Chapter 1: The Girl At The End Of Every Death
The world ended quietly.
No warning, no sirens, no heroic speeches. At exactly 2:17 PM, the sky cracked open, and Ren Ashvale still remembered the sound. It wasn’t thunder. It sounded like reality itself splitting apart.
Students screamed as black fractures spread across the heavens above the school courtyard. The clouds twisted unnaturally, turning crimson as thousands of glowing cracks appeared in the air like shattered glass. Then the gates opened.
Monsters poured out.
The first creature Ren saw looked human, if humans were stitched together from corpses. Its limbs bent backward, its skin hanging like wet paper while dozens of glowing eyes blinked beneath its jaw. Someone beside him vomited instantly. Another student fainted beside them.
Then the massacre began.
"RUN!!"
The scream echoed across the courtyard. Chaos exploded everywhere. Students shoved each other down stairways. Teachers shouted useless orders. Blood splattered across classroom windows as the creatures descended upon the campus like starving wolves.
Ren stood frozen.
His mind couldn’t process what he was seeing. One second ago he had been worrying about exams. Now a monster was tearing apart the vice principal in front of the entire school.
Crunch.
Bones snapped. The vice principal’s upper body disappeared into the creature’s mouth.
Ren stumbled backward in horror.
"What the hell..."
A deafening explosion shook the ground. The school gate collapsed. More creatures flooded inside, tall ones, crawling ones, winged horrors with twisted faces that had no business existing in the real world. The sky continued bleeding red.
And then blue screens appeared before everyone’s eyes.
[Ding!]
[The System has descended.]
[Humanity has entered the First Catastrophe.]
[Awakening process beginning...]
Screams intensified all around him.
"What is this?!"
"A game system?!"
"My eyes!"
Ren’s screen flickered violently before settling on his information.
[Name: Ren Ashvale]
[Class: None]
[Talent: None]
[Potential Rank: F]
His face darkened immediately.
"F..."
Others around him suddenly erupted with power. Flames burst from someone’s hands. A girl summoned ice spikes from thin air. Another student lifted an entire desk with telekinesis like it weighed nothing. Cheers mixed with terrified laughter all across the courtyard.
They had powers.
Ren didn’t.
His screen glitched again, stuttering like a broken signal.
[Unique Skill Detected.]
[ERROR...]
[Skill Awakening Delayed.]
Before Ren could even react, the wall beside him exploded inward. A massive creature crashed through the hallway. It resembled a wolf except its entire body was covered in human arms that clawed endlessly at the air. Students died instantly around it.
Blood painted the corridor red.
Ren turned and ran.
Pure instinct took over everything. His lungs burned as he sprinted through collapsing hallways while screams echoed endlessly behind him. Emergency alarms kept ringing, mixing horribly with the sounds of monsters feeding. He nearly slipped on blood while descending the stairs.
Outside, the city looked far worse.
Buildings burned in the distance. Military helicopters filled the sky. Giant portals floated between skyscrapers like open wounds in the air. The apocalypse hadn’t just arrived, it had already settled in comfortably.
"Move!! MOVE!!"
A crowd shoved past him toward the main road. Ren followed desperately. A woman suddenly burst into flames beside him. Another person mutated into something inhuman mid-stride. The System screens kept appearing nonstop, hovering in everyone’s vision whether they wanted them or not.
[Humanity survival rate: 31%]
[New Dungeon Gates detected.]
[World synchronization in progress.]
None of it made sense.
Ren kept running until his legs nearly gave out completely. Then he heard it. Footsteps. Slow, calm, deliberate. Completely different from the chaos surrounding everything else.
Ren turned.
And saw her.
A woman dressed entirely in black stood in the middle of the destroyed street. Long dark hair. Pale skin. Crimson eyes. She looked completely untouched by the apocalypse happening around her. No fear. No panic. Just silence.
Around her feet lay corpses.
Monsters, humans, soldiers. All dead.
Ren’s breath caught in his throat.
She was beautiful. Terrifyingly beautiful.
The strange woman slowly lifted her gaze toward him. The moment their eyes met, her expression froze. The world itself seemed to stop moving. The screams disappeared. The explosions faded. Only those crimson eyes remained in focus.
Shock appeared across her face.
Then something far worse than shock.
Recognition.
"...Ren?"
His heart skipped a beat.
