Auria sat down. Klaus still stood where he had been, with his empty sleeve fluttering in the wind. Except that when I looked around, the place was void of literally anything. His sleeve was moving around for no reason at all.

I looked down at Auria, who had a determined expression on her face.

“Where are we?” I managed to ask her.

“Inside the wardlebeast.” She looked around at the darkness, “Normally, once it binds you, it shows you terrible hallucinations. Anything to get you out of the place it’s protecting. Klaus used a spell to forcefully put us into the place that the wardlebeast uses to create illusions.”

Essentially, this was where people saw the hallucinations. But because Klaus had put us in without the monster’s permission or choice, no such illusion had been prepared. We were seeing the empty stage which it had inside of it at all times.

I hesitated a bit before sitting down.

“There is no way to escape the wardlebeast until the hallucinations end.” Auria explained.

“But we aren’t in a hallucination right now.” I remarked.

She nodded, “That is exactly why we have all the time we need. Until he attacks and brings us out. Until then, we can do and say whatever we want, free of any control.”

“What?” I was a bit confused.

Klaus came and sat down beside her with a thud. Then, he spoke in a surprisingly normal voice, “There is a lot to explain, but we cannot do all of that. We’ll be caught and killed pretty soon. All we need you to understand right now is that we have no reason to lie to you, not anymore. Everything that we intend to tell you is true.”

They were going to die? Where did that even come from?

“Who’s going to kill you?” I asked.

“God.”

I sighed and looked at them with pitiful eyes, “Are you kidding me right now?”

“I told you he wouldn’t believe us. Tyber’s situation has blinded him.” Klaus violently stood up and walked away from us.

“We are not lying.” Auria still held her ground, “Our God is…not himself anymore. He’s been corrupted. He always had the ability to control all of us, but he never used it. He was good, benevolent. After the corruption, all of that changed.”

Klaus was still roaming in circles around us. It seemed like he had given up completely. Still, the very fact that he had spoken normally had been a bit surprising. But there was always the chance of him acting in front of me.

“One day, after the corr-”

A loud noise shook my right ear. It pained and started bleeding. I shouted and looked towards the direction, to see a white rift starting to appear in the darkness. It was like an uneven cut, ripping right through the wardlebeast.

“He’s started. Klaus, please.” Auria looked at him. Without any reply, he just put his hand in his jacket and took out another book. He flipped it open to a page and walked towards the rift. He held it with his remaining hand and started chanting.

As he did, the rift slowly started to get smaller and lose all of its shine. It grew smaller and smaller in size until Klaus’ body was completely hiding it. He grunted in pain, but kept pushing the book. The rift did not disappear, however. It was tiny, and emitting as little light as possible, but it was still there.

Auria brought my attention back to her and continued, “Hey, listen. I need to finish this. One day, as I said, after the corruption had happened, we all woke up with instructions on what we had to do that day. To the people who followed them, nothing happened. To the ones who laughed it off as a joke, died the very next moment.”

“What?”

What kind of instructions even were they?

“But that was the beginning.” Auria added, “The instructions soon became more detailed, more nuanced. Along with that, more violent. People were asked to kill their own families, their own children. Whatever felt cruel enough to God, he would ask us to do.”

What the hell?

Auria did not stop, “God was not satisfied, however. You could only see people suffering without reason for so long. It soon became a loop for him. Something that did not excite him anymore.”

“So, he started giving the suffering reason. Soon, we were given new names, new personalities to follow, new ideals to believe in. We were all instructed to play characters and participate in stories that God wrote. All of these, of course, end in despair and death. That is much more satisfying to him. To see us lose hope little by little, slowly grow insane over the increasing depravity.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“You’re…saying that…” I stuttered a little.

Auria finished my sentence for me, “Even today, we get instructions on what to do. Every single person in the world. That day, when we met you, Ty-...Tyber was told that he was going to die. And he had told that to us beforehand. But Auria is supposed to be the cheerful clown and Klaus the dumb brute. We weren’t allowed to cry. If we did, we would die too.”

Oh. That was it. It wasn’t that they didn’t feel bad. They couldn’t. At least not visibly. Because that was crueler, sadder. And God liked to see that. He liked to know that these two had to laugh and brush off the death of a man they had loved and admired with all their hearts.

I looked at Klaus, who was still holding back the rift, which hadn’t disappeared. All of a sudden, his antics the day before weren’t that funny. All along, he knew that sometime in that journey, Tyber was going to die. But he couldn’t show it. He had to be the rough-spoken idiot who was more worried about proving his strength.

If they did anything, then all three of them would die. Tyber had probably told them not to do that. It would make no sense at all. But then –

“Why now?” I asked, “You said we will die anyways, so why is it fine to do that now?”

“‘We’ includes both of us. Not you.” Auria explained, “In fact, here’s a lie that we need to correct. There is no portal to send you back home. You are, indeed, still alive. But you cannot go back.”

