* * *

The seal was broken.

Curled up on the stiff bed, I awoke to a peculiar sense of liberation.

Still groggy from sleep, I absentmindedly groped at my chest.

The sealing ritual that had gripped my heart so tightly—sometimes making even breathing a struggle—was gone.

For this seal to be undone, one of two conditions had to be met: the permission of the one who cast it, or that person’s death.

But the one who had carved this wretched thing into my chest would never have permitted its release under any circumstances.

Which meant that this situation pointed to only one possibility.

“He’s dead. That bastard is dead….”

Muttering as if possessed, I staggered out of bed.

Beyond the tightly barred window, a large, round moon hung in the sky.

The sun hadn’t inexplicably risen in the middle of the night, nor had it suddenly started snowing in the height of summer.

Nothing seemed different from usual, yet I knew.

“…Letiyan is dead.”

Ever since I realized I had been reborn as a character in a novel, I had been bound by the constraints of the original story.

As a character in the novel, it was only natural to act according to my given settings…

But in the end, not only was I forced into the role of a villain, but even my entire existence had been stolen away by my twin brother.

“Hah… So if I just hold on long enough, a day like this really does come.”

A hollow chuckle escaped my lips as I squeezed my eyes shut.

My legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the cold stone floor.

I should have felt pain from the impact on my knees, but strangely, there was nothing—no sensation at all.

The feeling of liberation was simply overwhelming.

“I’m finally….”

Kneeling on the ground, I lowered my torso.

As the coldness of the floor seeped into me, my body trembled in sheer ecstasy.

Hard as it may be to believe, I was nothing more than a fleeting extra in a fantasy novel.

And the day I first realized this fact, as if receiving a revelation, I was only eight years old.

Back then, false accusations had begun piling up against me, one after another, completely beyond my control.

The day I came to understand that I had been born as a character in a book was just like any other.

It was the day yet another crime I had never committed was added to my name.

I hadn’t killed the cherished animals my father had set loose in the eastern garden.

I hadn’t mutilated their corpses and scattered the remains across my mother’s dressing room.

But everyone spoke in unison to condemn me, and my parents—who had always been passive observers—looked at me with newfound hatred.

As if merely being accused of such a horrendous crime wasn’t enough, I was branded a liar and sentenced to a year of confinement as punishment.

And this confinement wasn’t to take place in my room.

Fearing what I might do if left among people, they exiled me to the western annex—a place so abandoned that rumors of ghosts had long surrounded it.

I knew it wouldn’t matter if I denied it.

No one would believe me.

So I didn’t even bother protesting.

Dragged away by the servants, I could only plead, over and over again, not to be sent to the annex.

And that’s when I saw it.

My twin brother, Letiyan, smiling at me as he consoled our parents, supposedly shaken by my “terrible nature.”

Frozen in shock, I didn’t even struggle as I was locked away.

That night, I cried until exhaustion overtook me.

And in the dream that followed, I understood everything.

I was merely an extra, existing solely to justify the protagonist’s actions in killing the villain, Letiyan.

And even with that knowledge, there was nothing I could do.

-I looked into it. That bastard Letiyan was truly monstrous. It was him—he was the one who killed his own parents. And more than that, he did everything he could to get rid of his twin brother since childhood, framing him for all sorts of horrendous crimes. The twin’s name was… Vivisian, I think? The late duke and duchess never even realized Letiyan was behind it all, and they locked the young lord away in prison over twenty years ago.

-…Then the skeleton we found in the prison….

-Yeah. It was most likely Lord Vivisian.

-How tragic. To be cursed with such a family….

-Exactly. So, Ian, don’t think of taking a life as something so horrifying. You simply avenged that young lord.

In the original novel, that was all there was to Vivisian—to me.

To justify the protagonist’s act of slaughter, Letiyan’s evil had to be emphasized.

And I was nothing more than a sacrifice for that purpose—an extra whose fate was left uncertain, dead or alive.

When I first grasped the truth, I didn’t even have the luxury to be shocked.

Too much had crashed down on me at once.

My mind matured overnight, but my body remained the same, and I spent a full week feverish and bedridden, struggling to process it all.

I cried myself to sleep every night, and by the time I regained my senses, I had no more tears left to shed.

At first, I tried everything to escape the original story’s setting.

If things unfolded as written, I was destined to die.

Who in their right mind would welcome such an ending?

I tried making allies.

I tried making friends.

I even attempted to fight back.

But in the end, everything failed.

My allies quickly turned into Letiyan’s pawns.

My friends came to despise me.

Any resistance was met with harsher punishments.

Through one failure after another, I learned to resign myself.