How did she know his name?
Before he could speak, a monster crashed onto the street between them. The creature towered nearly ten feet tall with jagged bone armor covering every inch of its body. Ren stumbled backward in terror.
The woman tilted her head slightly.
Annoyance flashed through her crimson eyes.
The monster roared.
Then exploded.
No attack. No movement. Its entire body simply burst apart into pieces of flesh and blood without her lifting a single finger. Ren’s face turned completely pale.
The woman stepped forward slowly. Every step felt unnaturally heavy, like the ground itself recognized her presence. The surrounding monsters began retreating instinctively, backing away from her like animals fleeing a predator they couldn’t fight.
"Impossible..."
Ren backed away slowly.
She stopped only inches before him. Up close, her beauty felt unreal. But so did the overwhelming danger radiating from her like heat from an open flame.
Her cold fingers slowly touched his cheek.
Ren flinched.
Yet her touch felt strangely gentle, careful even, like she was afraid he might break. For a moment, the terrifying woman simply stared at him in complete silence.
Then her lips curved into a faint trembling smile.
"You’re alive..."
Her voice sounded relieved. Emotional. Almost broken in a way that didn’t match her terrifying presence at all.
Ren’s confusion only deepened.
"We know each other?"
The moment he asked that, something shattered inside her eyes.
Pain. A terrifying amount of pain behind those crimson irises.
The woman lowered her head slightly, hiding her expression from him.
"Right..."
Her smile became hollow.
"This timeline hasn’t happened yet."
"What..."
Suddenly a spear of black bone pierced straight through Ren’s chest from behind.
His eyes widened completely. Blood spilled from his mouth. Pain exploded throughout his entire body like fire spreading through dry wood. He slowly looked downward in disbelief.
A massive monster stood behind him. Its arm had transformed into a jagged spear protruding straight through his chest from back to front.
Ren collapsed to his knees.
The woman’s expression froze entirely.
The air changed. No, the entire world changed around them. Everything became cold in an instant. The sky darkened without warning. The monsters nearby began trembling violently, their bodies shaking like they could sense something ancient and furious waking up.
The woman stared at Ren’s blood spreading slowly across the ground.
Then she whispered softly.
"No..."
The monster behind Ren started screaming. Its body twisted unnaturally before collapsing into nothing but ash. Every creature within sight suddenly exploded in the same instant. Buildings cracked apart. The ground shook violently beneath their feet.
Ren could barely breathe.
His vision blurred at the edges. Yet he still saw her kneeling before him desperately, her hands trembling as she held his face gently between her palms.
For the first time, genuine fear appeared in those crimson eyes.
"Don’t die..."
Blood continued pouring from Ren’s mouth.
"I... don’t even know you..."
The woman looked as if those words had stabbed her far harder than any blade ever could. Her expression broke completely, every wall she had built around herself crumbling in a single second.
And then she smiled.
A sad, terrifying smile that held years of pain behind it.
"That’s okay..."
She gently pulled his dying body closer to her.
"Even if you forget me..."
"I’ll always find you again."
The sky above the city cracked open completely. Crimson light swallowed everything around them. Ren’s heartbeat slowed with every passing second.
The last thing he saw before darkness consumed him was the woman crying quietly while the entire world burned around her.
[Ding!]
[Death Registered.]
[Unique Skill Activated.]
[Fate Loop System Initializing...]
[Condition Met.]
[Timeline Reset Beginning.]
Ren’s eyes snapped open.
He gasped violently, his entire body lurching upright. Sweat drenched every inch of him. He was back inside the classroom. Sunlight entered through the windows peacefully. Students chatted casually around him like nothing had happened.
No blood. No monsters. No apocalypse.
Ren’s breathing became completely unstable.
"What..."
His shaking hands grabbed his own chest instinctively. No wound. But the pain still felt real. Every single second of it still burned inside him like a fresh memory.
The classroom clock read 2:06 PM.
Eleven minutes before the sky cracked open.
Ren’s face turned pale.
"No way..."
[Ding!]
A blue screen appeared before him.
[Fate Loop System Successfully Bound.]
[Current Objective: Survive.]
Ren stared silently at the screen. Then another line slowly appeared beneath it. A line that made cold fear crawl all the way down his spine.
[Warning:]
The Crimson Queen remembers you too.
