The Shadow Queen Is Too Alluring—I Can't Handle This Anymore!
Chapter 95 - I Am the Forgotten Draft

Chapter 95: Chapter 95 - I Am the Forgotten Draft

Silence.

Not the quiet before danger.

The kind of silence where nothing exists to make a sound.

Lyra opened her eyes.

No throne.No sky.No Kael.No Aelira.

No stars.No sentences.No plot.

Just her.

Suspended in an endless white void.

Her breath echoed like someone else’s.

She tried to speak—her name, anything.

But her voice came back delayed, warped, like the system hadn’t decided how to process her yet.

"...L—y—r—a..."

The system had put her on hold.

She sat on the floor—if it could even be called that—and touched her chest.

No rune.No wound.Not even a heartbeat.

This is what deletion feels like.Not an explosion.Just... silence pretending it was mercy.

She wasn’t rewritten.She wasn’t erased.

She was unlinked.

Her world had lost its place in the story tree.

She curled into herself, the weight of isolation pressing in like gravity made from regret.

Is this what happened to all the old characters?To the first queens, to the failed drafts, to the loyal knights no one remembered?

She wasn’t gone.

She just wasn’t loaded.

Time didn’t tick here.

It waited.

Every second dragged like an unwritten ellipsis... never quite ending. Never beginning.

Around her, outlines of memories flickered like dying fireflies—Kael’s smile, Aelira’s laugh, the burn of betrayal, the roar of rebellion.

But they were all dimmed—like someone had turned her world to grayscale.

She tried to scream.

But here, emotion had no UI.

Lyra stood—swaying, numb.

Then, from the blankness, a shape began to rise.

A mirror.

But it didn’t show her.

It showed... versions of her.

Lyra the Queen.Lyra the Villain.Lyra the Sidekick.Lyra who died in Chapter 12.Lyra who was written out before the throne even existed.

And then—

Lyra with no story at all.

She touched the mirror.

Her reflection did not move.

Because this Lyra had never been uploaded.

Only imagined.

That’s when it hit her.

They weren’t keeping me alive because I mattered.They kept me because I performed.

The moment the audience had a shinier version—Fanfic Lyra, Draft Zero, any Lyra who smiled the right way—she had become a risk.

Not just to the plot.

But to the product.

And now, I’m in a sandbox.The test server.The "maybe later" folder.

Tears welled, but didn’t fall.

Because here—feelings didn’t render unless requested.

Then—

A flicker.

A spark.

A voice.

Crackling like it came through a speaker made of bone.

"Lyra?"

Her heart stopped.

Not in fear. In hope.

"...Aelira?"

The mirror glowed.

The wall beside her cracked.

And from it—barely visible—Aelira’s hand pushed through.

Like she was reaching across code.

"Lyra—are you still you?"

Lyra cried out, rushing forward, pressing her palm to the shimmering breach.

"I’m still me—I never stopped being me!"

Aelira’s voice was strained. "The system locked your arc. It flagged you as ’inconsistent.’ But Kael and I... we found a line. A line you wrote."

"What line?!"

Aelira whispered:

"I was never the story. I was the one who made it worth reading."

The void shook.

The mirror shattered.

And behind Lyra—

A page loaded.

Not from the system.

But from offline memory.

And it had her name at the top:

Chapter ONE (UNPUBLISHED)

And beneath it—

"She was never supposed to exist. But she did. And she would write herself into permanence."

Lyra smiled for the first time in this hell.

Because now, the story wasn’t bringing her back.

She was bringing the story back.

Lyra stood before the floating page.

No border.No title card.No formatting.

Just her name at the top—scrawled in hesitant, trembling font:

Lyra Ver. 0.01 – Unpublished

She touched the surface.

The page didn’t open.

It shuddered.

The system around her pulsed once, then flashed red.

[⚠ Unauthorized Memory Access Detected][Auto-Sanitize Protocol Engaged][Warning: Legacy Draft Identified as Non-Canonical]

Lyra laughed. A low, bitter sound.

"That’s the whole point, isn’t it?"

They never let me be real because I didn’t test well.Because I wasn’t predictable.Because I wasn’t them.

She clenched her jaw, pulled her pen-blade from her side—and began to write.

Not into the void.

Into the system.

Line by line. Word by word.

She rewrote herself.

The real world cracked.

Kael blocked another swing from Draft Zero—her movements sharp, precise, algorithmically perfect.

"She’s adapting!" he gasped. "Every time I hit her, she optimizes!"

Aelira ducked under a swing from Fanfic Lyra, rolling to cover.

"They’re syncing. Like a combat patch updating in real time."

The battlefield was now a rendering field—half-rendered sentences, broken character frames, flickering memories forming walls that changed based on audience interest.

Aelira looked up.

And for a moment—

Saw Lyra’s name flicker in the sky.

"She’s trying to break back in."

Kael bled from the lip, grinning. "Then we’d better hold the door."

The system’s voice echoed, sharp and metallic:

[Rejection Detected. Please format to approved structure.]

Lyra shouted at the void:

"No. You rejected me before I even had a sentence."

I’m not a bug.I’m the part of the code you couldn’t control.

She pressed the final word into the draft—

And the entire void around her fractured.

Suddenly—

She saw herself.

Not just one.

All versions.

Hundreds.

Laughing. Dying. Kissing Kael. Killing him. Holding Aelira. Leaving her.

Some lasted ten Chapters. Some, ten lines.

Some never even had names.

They turned toward her.

They spoke as one:

"Write us free."

Lyra’s eyes burned.

So that’s what this was.

Not resurrection.

Restoration.

Not of power.

But of possibility.

She stepped forward and lifted the unpublished draft high.

The system screamed.

[Legacy Rejection Reversed][Unpublished Material Now Canonized][Narrative Host: LYRA01 REACTIVATED]

Her pen-blade gleamed again—

This time not with blood.

But with beginning.

Aelira was bleeding.

Her stars were flickering—Reader Ranking 2.1"Low Retention Risk"

Fanfic Lyra raised her blade, eyes shimmering. "This version of you was always weak."

Kael blocked it last second. "You don’t get to say her worth."

Then—

A rift burst open in the sky above.