Zayn watched through heavy-lidded eyes as the sickly man began to approach him. His body screamed in pain, every nerve aflame from the brutal ordeal he'd endured. He wanted to glare at the man, to channel even a shred of anger, but he couldn't muster so much as a fart.

Besides, what would it accomplish? Instead, he sighed, his voice barely above a strained rasp, "If you're going to kill me, at least let me die without puke all over myself. Give me that much dignity."

The man didn't respond, didn't even acknowledge Zayn's plea. He simply knelt beside the corpse of the larger monkey, its massive, lifeless body still pinning Zayn to the ground. With a slow, deliberate motion, the man placed his hands on the monkey's limp arms and began to pry them away. Zayn blinked in confusion, unsure of what he was witnessing. What was this man doing?

"Uh... what are even trying to do?" he asked.

The struggle was almost comical—the sickly figure, all skin and bones, tugging at the creature's massive, flaming limbs. Zayn almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, but even that required more energy than he had. But to his surprise, the man succeeded after a few moments of silent effort, freeing one of the arms and pushing the heavy corpse off Zayn with a final strained shove. The weight lifted, Zayn gasped, his ribs protesting as he finally took a full breath.

Still, he couldn't move. His body felt like a shattered husk, and he could only lie there, staring up at the man who now stood motionless, gazing down at him.

For a moment, Zayn wondered if the man was admiring his Outline, which still floated above his head, its pages faintly glowing with the strange inscriptions. Worry grew briefly in Zayn's mind, but then he noticed something peculiar. The man's eyes weren't on the book—they were locked on Zayn himself.

"You can't see it, can you?" Zayn muttered, a grim chuckle escaping his lips. He cursed inwardly at the wasted effort of trying to hide the Outline earlier. If the man couldn't see it, then all the secrecy had been pointless. The thought was both frustrating and oddly comforting.

The man broke his silence, his voice strained and halting, as though every word cost him dearly. "Remember... what you saw."

Zayn frowned, the phrase striking an uneasy chord within him. It was the same thing the man had said right before the flaming monkeys descended upon him. Despite his frustration, curiosity gnawed at him, and he forced his battered mind to focus. "What the hell does that mean?" he croaked.

"Remember...what...you...saw..."

The man repeated the phrase, slower this time, as if the words held a weight Zayn couldn't yet comprehend. Zayn gritted his teeth, frustration bubbling to the surface despite his condition. "Telling someone to remember doesn't actually help them remember," he snapped, his voice barely above a whisper. "If you want me to understand, maybe try saying something useful."

The man paused, his emaciated frame eerily still as if even breathing taxed him beyond measure. His lips trembled faintly before parting, each syllable forced out with an almost agonizing slowness. "The... Red... Flame... is a false... god," he said, his voice breaking as though the words were shards cutting through his throat. "It... never... brought us... to the island."

Zayn's breath hitched. The words echoed in his mind, resonating with a truth he couldn't ignore. At first, the statement seemed absurd. The Red Flame was the cornerstone of the villagers' faith, their guiding light, and their protector. But then, a memory surfaced—one he'd forgotten.

When he first arrived in this Story, he'd witnessed a strange, rapid sequence of events. The villagers' arrival on the island, their struggles, their eventual settlement—all of it had been shown to him in a historical fast-forward. And now, as he replayed those images in his mind, something stood out: there had been no sign of the Red Flame. No divine intervention, no miraculous guidance, no god lighting their path. They had simply… survived. On their own.

He had ignored this and kept it at the back of his mind as he simply chalked it up to them building up superstition as time went on. In the empire's history, things like that were very common, people would come up with strange obscure reasons as to how they had survived perilous situations in the past when in fact they were pretty simple.

But from the intent he was getting from the sickly man, he could tell that it was a lot more than that.

"What the hell?" Zayn muttered, his voice thick with disbelief. His mind raced, connecting dots he hadn't even realized were there. The villagers' belief in the Red Flame was a lie, or at least a carefully constructed myth. But why? And who had constructed it?

The man's words had shaken something loose within him, a realization that felt both profound and deeply unsettling. Whatever this Story was, it was far more complex than he'd first assumed. If the Red Flame wasn't truly a god, it didn't erase the fact that something bearing its name clearly existed—those flaming monkeys were proof enough of something serious going on.

And if that "something" wasn't divine, what did that mean for the island, for the people who lived here, and especially for him, who was here for a reason?

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'Fuck, I really don't know what I've gotten myself into. Should I have just stayed in that Libraros or whatever place? Seems like it would have been a much better choice than this shit.'

Zayn's thoughts were interrupted by the man's voice, quiet but insistent.

"Do... not let the... troubles...ahead blind you, though your story is...short, and there...is much that confuses you. You still have a goal to reach. A purpose to fulfill."

"Huh?" Zayn said confused by why the man was saying so much now.

"What purpose are..."

