In a tiny apartment that could barely fit his ego, Asher lay half-naked, starfish-style on a mattress that had seen better years. The fan above him creaked like it was dying in installments, the fluorescent light buzzed like a mosquito with a vendetta, and the air smelled faintly of instant noodles and existential dread.
As for his name? Yeah, he blamed his mom for that. She once told him it "sounded mystical." He thought it sounded like something a Final Fantasy boss would scream right before obliterating your party with a 10-minute unskippable Limit Break.
He hated it. Everyone else just called him Asher. Safer for his mental health.
Right now, Asher wasn't really thinking about his name, though. He was too busy rereading the last few lines of The Academy's Regressor Can't Live a Peaceful Life—a novel that had lied to everyone with its soft-ass, wholesome-sounding title and then proceeded to mentally maul its entire readership like a bear on bath salts.
He let out a strangled, furious wheeze and smacked the pillow next to him.
"That motherfucker author really lost his goddamn mind!"
THUD!
The neighbor's wall got a nice punch from the other side. Classic Mrs. Kim. She always knew how to communicate with love and drywall damage.
"Sorry, Mrs. Kim!" he called, tone dipped in fake politeness. Not that it mattered. That woman had a PhD in holding grudges. Last time he sneezed too hard at 2AM, she slipped a sticky note under his door that read:
If your sinuses need an exorcism, do it outside.
Asher stared up at the ceiling, letting silence settle over him for a brief, peaceful second before it was immediately shattered by the chaos on his phone screen.
The comment section under the final chapter was pure rage-fueled comedy.
"10 years. 10 fucking YEARS. And he ends it like that?!"
"This is war. I'm learning how to dox."
"Plot twist: we were the regressor all along. Regressing into depression."
"I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed. And also mad. Very mad."
People were losing their collective shit. And honestly? Same.
What made it worse was that nobody knew anything about the author. Just a single initial—E. That was it. No socials. No author notes. No Patreon. All chapters were free. No monetization. No announcements. Like he just showed up, dropped literary nukes on their brains, and vanished into the void like a digital ghostwriter with a grudge.
Something about that always itched at Asher's brain. Like a weird riddle he could never quite solve.
Asher was technically on break from college. And by "break," he meant breakdown. His GPA was holding on by dental floss, his fridge had more expired sauces than actual food, and he hadn't replied to a single group project chat in two weeks. But hey—he was still breathing. That counted for something, right?
Life was painfully average. Not tragic, not glorious. Just... static. He didn't hate it. Didn't love it. Mostly, he just didn't care.
Most of his free time was spent exactly like this: lying on his mattress with a dying fan spinning overhead, doomscrolling through whatever novel currently had him by the soul.
That particular obsession? A webnovel he found four, maybe five years ago back in high school. The Academy's Regressor Can't Live a Peaceful Life.
The title was basic as hell. Sounded like every other power fantasy romcom. But the hook? Oh, the hook reeled him in like a starving fish. It started strong—beautiful character introductions, deep-ass worldbuilding, and that juicy setup: a future-scarred regressor sent back to his academy days in a high-fantasy world to "fix everything."
And then the plot said, "lol no."
He kept scrolling through the fresh battlefield that was the comment section. Some folks were still deep in denial, typing essays about symbolism and "how it's all probably foreshadowing" like the world needed another Reddit thread. Others were throwing around lines like:
"I refuse to believe it ended like this. He has to update next week. There's no way—"
"Copium in my lungs, delusion in my veins."
"This is clearly subverting narrative expectations. You guys don't get it."
"Another day ruined by being Kaine-sexual."
He winced at that one. God, the Kaine-sexuals were out in full force tonight. Always the same weirdos jumping to defend their precious regressor.
And how did it end?
Well. The regressor failed.
Like, not "aw man he didn't save everyone" failed.
More like "the main cast got slaughtered, emotionally wrecked, or corrupted beyond repair" kind of failed. It was a slow-burn tragedy wrapped in plot twists so sharp they could slice your screen.
Asher stared at his phone like it personally betrayed him. His emotions were an unsorted pile of "do I laugh," "do I rage," and "should I find this author's house and take a giant steaming dump on his porch."