“I-I saw the portal, though.”

“Yeah. The portal does exist. But it is to bring you to our world, not send you to yours. God teleported you here, randomly. Seeing us suffer in our world is hilarious to him, but its funnier to see someone suffer in, and for, a world that isn’t even theirs.” Auria said, “There is just one catch. God cannot control you until you accept him yourself, until you become a part of our world. That’s what the portal does. It enters you in his theatre.”

I felt like laughing. This was funny. I had once dreamed of being reincarnated, but that was for different reasons. That was for adventure and fun, and love, and action. Not like this. What the hell was this?

Auria inched closer, “People from other worlds are not common here. Its because it takes a lot of power from God’s side to do it. Once we came across you, we knew we needed to try and do this. To tell you about everything. Because as long as he cannot control you, you are free. You’re the only free person in this entire world.”

She held my hand, “That’s why we chose to die here. If we can tell you what you need to do to help us out, and you accept to do it, we stand a chance to fight back against God. To take our freedom back.”

“You have three choices.” Klaus’ croaking voice suddenly spoke up, “One, you think we are lying and go to the portal. You become part of the story. Two, you believe us and help us out. That gives us a chance to fight back. And if you don’t want to do either, then take my sword and end your life. That’s the happiest you will get to be in this place.”

He threw his sword towards me, and it slid all the way to my right hand. The way it softly hit my body reminded me of Tyber’s head. I looked at it and gulped. I hadn’t signed up for this. I didn’t want any of this. Klaus’ book was starting to tear. His hand’s bones were breaking. There was no way he was going to be able to win against God himself, if what they said was true.

And if he couldn’t, then what chance did I stand to help these people out? I was a nobody.

“Please.” Auria’s voice was much more desperate now. She squeezed my hand, “You have a choice, so pick the right thing. Help them, please.”

“I-” I was tongue-tied. It wasn’t like the choice was obvious. They had just thrust all of this on me and expected me to accept. I wasn’t strong, or smart, or good at anything in general. Did they really expect me to do something?

Auria left my and completely bent down. Her hands went straight for my feet as she started wailing, “Please. I’ve held my dying son in my hands, and not known what to do. Give me this one chance, please. I hate this girl. I hate Auria with all of my heart. I…I can’t even remember my own name. Can’t even remember my son’s face. Just…please.”

Klaus looked back at me and shouted, “What is wrong with you? Would you really resign yourself without a fight?”

I looked at him and managed to speak, “I-I can’t do anything. I’m not strong like you people. I’m nothing. What do you want me to do, if all of this is true?”

“He can’t control you, and that’s enough.” Klaus shouted. His fingers bent back and broke. He groaned with pain, but continued, “I would do anything to be in your position. You do not realize how lucky you are, how free. Just…do it. Help those people.”

I looked down at Auria, who was still holding my feet while sobbing. Klaus’s hand was now twisted, but he still managed to hold the book towards the light, which was now growing once more.

Then, in a moment, it clicked. This is exactly what I had once wanted. To save the world. That was what people always wanted to do, after all. That was probably why I secretly wished for a life after my death. To come to a fantasy world like this and help people defeat the final demon. The only difference here was that the enemy was God. Nothing else had changed. I still had the chance to be a hero, right in front of me.

Klaus’ determined face and voice hurt me a bit. He would do anything to be me. I probably could not imagine what these two had been through. I did not even know how long these people had been suffering for. But they had decided to place all their trust in someone they met less than twenty-four hours ago, because that was their desperate last chance. It was the only thing these two could believe in.

“I’ll do it.” I put my hands on her shoulders. She looked up with a smile and nodded.

“When the wardlebeast dies, we will be back in God’s sight. So, we will probably die soon too.” She suddenly started, her voice fiery, “You run. Even if God cannot control you, he can control everyone else. And instructions for the story can be changed at any moment. Think of everyone else in this world as your enemy.”

“Go back to the inn we were staying at, and go to the room I was in. On the back of the clock, there is a small compartment I carved out. Open it, and you’ll get a map. Take the map, leave the town, and travel to the place I have marked. There, you will find more people who are willing to fight. They can take it from there.”

Her eyes met mine, and I felt I saw happiness in them. I nodded and stood up. She didn’t.

All around us, more rifts started to appear. Klaus gave up and sat down on the floor, with a hand half-burnt. He looked at me with a smile and started laughing.

The light rifts connected with each other, slowly, until they formed a dome around us. After a loud noise, the darkness disappeared.

We were back in the house. It looked exactly like it had when we had first stepped into it. The monster was dead.

Auria, still sitting and smiling, looked at me.

“Go kill that bastard.”

Her entire head was squished into her neck, as if being pushed from above. Blood flew all over the room. Her hands were raised into the air, and both of their bones rotated and tore through the flesh, until they had fallen to the ground. Then, her upper body violently twisted a complete one-eighty degrees until it was torn off, and fell to the ground.