Inside an elegantly decorated underground study, Dorothy sat on an ornate chair, her expression stunned as she looked at her surroundings. Faced with such an abrupt and dramatic transformation, even someone as composed as she couldn’t help but feel surprised.
Sturdy, antique bookshelves. Clean, polished floors. Bright oil lamps. Neatly arranged books. Countless people quietly reading… No matter how she looked at it, this place seemed like a fully functioning library—certainly not the long-abandoned underground archive she had just been in for decades.
The archive had suddenly become what it was now, and it had done so silently and seamlessly. Dorothy had anticipated that fabricating pseudo-history might cause some change, but she hadn’t expected this kind of change...
“Where is this? Judging by the layout, I should still be in the underground archive beneath Bastis… but the decor is completely different. And who are these people?”
Dorothy carefully observed her surroundings. She noticed that both she and several of her corpse marionettes had appeared in this familiar-yet-strange environment. Around them were numerous robed figures dressed in the North Ufiga style, browsing books as if in a normal library. None of them reacted to Dorothy or her marionettes at all—they behaved as though they couldn’t even see her.
Faced with this, Dorothy frowned and began pondering. Soon, she recalled the conversation she’d overheard just after arriving in this strange new place—between two students who had passed her by.
“Right… one of them mentioned the name Hayak… and Hayak is the one I…”
Suddenly realizing something, Dorothy froze for a moment. Then she stood up and walked quickly toward the library’s exit. Sure enough, at the location corresponding to the original archive’s exit, she found a familiar staircase—same direction, same number of steps. She ascended swiftly through the corridor.
Upon pushing open a door at the top, Dorothy emerged into a vast indoor space. Towering columns and rows of bookshelves filled the area, holding even more books. People strolled between the shelves, reading and searching. Sunlight streamed in through massive windows, flooding the space with natural light. If where she had been before was a library basement, then this was, without question, a fully realized, proper library.
After a quick glance around, Dorothy hurried out the main doors and stepped outside. What she saw next was a bustling city street.
Countless people, dressed in North Ufiga-style robes, filled the wide roads. Camels pulled by handlers swayed as they hauled heavy loads, their bells jingling. Vendors along the roadside called out to customers, hawking their goods. The entire street bustled with lively commerce.
Dorothy stood quietly, staring. The layout and structure of the street resembled what she’d seen before—but in her reality, it had been desolate, plagued by disease, dominated by cults, and reeking of decay. Here, it was a normal city street.
She continued walking forward. After descending the front steps of the library and turning around, she looked back—and saw a tall gray-yellow building with countless large windows. Its architecture was familiar. She had seen it before—but only as ruins charred by fire.
It was the National Library established by the Santo Dynasty. Once destroyed in the fires of war, it now stood before her, pristine and intact.
"This is… truly astonishing..."
Dorothy murmured in awe as she took in the sight.
...
In the ancient oasis city within the desert, atop a tall tower in a palace, a middle-aged man stood. He wore regal robes, a vibrant feathered turban, and sported a thick beard. Hands resting on the railing, he gazed over the sprawling city. Beside him stood an elderly man in a white robe.
“Your Majesty, this year’s sandstorms in the northern provinces have caused more damage than expected. We should consider some measures to mitigate the loss.”
“Yes, I’ve already sent people to investigate the situation. It’s also time to prepare disaster relief supplies. And we’ll need more than just that. Bandits tend to appear after disasters like this—we’ll need preventative measures too…”
As he looked out over the prosperous city, the middle-aged man gave orders. Then he turned and sat with the elder at a nearby stone table and bench to discuss relief plans in detail. Unbeknownst to them, a pair of eyes were quietly observing their conversation.
Dorothy, standing atop the tower, silently watched the scene. Her gaze was calm, but her heart stirred deeply.
She knew who these men were: King Hayak and his advisor Hassan—characters she had fabricated during her pseudo-historical extension of the Santo Dynasty. Hayak was the sixth-generation king of the dynasty, a man who had never existed.
“Fictional historical figures… now brought to life? That’s unbelievable… no, even more unbelievable is the fact that this entire fictional dynasty has come to life.”
Dorothy marveled silently, then turned her head toward the sunlit city spread out beneath the tower’s railing. Though its tall buildings had multiplied and its scale now extended beyond the city walls, she could still clearly recognize the structural layout—it was Bastis.
But this was not the Bastis of reality, torn by plague, war, and cults. This was the Bastis that had lived on in her fictitious history—peaceful, stable, and prosperous for decades.
Even now, Dorothy struggled to believe she had stepped into a world constructed entirely from her own written history. That such a fabricated narrative could manifest into something so real was beyond her imagination.
“So this is… the miracle wrought by the lingering divine power of the Heaven’s Arbiter? Truly… unbelievable…” she murmured again as she took in the cityscape. Then her gaze sharpened.
“I don’t know the exact mechanism by which this force operates. But judging from what’s happening now, if I want to find Heopolis, I must approach this divine power through historical compilation. So now, I need to thoroughly investigate this pseudo-historical world… perhaps through it, I can gain a deeper understanding of this divine force.”
With that, Dorothy made her decision: to carefully study the world she had written into being.
…
Several hours later, Dorothy completed an initial survey of the pseudo-historical world she had found herself in, using various methods to better understand its nature and characteristics.