Honestly? He was leaning toward the third one.
Asher got up from the bed, stomping toward the kitchen like it owed him money. Rage didn't solve anything, but apparently, it did make you hungry. Or maybe he was already hungry and just now realized it. Hard to tell. His emotional stability was hanging by a noodle thread at this point.
He grabbed a cup of instant ramen—his one true savior in this cruel, godforsaken economy—and tore the lid halfway with the precision of someone who had done this far too many times. Water. Microwave. The dull hum filled the silence, like a soundtrack to his disappointment.
He leaned on the counter, arms crossed, waiting for the beep, brain still swirling in the aftermath of that ending. The regressor failed. Failed. Not metaphorically. Not thematically. Not some open-ended "did he really lose?" kind of ending. Nah, this was the type of L that made even the villains go, "Damn, that's rough, buddy."
It all started when one of the main girls—yeah, one of the actual harem girls—got killed out of nowhere. Mid-arc. No warning. One chapter she's blushing and bantering with Kaine, next chapter she's lying in a pool of blood with half her dialogue cut off mid-sentence.
People thought it was a fake-out. Classic bait.
Nope.
The next week, two more named characters bit the dust. Then the body count just kept climbing. Allies. Teachers. Even side villains who had 40 chapters of build-up just gone.
And the memes?
Oh, the memes were biblical.
"Kaine's regression arc sponsored by Raid: Shadow Legends—play now and watch everyone you love die."
"The real plot twist is how I stayed loyal to this series while the author gave me 50 consecutive middle fingers."
"At this point, Kaine should regress again. Maybe back to the womb."
People were losing it—laughing and crying at the same time. Rageposting under fanart. Making tribute edits to dead characters with sad piano music. One guy even wrote a fanfic where the regressor died in chapter one and the rest of the cast lived happy, peaceful lives.
Asher sipped the hot broth and stared at his phone, dead-eyed. Every slurp was a tiny therapy session.
"This story used to be about hope, man," he muttered. "What the hell happened."
But deep down, a part of him already knew something was off about this whole thing. About the novel. About E, the ghost author behind it all.
Something about it just didn't sit right.
And tonight… that feeling was about to get worse.
With the last strand of noodles slurped and the broth sitting warm in his gut like a cheap hug, Asher tossed the empty cup into the trash and shuffled back to his bed. The springs creaked under him like they shared his exhaustion. This was usually the part of his nightly ritual where he'd pull up a fresh novel and read until his brain fogged up enough to pass out.
Not tonight.
Tonight, every other story felt hollow. Watered down. It was like trying to eat instant noodles after dining on a full-course meal of pain and betrayal for five years straight.
He scrolled through his library anyway, thumb hovering over the titles—none of them clicked. Nothing felt worth diving into. Not after what he just finished. That story left a crater in his soul, and now everything else felt like filler in the anime of his life.
So instead of moving on like a normal person, he did what any emotionally compromised terminally online guy would do: he went back to the comment section and joined the war zone.
At first, just lurking. Laughing quietly at the chaos.
"Can't believe Kaine folded harder than my laundry."
"I'm starting to think the author based this on real trauma."
"Nah because if this was a game, I'd uninstall and refund my life."
He smirked. Then sighed. Then gave in.
He tapped out a comment and hit send without thinking:
"Real talk, if it was me instead of Kaine, I'd have cleared that timeline before the midterms. Hell, even my 87-year-old grandma would've handled it better. Man got a full memory of the future, all the cheats, all the plot armor, and STILL fumbled like he bet against himself. You're humanity's top powerhouse and you let a bad ending pull an upset like LeBron in 2016? Came back 3-1 and snatched the title. Meanwhile, Kaine had almost thousands of chapters of setup and still got reverse swept. Personally? I would never."
He stared at the comment. It got two likes almost instantly. Probably from equally unhinged Kaine-haters.
But even after posting it, he didn't feel better.
Just… empty. Like the comment was a scream into the void, and the void replied with a shrug.
He put his phone down on his chest and closed his eyes.
