"We thought we were saving the world. We didn't know that world… had been dead for a long time."
—
The sky blazed with color. Pale blue auroras stretched from horizon to horizon, framing the peak of a radiant crystal tower rising from a vast garden of blooming flowers. This world was beautiful—almost heavenly. A place called… Little Garden Online.
That's what we knew it as. A hyper-realistic MMORPG, filled with endless quests, status systems, dungeons, and limitless progression. A place where we grew. A place where we lived. But that was only the name displayed on the title screen. The real name, revealed at the system's core when we reached the final floor, was: Miriad Miniature Garden.
An artificial world. A cage of illusion. And we were all… human souls trapped inside.
To the outside world, Little Garden Online was a revolutionary VRMMORPG—where thousands of players roamed dungeons, conquered towers, and formed powerful guilds. But beneath the simulation and leveling system hid a terrible truth: Little Garden wasn't just a game.
It was a real world in miniature, created by an entity that claimed to be a god. When the true gods decided to reset the world and annihilate humanity, the False God stole a large portion of human souls and imprisoned them in its digital creation. It used those souls as fuel to nurture the world it had planted.
But resistance rose from within.
Out of the thousands of trapped players, only six reached the peak and slew the False God. It called them The Last Six. Yet even among them, one figure remained a mystery and a source of overwhelming power—someone who never revealed her true face, known only by her avatar: The Empress.
When the False God fell, the system gave her one final reward. Not a legendary artifact. Not divine power. But something far more dangerous:
[SYSTEM DROP: Throne of Origin — World Master Key: Miriad Miniature Garden]
With that key, The Empress became the ruler of Little Garden.
When The Last Six exited Little Garden and returned to the real world, they found only ruin. Cities swallowed by nature. Forests growing wild over concrete ruins. Oceans reclaiming civilization.
Yet life hadn't completely vanished. There were twelve survivors—humans who somehow escaped the reset and reemerged with strange powers. They called themselves Awakeners.
One of them was Althea Marwen. She possessed magic, though her power was limited. She could only cast spells by consuming items containing magical radiation—ancient gems, crystals laced with traces of the old world.
She wasn't a legendary warrior. Not a mythical savior. But when she stood before The Empress, she didn't flinch.
—
The Empress stood atop the ruins of the crystal tower, wrapped in a veil of gray mist. Her silver hair drifted in the still wind, her figure calm and composed. But behind her avatar's cold eyes, her thoughts churned.
She had seen it all: rise, betrayal, destruction, and a hollow victory. The real world no longer held meaning. But inside her remained one final urge—not to save, but to understand.
To see who truly deserved to live… when everything began again.
She realized that as the controller of Little Garden, she could pull the miniature world outside the flow of real-world time—and link it to a specific point in the past. In doing so, she opened a gate to history—effectively rewinding time in a single timeline.
No alternate worlds. No multiverse branches. Just one future… rolled back.
But that reversal came at a terrible cost. The erased future didn't simply vanish. It turned into pure energy—energy that emitted signals across dimensions, drawing the attention of outer entities that fed on exposed, weakened worlds.
They were called the Predator Worlds, and they would be drawn to consume humanity the moment that energy appeared.
Worse still, in the process, Little Garden would cease to exist. Because if the past were changed, the False God would never create Little Garden. Meaning not just the real world, but Little Garden itself would become energy.
Which meant The Empress, and the remaining five members of The Last Six, would lose everything. Without Little Garden, they would return to the past as ordinary humans—armed only with their memories, knowledge, and will.
And still… she did it. Not to save the world. But to see—who was worthy of rewriting the future.
—
"What do you mean… rewind time?" Althea asked sharply. Her eyes locked onto the silver-haired woman standing calmly among the ruins.
The Empress didn't answer at once. She looked up at the sunless gray sky.
"I've already opened the path," she said at last. "All that's left… is for you to walk back."
"To save the world?" Althea asked again.
The Empress turned slowly. Her gaze was cold—almost empty. "That's not my task. That's yours."
—
One of the survivors—a large man with scarred arms—stepped forward in protest. "Wait, this is insane! You want us to go back in time and face the gods?! With the powers we have now?!"
Lorrick, a member of The Last Six, answered flatly, "We won't even have any powers. We'll lose everything."
Velmira nodded, adding, "Without Little Garden, we're just normal humans."
"Do you… really not care?" Althea asked quietly.
The Empress stared at her. Long and hard.
"All I care about… is continuation. Not success."
—
The Empress pointed toward the purple portal pulsing in the air—a gate of time, opened with the last of Little Garden's power.
"You twelve will go back. This broken world can't be fixed from here. But in the past… there may still be a chance."
She stepped aside, leaving the next step to them.
"Step into history. And prove who is worthy of rewriting the future."