Atlas sat on the edge of the stone bench in the tower’s upper chamber, rubbing his temples.
The cultists were hidden away in the lower maintenance tunnels, safe for now. No one had co knocking. But sothing was wrong with him. Really wrong.
It started in the polished shield hanging on the wall. He caught his reflection while walking past, and the image didn’t turn its head when he did. It just stared. Then it blinked slowly, out of sync.
"Great," Atlas muttered. "More system bullshit."
The reflection spoke. "You still think you can win this?"
Atlas froze. The voice was his own, but flatter. Tired. The kind of voice he used to have back on Earth when another overti shift killed his weekend.
Elara looked up from sharpening her gauntlet blades. "What?"
"Nothing," Atlas said quickly. But the reflection kept talking.
"I had a fiancée nad Sarah. You rember her na? Because it’s getting fuzzy for ."
Atlas’s stomach dropped. He did rember. Mostly. The na was there, but the face that went with it was blurring at the edges. He turned away from the shield.
It followed him to the tall window overlooking Middle Heaven’s glowing spires. Another version of himself stood there, arms crossed, wearing black armor that looked like it had crushed armies under its boots.
"You’re wasting ti playing hero," the tyrant version said. "Take the red pen. Rewrite everything. Rule it. I did. Felt good."
Atlas laughed once, sharp and bitter. "Yeah? How’s the loneliness treating you?"
The tyrant smiled like a wolf. "Better than your slow death by plot."
Elara walked over, frowning. "Atlas. Talk to . You’re staring at glass like it owes you money."
Before he could answer, a third reflection appeared in the smooth surface of her gauntlet. This one looked softer. Content. The kind of guy who never took risks.
"I said yes to Lara," the happy version said quietly. "We built a life. Small house. No cults. No resets. Boring as hell. But we were alive."
Atlas stepped closer, glaring at all three versions now visible across the different surfaces. "You’re not real. You’re pruned scraps. System garbage."
The depressed salaryman reflection shrugged. "At least I had weekends. What do you have? A body that’s slowly being edited into the Council’s perfect puppet?"
Elara planted herself between Atlas and the window. "If you three don’t shut up, I’m polishing every reflective surface in this tower to a mirror finish so you can all argue in 4K."
The reflections paused. Then the tyrant snorted. "She’s feisty. Harem route?"
"Redemption arc," the happy version said.
"Both wrong," the depressed one muttered. "She’s the one who watches you lose everything."
Atlas and his alternate selves started arguing again, voices overlapping. Elara pinched the bridge of her nose. "This is my life now."
The strain hit harder than Atlas expected. While arguing with the salaryman about who had it worse—corporate hell or literal soul-erasing system—he suddenly couldn’t rember the taste of cheap beer.
That sour, cold bite after a long day. Gone. Just a vague concept. His hands started shaking.
Elara noticed imdiately. She grabbed his wrist. "Stop. Look at ."
He did. For the first ti in a long while, he didn’t try to look untouchable. "I’m forgetting things, Elara. Small stuff. But it’s accelerating. Every ti I use that damn pen, it pulls more of out."
They sat down on the bench together. The reflections stayed quiet for once, watching like ghosts at a funeral.
Elara spoke first, voice low. "I’m scared of what you’re becoming. And I’m scared of what I’m abandoning to follow you.
The Council raised . Trained . Now I’m hiding cultists and watching my brother argue with alternate versions of himself in mirrors. This isn’t normal."
Atlas gave a weak smile. "Normal left the building when I got isekai’d."
One of the reflections—the tyrant—leaned forward in the window. "The red pen isn’t just a tool. Every use edits you. Makes you more compliant. More protagonist-shaped. You’re not pruning tilines. They’re pruning you."
Atlas stared at his hand. The words hit like ice water. He stood up, walked to the window, and smashed his fist through it. Glass exploded outward. A shard cut deep into his palm. It didn’t bleed normal blood. It glowed faintly red.
The shard pulsed once. Words ford in the light: *Reset Protocol calibration: 37% complete.*
Atlas pulled the shard out and dropped it. The other reflections faded, but the damage was done.
