The last thing Soren did before he died was laugh at a kid who had his name.
It was three in the morning and the phone was the only light in the apartment.
The Jaws of the Shadow had four hundred and eighty-two chapters.
Soren was on his third reread, back at chapter four, because the early chapters were the ones that still made sense.
His actual life had stopped making sense about six months ago.
He read the Assignment Ceremony scene.
Troy Minden awakened a Spectral Knight, Rank A.
The narrator did a whole paragraph about the light being so white people had to squint.
Soren read it twice, because it was the kind of paragraph he had wanted someone to write about him for a long time, and at thirty-one no one had yet.
Then came the side character Soren Kane.
Half a page.
Trembling, wet and pathetic.
His puppy peed on the Binding Stone, and the narrator never mentioned him again because why would he?
Soren scrolled to the comments.
The top one had two hundred and forty likes and had been sitting there for two years: hahaha the poor puppy peed on the stone. Imagine the shame of this loser lmao.
He tapped the heart.
The alternative was thinking about the eviction notice on the counter, the voicemail from his mother he still hadn't played, and the exit interview that lasted four minutes where he had smiled because he didn't know what else to do with his face.
He typed at least the cub got screen time underneath it, posted, and put the phone face down.
The ceiling stain had been growing for eleven months.
The fan clicked once and stopped.
The gas water heater in the kitchen did what the landlord had been promising it wouldn't do since April.
Soren smelled something chemical, got dizzy, tried to sit up, and didn't make it.
No last words or drama.
No final thought worth keeping.
Just a guy rereading chapter four who stopped breathing between one paragraph and the next.
◆◆◆◆
A voice came from somewhere in the dark.
"Another one," it said.
"Another what?" Soren tried to say, except he had no mouth.
"A man who spent his last night alive being mean to a fictional character. You know that's a little sad, right?"
"It was a comment with two hundred likes already. I was contributing to a community."
"And now it has two hundred and forty-one because of you. But that's not why you're here. You're here because heaven doesn't want you, hell doesn't care, and I have a slot to fill."
"What kind of slot?"
"The kind where you find out what the joke feels like from the inside."
The dark cracked open and swallowed him whole.
◆◆◆◆
He had maybe thirty seconds to orient before the Ceremony started, and he used them.
He was Soren Kane, F-rank, the punchline of chapter four.
The puppy was going to pee on the Binding Stone.
The gym was going to laugh.
Then, according to the book, he was going to pick up the puppy, walk out, and that was the end of his story.
That was the version of events where he did nothing.
He had read this novel three times.
He knew every character in this room, every ability, every outcome for the next four hundred and eighty chapters.
He knew who lived and who didn't, why, and what mistakes they made on the way.
That wasn't nothing.
He found his seat at the end of the last row and watched the Assignment Ceremony run exactly as the book said.
Name after name, beast after beast.
He cross-checked each one and they all fit.
Then Troy Minden stood up from the fourth row.
Tall, broad shoulders, the posture of someone who already knew who he was.
Troy put his hand on the stone and it rang three notes in white light.
The whole gym squinted.
The system broadcast his rank to everyone present, and the applause was exactly as loud as the book said it would be.
Soren watched Troy walk back down the stairs and had a thought he hadn't expected: the man was genuinely good at this, not just strong, but the kind of person a story naturally built itself around.
That was worth remembering, because Soren was going to spend a lot of time near him.
"Soren Kane."
He stood up.
He knew what was coming.
Knowing it didn't make the laughter any less real when the stone played its broken note and the gym recognized the sound for what it was.
[Link established. Blind Shadow Beast Puppy. Rank F.]
Something warm touched his shoe.
The puppy was the size of a closed fist.
Gray fur stuck flat against her body.
She turned her head in a direction that was not toward Soren and sneezed.
Then she did what the book said she would do, and Soren was right.
It wasn't funny from this side of it.
He just held out his hand.
The puppy sniffed the air, found his fingers, and bumped her forehead against his palm.
Soren picked her up, tucked her under his arm, and walked out through the side door while three hundred people laughed.
Outside in the hallway he leaned against the wall and looked down at the puppy.
The puppy looked back with her sealed blind eyes.
He thought: okay. I know this story. I know every trap in it. Now let's see what I can do with that.
◆◆◆◆
Back in the room, he sat on the bed and put the puppy on the sheets.
She walked in a circle twice and sat down facing him.
Master.
Soren stopped breathing.
Master! You are here, you are here, you are here!
The voice was a woman's, not a puppy's.
It came through the back of his skull like something had always been there and had just switched on.
[Resonance Event detected. Compatibility: 100%. That should not be possible.]
The system had never commented on its own readings before.
[Hidden Trait detected: [Heart of the Primordial Tamer]. Status: AWAKENING.]
[This trait does not exist in the database. Generating new entry. Warning: requires authorization from the Author. Author: NOT LOCATED.]
'Author not located? You fucking kidding me?'
He stared at that for a moment.
The system had just admitted it was running a variable it wasn't built for.
[Notification sent to Main Character: Troy Minden.]
[Message: 'Anomaly detected. Origin: Soren Kane, Rank F. Investigation recommended.']
[Main Character has read the message.]
"Okay," Soren said out loud, to the room, to whatever was running this world. "Day one. That's fine."
The puppy climbed up his chest and pushed her face into his neck.
Master, I'm sleepy. I'm going to dream of you.
She fell asleep on him.
Soren lay back with the puppy on his chest, looked at the ceiling, and started building a list in his head of everything he knew that the other people in this story didn't.
It was a long list.
He fell asleep before he finished it.
◆◆◆◆
In the dream there was a flat stone, and he was lying on it looking at a starless sky.
Then a woman sat on his thighs.
Soren recognized her before she lifted her face.
White hair, wolf ears, skin pale enough to see the veins.
When her eyes opened they were the exact red the forum illustrations had argued about for three years.
Yara Hale.
The Goddess of Shadows.
The mythic level-six link of the hero.
The character whose introduction chapter had broken the site's comment record twice.
She was sitting on him.
"I found you," she said. "I finally found you, Master."
Her hair brushed his collarbones.
Soren tried to move and the body did not respond.
"Don't let him have me," said Yara, and her voice broke on the last word in a way that did not match the face.
"I know what's coming, I've seen it. He is going to come looking for me, and I don't want to go. I found you first, I've been waiting for you a very long time."
A tear fell and landed on his chest.
"If I have to kill him to stay with you," she said, and smiled, "I'm going to kill him."
The smile was completely sweet and she meant every word of it.
She leaned in, rested her forehead against his, and whispered against his lips: "Wake up, Master, he is already coming."