Even though I kept quiet and tried to live unnoticed, I was still cast as the villain.

I was still branded the most loathsome scum to ever exist.

Even though I did absolutely nothing.

As I grew older, so did my twin.

With time, his crimes became even more twisted, more depraved.

And, as always, every single one of them became mine.

There was no escaping the constraints of the original story.

Proving my innocence was impossible.

Maybe, if it had only happened once or twice, I could have struggled against it.

But was there even a shred of will left in me to do so?

The answer was obvious.

No.

Knowing the truth changed nothing.

I couldn’t alter the future.

All I could do was accept it.

To fulfill his role as the villain, Letiyan continued to commit countless atrocities.

In the end, my parents and the elders—unable to endure my existence any longer—imprisoned me in the duchy’s dungeon.

Officially, I had been sent away for “recovery.”

But my infamous “misdeeds” were well known, and it was nothing more than a weak attempt to disguise the truth.

And so, I was locked away, with the seal Letiyan had so kindly gifted me—carved into my very heart.

If only I had been sentenced to death.

At least then, my life wouldn’t have been dragged out so miserably.

But as fate would have it, I was an Apostle.

A being blessed by the divine.

And if an Apostle were to die unjustly, a heretic would inevitably rise from the place of their death.

In those early days, knowing I would die anyway, I attempted suicide many times.

But it seemed that deviating from the original plot—even in death—was impossible.

No matter what I did, I could not die.

And so, I continued living—trapped in a state neither fully alive nor fully dead.

Letiyan, who had frequently visited my prison cell to watch my miserable state, eventually stopped coming as often.

In the end, I was left alone, rotting away in a prison where not a single soul came or went.

Time passed, and in the year I came of age, I received news that my parents had died under mysterious circumstances—just as in the original story.

Of course, I knew the truth. Letiyan had killed them.

But I didn’t act on it.

I had no particular attachment to my parents, that much was true.

More than anything, I was powerless.

Bound to the original story, unable even to take my own life, what could I possibly do from inside a prison?

And then, years passed.

The days when people called me “Second Young Master” or “Little Lord” felt like a distant dream.

Letiyan, who was supposed to die at the hands of the protagonist at least five years later, was dead.

That alone was enough to tell me something had changed.

I didn’t know exactly what had happened, but the original story—the one that refused to let me go no matter what I did—had vanished.

Completely.

“Ah…”

How desperately I had longed for this day!

The day I would finally be free from the story that toyed with me!

From this moment on, every choice would be mine.

My life—and even my death—belonged to me alone.

The realization sent waves of euphoria through me, like a child clutching a long-coveted toy from their dreams.

My hands, resting on the ground, clenched and unclenched, trembling.

“It’s over. That damn shackle…”

I whispered in a voice that barely felt like my own.

Then, I let out a quiet laugh and activated my ability.

The same ability that had refused to obey whenever I tried to use it to end my life finally responded.

It was the original story that had prevented my death all this time.

Those arrogant, idiotic fools never thought to restrain me because they assumed I wouldn’t be the type to commit suicide.

For the first time, I was grateful for their negligence.

“Finally…”

I whispered with a soft chuckle, considering the best way to die.

Apostles don’t die easily.

Their hearts must burst, or their heads must be severed from their bodies.

Originally, I had planned to relocate my head elsewhere to ensure my death, but that seemed too excessive.

Instead, I decided to remove only my heart.

I willed my heart out of my body, and now that the story’s grip was gone, my ability obeyed like a docile lamb.

With a dull thud, my heart landed in my palm.

My torso remained intact—unharmed, unmarked—yet the heart that should have been inside was missing.

I ran my eyes over my unblemished chest, marveling at the precision of my control, before slowly collapsing backward.

“Ha… Haha! I won. I won, you piece of shit world…!”

What I wanted was complete freedom.

True, unquestionable death.

Proof that I had finally escaped the original story—that I had conquered it!

My heart pulsed weakly in my palm.

My vision blurred.

Humming the lullaby my old nurse used to sing to me—the one who had been cast aside long ago—I closed my eyes.

“…Sian!”

Vivisian!

Somewhere, I thought I heard someone calling my name… but I ignored it.

Instead, I surrendered myself to the darkness pulling me under.

Yes. I was certain I had died.

The wretched life that had been forcibly prolonged by the original story had finally ended.

Naturally, the dead don’t open their eyes.

“…What the hell. I was definitely dead.”

And yet, I had woken up.

In a bed, no less.

Lying there in a daze, I felt my heart beating beneath my ribs.

Stunned, I tried to take my own life again.

And once again… I came back.

Damn it!

* * *