The heat from Lina's explosion still lingered in the air as the group trudged deeper into the Forbidden Zone, ash crunching beneath their boots and the occasional hiss of cooling earth echoing in the quiet. Every step forward felt heavier, the darkness pressing in thicker than before, as though the very ground disapproved of their presence.
Then the fog rolled in — sudden, unnatural, and dense enough to choke on. It slithered between the trees, curling around their legs like a living thing. Even Iris's time-enhanced senses couldn't detect where it came from.
"Everyone, weapons up," Kira hissed, drawing her daggers, her voice sharp and tense.
"Fog in the middle of a scorched zone?" Lina muttered. "This isn't natural."
That's when they heard it. A voice.
Not loud. Not demanding. But somehow... there — right behind their ears, beneath their thoughts.
"You carry a crown not meant to exist."
The group whirled around. And there, standing on a rock that no one had seen before, was a figure in a cloak so tattered it seemed part of the fog itself. The person — if it was a person — wore a blindfold of woven silver threads across their eyes, and their skin had a faint, pulsating glow like a living System interface.
"State your identity!" MC shouted, trying to sound brave while awkwardly holding his sword backwards. (He quickly flipped it around, hoping no one noticed.)
"I am a Seer. One who glimpses the threads that weave the fate of Systems," the figure said, in a voice that sounded male, female, old, young — all at once. "And you… are a fracture."
MC blinked. "I—what?"
"You carry a System that was not born of this world's rules," the Seer continued, slowly walking in a circle around him. "The 'Harem King'—a title the old laws never permitted, a mechanism that copies, fuses, and bends the will of affection into raw power. You walk a path not written in the code of destiny."
"Okay, wow," Jax said, wobbling slightly. "That was poetic. Also terrifying. Also... I may have peed a little."
Kira groaned.
But MC stepped forward, frowning. "What do you mean not born of this world? I got my System like everyone else at sixteen."
"Did you?" The Seer tilted their head. "Or did your System choose you?"
There was silence. Even Luna, normally quiet and withdrawn, leaned in with a mixture of fear and curiosity.
The Seer extended a hand, palm glowing with lines of energy — not like the System interface they were used to. It was ancient, tangled, chaotic. "Your System is not simply a tool of fate. It is a wedge. A weapon. A question without an answer. It has no place among the others."
"So what? You want me to give it up?" MC asked, but his voice cracked halfway through the sentence.
The Seer didn't respond directly. Instead, they turned slightly toward the others. "You all are changing. Twisting in ways the world is not ready for. Fire and time should not fuse. Shadows should not love light. And yet… you persist."
They stepped back into the fog. "There will be a reckoning, 'King of Hearts.' The world notices. The System remembers."
"Wait!" MC shouted, stepping forward, but the fog swallowed the figure whole. In a blink, they were gone.
Silence again.
"…Did anyone understand what just happened?" MC finally asked.
"I think you got called a cosmic glitch," Iris offered.
"Or a threat," Lina muttered, still visibly on edge. "That Seer… they weren't joking. That wasn't some random side quest NPC. That was something big."
Luna looked down at her hands, her lips pressed tight. Her own interface blinked silently, as though afraid to speak.
Jax finally broke the tension by raising his mug. "Well. Nothing motivates a party like impending cosmic doom. To the Harem King!"
Nobody toasted back.
Kira rubbed her temples. "If you say that phrase again, I'm stabbing you in the knee."
But deep down, none of them could shake the feeling: things were shifting. Systems had rules. But what if someone, somewhere, was starting to rewrite them?
END OF CHAPTER 63