"…I really need a new hobby," he muttered.
Maybe it was the rage. Maybe it was emotional exhaustion. Or maybe he just passed out mid-scroll like he usually did after doom-posting at 2AM. Either way, Asher finally knocked out.
Or so he thought.
The next thing he felt wasn't peace. It was pain.
A sharp, gut-twisting stab right in his stomach like someone had dropkicked him with steel-toe boots. His eyes snapped open.
The world around him wasn't his crappy apartment room.
Instead, he was kneeling on cobbled stone. Dirty. Cold. His head throbbed, and he couldn't move—because someone was yanking his hair back like he was livestock.
Three boys stood in front of him.
They looked… young. Maybe thirteen or fourteen at best. But the way they dressed? Full-on fantasy drama energy. High collars. Embroidered cloaks. Boots polished to the point of blinding. Straight out of some noble academy lineup or mid-tier villain squad.
But the worst part wasn't them.
It was him.
Or… this body.
He felt it immediately—thin, brittle limbs. Weak knees. Pale skin like he hadn't seen sunlight in months. He looked down at his hands and barely registered them as his own. It was like watching someone else's dream through VR. Except every breath he took hurt.
And the boy holding his hair—blonde, smug, with the permanent expression of someone who never heard the word "no" in his life—spat out with venom:
"How dare you, bastard son! Did your lowly servant mother not teach you better than to steal from us? That book is ours! Just because our blood flows through your filthy veins doesn't mean it's the same quality."
Asher blinked. Bastard son? Servant mother? Magic book?
He barely opened his mouth—didn't even get a syllable out—when another kick landed in his stomach, sending him curling forward in pain.
Laughter followed.
'What the actual hell is this?' Asher thought, face pressed against the cold stone. 'Is this some lucid dream? Did I black out so hard I Isekai'd?'
As he tried to speak. His throat was dry. His lips cracked.
But more than anything, he couldn't shake the eerie, bone-deep sensation that this wasn't a dream.
Because this pain was too real.
Asher's ribs throbbed, his breath shallow as he tried to push himself upright, but the grip on his hair tightened again, forcing his face back down to the stone.
"You think you can touch what belongs to our house, Ashryn?" one of the boys snarled, voice sharp and dripping with superiority.
Asher froze.
Ashryn.
The name hit him harder than the kick.
Ashryn?
That wasn't just a random fantasy-sounding name.
He'd read that name before.
A weird, throwaway character in The Academy's Regressor Can't Live a Peaceful Life. He wasn't even a side character—barely a background shadow. Maybe three or four mentions. A bastard son of some noble family who got accused of stealing something, then just... vanished from the plot. No big death scene. No redemption arc. No closure. Just gone. Like the author forgot he existed halfway through.
Asher remembered him for one reason and one reason only: the name. Ashryn. It felt like some bootleg mock-up of his name. He even joked in the Discord with his friends once—"yo this guy a dollar-store version of me fr"—and got a few laughing reacts. That was it.
But now?
That name had just been spit at him by some pompous brat in fantasy cosplay... while he was kneeling in some unfamiliar body that felt like wet tissue.
His pulse spiked.
"No fucking way," he whispered, voice hoarse, barely audible under the buzzing in his ears.
He wasn't dreaming.
He wasn't hallucinating.
Somehow—somehow—he was in the damn story.
Not as the regressor. Not as one of the leads. Not even as a proper supporting character.
He was Ashryn.
The character so irrelevant, the fandom wiki didn't even have a profile picture for him.
And the worst part?
This scene—this whole moment—wasn't in the novel.
Which meant…
This was before the story even started.
Before the academy. Before the main plot. Before Kaine and the crazy timeline nonsense.
This wasn't just some weird cameo drop. He'd been thrown into the prologue of a world that was already designed to chew people up and spit them out.
He tried to speak again, to say something, anything, but all he got was another blow to the ribs, followed by laughter as the boys turned to leave like they'd just finished cleaning their shoes with his body.
Asher collapsed forward, coughing, his palms scraping the ground.
This was real.
And he had no idea what came next.
But whatever it was… the real problems had yet to come.