Before Zayn could interrogate him further, he noticed something strange—the man seemed to hesitate, his frail body trembling slightly. Zayn's confusion deepened as the light seemed to drain from the man's eyes.

Without another word, the man crumpled to the ground, lifeless, his body collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut. The sight was so sudden and jarring that Zayn could only stare, his battered mind struggling to process what had just happened. Was he truly dead? And if so, how had he known what Zayn had seen? What did it mean by purpose to fulfill? The questions swirled in Zayn's mind, unanswered and haunting.

"Hey you aren't really dead right?" he asked, but the empty eyes of the sickly man's body did not answer. With a sigh of dissatisfaction from being left with more questions than he wanted, he decided to focus on something else.

Zayn's mind churned as he began piecing together the revelations he had just received. From what he got, the Red Flame definitely did not bring the people to the island but whether it was a god or not was something Zayn felt apprehensive about, this was mostly for the reason that the monkey existed.

All of Zayn's life, he had never even heard of creatures like those monkeys existing. He couldn't even keep calling them monkeys as the only thing they had in common with those wild animals where the general body proportions. Those kinds of creatures were considered mythical and rumors of the likes of dragons and phoenixes.

So even though he expected to see wild shit when he entered the Story, this was not one of them.

The next thing he really needed to think about was how everything odd he saw since getting to the village started to make a bit of sense. Everyone wanted to prioritize the village, not calling each other by names or even acknowledging that they had names, and most important for him was how even he was affected.

He knew the Blood Claws had something to do with it as the moment he wore it was when his thought process took a drastic turn. This frightened him a bit as the thought of becoming like them rose, he would have preferred dying than that.

Each thought clicked into place like puzzle pieces, creating a picture that was still incomplete but disturbingly clear in its intent. He finally understood—or at least thought he did—what his purpose in this Story was. It had to deal with whatever this Red Flame entity was doing. It explained why he was brought here on the day of the festival and not any other time.

His thoughts turned sharply to his Qualities, specifically the one he'd seen in his Outline: [Blessed by Red]. He hadn't given it much thought before, dismissing it as another piece of flavor text in this twisted narrative that he could look at later, but now he realized it was far more integral to his role than he had assumed.

Turning his gaze upward, Zayn focused on the Outline still floating above him, its faint glow casting eerie shadows over the dead body of the sickly man. He chose to ignore the corpse for now. His attention locked onto his status display, which appeared before him in a clean, novel-like system format:

Character: Zayn

Rank: Mundane

Role: None

Core Purpose: Mundane

Qualities: [Blessed by Red], [Unfortunate]

Abilities: None

Story Purpose: [Village Boy]

Fragments: None

Wills: [Blood Fever]

Zayn's eyes were drawn to the newest addition: the Wills section. He stared at the phrase [Blood Fever], his brows furrowing as he finally recognized where he had seen the mention of Wills before—it was here, in his Outline, waiting for him to discover it. He felt a strong temptation to delve into what this Will did but decided against it, at least for now. There was something else he'd been avoiding for far too long: the descriptions of his Qualities.

With a deep, pained breath, Zayn focused on the [Blessed by Red] Quality. As he concentrated, the description expanded before him, written in stark, elegant script:

[Blessed by Red]

You are one blessed and chosen by the Red Flame to be a beacon to the village. Your fate is to carry this banner among your people and burn bright as a symbol to all from afar.

Zayn's eyes widened at the words. A beacon? A symbol? What the hell was that supposed to mean? He reread the description several times, hoping for clarity that didn't come. Instead, it only raised more questions. Why was he supposed to serve as a beacon? What exactly was the Red Flame trying to accomplish?

He mulled over the phrasing, focusing on the idea of being a source of light. Slowly, an unsettling realization formed in his mind. If the story about the Red Flame leading the villagers to the island as their god was false, then it stood to reason that the accompanying tale of there being four gods was also fabricated—or at least not entirely true.

But why would the Red Flame—or whoever propagated this story—include that detail? Was it an attempt to appear more benevolent, to give the entity the feeling of a parent who stayed with their child when the other left? Or was there some truth buried within the lie?

Then came a chilling thought. What if he was the beacon in a literal sense—not to the people of the village, but to those other gods? Entities similar to the Red Flame. What if his role was to draw their attention, to light the way for them to find the village, the island, or even him?

The implications made his stomach churn. If the Red Flame was a "false god," as the sickly man had said, then its intentions for the village—and for him—were likely anything but benevolent. Was he a pawn in a larger game? A lure for something far more dangerous? The thought of what might come when those "other gods" noticed him sent a shiver down his spine.

Zayn clenched his fists, his nails trying to move and dig into his palms despite the pain that shot through his arms. He had come to this Story expecting to play a role, to do what was needed and survive. But this? This was something else entirely.

Whatever the Red Flame's plan was, Zayn was determined to uncover and hopefully stop it. And if that meant playing along for now, he would. But he would not be anyone's pawn—not without a fight.