• The One Who Reincarnated

'What the... What the hell is this!!!'

Jarren's trembling fingers fumbled in fear as he yanked the gun from his mouth, barely aware of the possibility of it discharging in the process.

It clattered against the dirty, stained floor, and with his eyes of panic, he gave the object a quick scrutiny. That was when he realized that the device on the floor wasn't a gun—at least not one from his world.

Jarren's bloodshot eyes locked onto the foreign object. It resembled a gun, but it appeared to be something more familiar, a weapon he had written into his webnovel: a morgden.

'What is going on?' his terrified thoughts asked. He recoiled backwards, feeling a punch to his gut from the sudden realization. However, there was blood.

Wasn't that the taste in his mouth? Certainly, it was blood. The iron tang filled his mouth, thick and choking. A punch to the gut was supposed to be metaphorical, wasn't it? So why could he taste blood!!?

Jarren's pulse thundered in his ears, and with a burst of panic, he rose to his feet only for the grimy tiles beneath him to slip him. He stumbled and collapsed onto the cold floor, then he coughed violently.

Splat. Splat.

Two drops of blood splattered on the ground.

Jarren's eyes narrowed at the circular red stains and his heart began to pound uncontrollably. 'What the hell is happening to me?'

He coughed again, and more blood splattered out of his mouth and painted the floor. Then, like a crimson fountain, blood began to leak out of his mouth and fall to the ground.

Jarren was completely terrified now. In desperation, he pressed his trembling hands to his lips, but the blood kept coming, staining his palms and dripping down his arms, his fingers slick with red. He was also shivering uncontrollably, and his heart had not yet stopped pounding.

Following this was a sharp pain that stung his skull. Wincing in pain, Jarren arrived at the realization that he had already shot himself with the morgden. But how? He didn't remember pulling the trigger, and even if he did, how was he still alive?

'Have I gone mad? Am I having some sort of psychotic nightmare?'

A thousand possibilities for what was happening to him struck his mind, but the most likely one came when none other seemed possible.

'Is this hell?'

The bleeding eventually stopped, leaving Jarren trying to catch his breath. He made an attempt to speak, to yell for help. However, no sound emerged.

His throat suddenly felt incomplete, and now he was truly certain that he had shot himself with the morgden. It was the only explanation.

With a racing heart, his terrified eyes scanned the small, foul-smelling bathroom. The walls were a sickly brown, stained with grime, and the single weak door hung crooked on its hinges.

Jarren narrowed his eyes, took a deep breath and then a step back. Why did this bathroom look familiar? Why did this whole scene look familiar?

That was when it hit him.

He knew this place.

Every detail. The brown walls, the weak door, the disgusting odor—he had written it. It was the bathroom from his novel, the same place where one of his most forgettable characters had met their tragic end.

'No... no, no, no... This can't be happening!' he thought as he frantically scrambled to his feet. He moved clumsily and disconnected, as though he was not accustomed to the body he had.

When Jarren peered into the cracked, broken mirror on the wall, he saw why.

The reflection that stared back at him was not his.

It wasn't Jarren Fletcher, the successful webnovel author.

'Silver hair, lanky frame... Deremiah Morcant!' Jarren's heart hammered against his ribs. 'I'm... I'm Deremiah Morcant!'

This was certainly bad news... or bad luck.

Jarren had written Deremiah as a coward. Rather than face the horrors inside the Gates and help to battle paragons, he had killed himself in the very walls of this bathroom.

Jarren remembered vividly and it all clicked into place. He had reincarnated into his own novel. Not as the hero. Not even as a side character. But as Deremiah, an extra whose only role was to die in Chapter Twenty.

'No, no, no!' his mind screamed as he backed away from the mirror, hands trembling. 'This is impossible! I wrote this! I killed this guy off! If I was going to transmigrate into my own novel, it could have been with someone stronger. This guy... he's just a nobody.'

As he said that, his head snapped to the door. Remembering once again that he had written it all, he knew what came next in this chapter.