---
They didn’t get long to process it. The next night, the dreams started.
Atlas woke up covered in sweat. He’d seen Lara. Not the screaming yandere version. Just her—battle-worn, calm, sitting across from him in so dark space that felt like the bottom of the world.
She hadn’t said much. Just looked at him with that terrifying certainty.
Elara burst into his room an hour later, face flushed. "I just had the weirdest fucking dream."
She wouldn’t et his eyes at first. Then she grabbed his hand. "You’re mine to protect now, brother." The words slipped out.
She blinked hard, punched herself in the thigh, and stepped back. "Shit. That wasn’t . Or it was, but... amplified."
Atlas raised an eyebrow. "Possessive dream Lara?"
"Shut up."
Skritch, perched on the windowsill like a greasy little gargoyle, scribbled notes with a tiny pencil. "This is good material. Blackmail for later."
"Burn those notes or I burn you," Elara growled.
More reports ca in during the morning briefing. Three officials had woken up crying. One guard kept muttering about how beautiful Lara’s rage was. Another had punched a fellow soldier for "not understanding Atlas’s pain."
It wasn’t random. It was targeted. An infection.
Atlas and Elara investigated quietly, moving through the tower’s upper levels without drawing attention. They found the pattern fast. Every affected person had been near Atlas at so point in the last week.
The Amrit connection. The Thunder Marks. Lara had used their stepsibling bond like a two-way radio, pushing pieces of herself upward through his soul.
"She anchored herself to ," Atlas said as they walked a quiet corridor. "Not to control. To... prepare."
That night, Atlas let himself fall into the dream space on purpose.
Lara waited for him on a broken plain under a red sky. She looked tired but steady. No wild eyes. No obsession on full display.
"I’m not trying to drag you down," she said. "I’m building sothing down here. When the Reset hits, the script will eat Middle Heaven. But there will be a place for us. Both of us. Outside their story."
Atlas stared at her. "You’re killing people with these dreams."
"I’m waking them up." She stepped closer. "You feel it too, don’t you? The editing. The pen is changing you. I can feel every cut."
The dream felt too real. Too loving. That was the terrifying part. For a mont, Atlas understood why the officials were cracking. It was easier to believe in her version than the Council’s.
He woke up to steel against his throat.
A senior official—gray hair, Council robes—stood over his bed with a dagger. His eyes were wild but determined. "This will free you from her. I’m sorry, Atlas. It’s for your own good."
Atlas didn’t have ti to react. Elara ca out of nowhere, slamming into the man like a freight train. They crashed against the wall. The dagger sliced across Elara’s shoulder before she disard him with a brutal elbow.
She stood over the unconscious official, breathing hard, blood running down her arm.
Atlas sat up. "Elara—"
"Don’t." She pressed a hand to the wound. "This is what your presence does now. People around you get hurt. Or changed. Or both."
He helped her bandage it. Neither of them spoke much. Skritch stayed quiet in the corner for once.
Before the sun rose, Atlas sat alone at the broken window. The shard from earlier still glowed faintly in his palm.
He closed his eyes and pushed a ssage down the dream link, using the last stable mont he could feel inside himself.
*Stop protecting . Start preparing for what cos after.*
Lara’s reply ca back soft, like a breath against his ear. He heard her laugh—genuine, warm, and utterly terrifying.
*Never.*
Atlas opened his eyes. The tower felt smaller. The Reset Protocol counter in the back of his mind ticked up another notch. His hand still hurt where the glass had cut him. The reflections were gone for now, but he could feel them waiting behind every shiny surface.
Elara stood in the doorway, shoulder bandaged, watching him.
"We’re past the point of no return," she said.
Atlas nodded. "Yeah. We are."
He didn’t say it out loud, but for the first ti, he wondered if Lara’s quiet invasion was the only thing keeping him from becoming exactly what the system wanted. A clean protagonist. Edited. Compliant.
And he wondered how much longer he could keep pretending he was still in control.
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