A door out.

He finds it in a dark alley, a place where the air hums with static. The buildings around it flicker, warping at the edges, as if struggling to hold their shape. There's something waiting there, something just beyond the veil—

But before he can reach it, the world resets again.

Darkness.

Then light.

Riven wakes up, gasping. He's in another Rewrite. Another reality.

But this time, he isn't just erased.

This time, someone else is living his life.