In the novel, any moment after now, Zenith Moonbreak, the protagonist of his story, would knock on the door, followed by the commander. They would break in and find Deremiah's lifeless body sprawled on the floor, a suicide.

Why had Jarren written this scene? Created an extra just for him to die in the same chapter he was introduced?

Simple. Because it was a narrative device. Just a way to show how terrifying the Gates were. How the fear of facing the paragons had driven a Marked child to take his own life rather than step into the trial.

Deremiah Morcant's death was nothing but a tool for Jarren to highlight the stakes.

And now... he was that tool. He was Deremiah.

'What sick kind of karma is this?!' he thought bitterly. 'I was right. This is hell.'

Then came the knock.

Jarren froze.

Staying frozen, he heard the familiar voice, the one he had crafted with care and precision, come from the other side of the door. Zenith Moonbreak, the Flamekeeper.

"Hey, you done in there yet?"

The voice was calm, casual, and with a hint of impatience — just as Jarren had written it. His chest tightened, heart racing as he pressed his back against the wall. He knew what would happen next.

The commander would arrive because Deremiah didn't answer, and he would break the door down.

What they were meant to see was Deremiah's dead body, but now, they would see him bleeding from his mouth and a morgden on the floor.

They'd think he had tried to kill himself. And in this world, that was an unforgivable crime.

Jarren had to think of a way out.

"Hey?! Why don't you hurry up in there! They're preparing us for the Gates and I have to use a bathroom or else I'm shitting myself once I face a paragon."

Jarren remembered. He had also written Zenith as a witty character, at least in the early stages of the novel. He even remembered writing that damn line.

Ignoring Zenith's joke, he gripped the edges of the sink, trying to calm himself so he could think.

"Open up in there!" Zenith's voice called again, a little more impatient this time.

Jarren's panic swelled.

In the world of his story, suicide was a grave offense. The Marked were chosen to stand trial in the Gates for a reason—to defend the Realm from the deadly Waves. Any sign of cowardice, any act of defiance, especially something as serious as trying to escape the Trial, was punished harshly. The last thing this world tolerated was weakness.

Jarren's mind couldn't stop reeling. 'There is no way I'm subjecting myself to the harsh rules of a world I created!'

It didn't take long for a new voice to join Zenith. A deep and stern one. Jarren knew who it was instantly: the proud leader of the Waveknights, Commander Shoreshanc.

"I don't have the time for this bilge and blither! Whoever is in there, open this door immediately!"

Jarren's blood ran cold with more fear. Shoreshanc was intimidating as they came. He was the one who gathered the Marked for the Gate Trials.

Children all over the realm feared and hated him because of his hardened, unyielding nature. He was perhaps even a bigger reason why children feared the Mark, not the Paragons themselves.

Before Jarren could think of something, Shoreshanc's voice boomed again, more forceful this time.

"You in there! We are giving you five seconds to open this door before I break it down myself. Do you hear me?"

Jarren didn't necessarily get any more scared because of that threat. He had rather expected it. It was his novel, so he knew everything they were going to do or say up to the point of them barging into the bathroom.

After then, his existence here was going to change some core subplots of the story, and the problem was that he couldn't really tell how.

Deremiah Morcant was only an extra character, one who didn't even appear in more than one chapter. So how much change could a character like that cause to the overarching story that was Gates of the Primordials?

"I'm counting now!"

Jarren quickly rushed into action. The smartest thing he could do now was not to appear as a coward who had tried to commit suicide.

He snatched up the morgden, took out the pellets inside and dumped them into the toilet. He jammed the weapon into his boot just as Shoreshanc's countdown began.

"Five!"

He tore out a piece of his shirt, soaked it with the running water and started cleaning the blood off his face thoroughly.

"Four!"

He finished with his face and hurriedly cleaned off every drop of crimson on the floor.

"Three!"

He buried the cloth inside his pocket.

"Two!"

He composed himself, although his mind kept telling him that it was all going to change. Once that door was forced in, the entire story was going to be different!

Jarren didn't know how but it was impossible for it not to. Not when the author who knew all the rules was inside of it as well.

"One!"