First of all, she had suddenly arrived in this world—along with a portion of her corpse marionettes—without any warning. This world was no illusion; every person, object, and detail was materially real. The people here could speak, appeared to have independent will and lives, and did not resemble puppets.
The society of pseudo-historical Bastis was remarkably complete. From commoners to officials to nobles, everyone had their own trajectory and daily life. This world operated exactly according to the settings Dorothy had established while writing her history. She had defined how the Santo Dynasty’s bureaucracy evolved and which offices existed during King Hayak’s reign—and sure enough, all those officials existed here. She had written that the third king erected a commemorative monument in the city center of Bastis—there it was, standing tall. She had written that the fourth king married a commoner named Hana—sure enough, a portrait of Queen Hana could be found in the palace.
This world followed Dorothy’s fabricated history and settings with absolute fidelity. And for areas she had not specifically detailed—such as holidays, festivals, or local customs rooted in the dynasty—there were robust expressions of those too. It was as though the world had been fleshed out and expanded into a living reality based on Dorothy’s foundational framework.
Next, there was the curious nature of her connection to this world. Neither Dorothy nor the corpse marionettes who had come with her could be perceived by its inhabitants. To the people here, she and her marionettes were entirely invisible—no sound or action could elicit a reaction from them.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t exist physically. She and her marionettes could pick up items, drink water, eat food. If she ordered a marionette to tap someone on the head, that person would feel the pain, look around in confusion—yet be unable to see the culprit. They were essentially "invisible" entities in this world.
Dorothy also tested the world’s boundaries. After brief exploration, she confirmed that the pseudo-historical world was vast—any edge, if it existed, was far off. She could see all of Bastis in full detail, and beyond it, numerous settlements. Traders from all over Busalet gathered in the city, bringing news from other regions.
However, when it came to areas outside of Busalet, no information could be gleaned. Dorothy never heard foreign news from any merchant, and she could find no foreign traders in the city. At the library, she found a few documents vaguely referencing foreign lands, but they were extremely sparse. The capital of a supposedly prosperous kingdom having no foreign visitors at all was bizarre.
Thus, Dorothy speculated that the boundaries of the pseudo-historical world might be limited to all of Busalet. Whether anything beyond existed was uncertain—but with time limited, she had no opportunity to travel to the edge of Busalet and verify it.
Next, she investigated the relationship between this pseudo-world and the real world. Upon entering this world, her spiritual threads linked to the original reality had been severed—yet the system’s information channel remained functional. Dorothy was able to contact Nephthys and Vania in the real world. After confirming that everything on their end remained unchanged, she concluded that she hadn’t altered reality—the real world still existed as it was. She had simply crossed into a different pseudo-historical world.
Finally, Dorothy began seeking a way to return. Since she had entered this world by compiling a historical manuscript, it stood to reason she would need to use a similar method to return.
She discovered that not all of her corpse marionettes had been brought into this world. Only those who had participated in the writing process—and who were physically touching the manuscript at the moment of transfer—had come along. Those who had merely guarded the room or provided auxiliary help had remained in the original world. In other words, only those who actively contributed to the creation of the pseudo-history had entered it.
The trigger for Dorothy’s entry was the pseudo-history manuscript she had written for the Santo Dynasty—one that spanned sixty years and brought the fictional history up to the present year of 1361. This “synchronization” of dates between fictional and real timelines had created the condition for her transfer.
“If… crossing over was triggered by a temporal synchronization between the real and the fabricated history, then eliminating that synchronization should allow me to return, right?”
Sitting once again in the underground library of the pseudo-historical Bastis, Dorothy silently contemplated this as she gazed at a thick stack of manuscripts on the long wooden table. These were the pseudo-histories she had compiled for the Santo Dynasty—and they had been transported here with her.
“Radiance Calendar, Year 1361, Royal Year 64, April 11th. King Hayak receives reports of a massive sandstorm disaster in the eastern provinces, urgently summons his advisor Hassan to the palace for discussion.”
That passage was the last entry she had written in her fabricated history. It was after completing that line that she—and her marionettes—were transported into the pseudo-historical world. April 11, 1361: both the current date in the real world and the date in her fictional history.
“If this temporal alignment between the two histories is what caused the crossover…”
So thinking, Dorothy reached for a pen. After a moment of contemplation, she picked up a piece of fruit from the basket on the table and tucked it into her robe pocket. Then she raised her pen and decisively drew a line through the final sentence she had written.
The moment her pen left the page, the world around her plunged into chaos. Everything—light, time, color—twisted into abstraction. Except for Dorothy, the manuscript before her, and a few corpse marionettes who had touched the manuscript, the entire world distorted and flickered violently before quickly stabilizing once more.
As the light and color returned to normal, real matter began to manifest again: a stone desk, dusty shelves, torn books, dim oil lamps. The elegantly decorated underground library vanished completely, and in its place, the desolate archive of reality reappeared. Dorothy had returned to the real world.
"Phew… as expected, breaking the synchronization really did let me come back…"
Standing up, Dorothy exhaled deeply and murmured. Looking around, she saw the marionettes who had not touched the manuscript still lying motionless on the ground—they had never entered the pseudo-historical world. Those who had touched the manuscript, however, had returned with her.
But… a few were missing. The marionettes she had deliberately prevented from touching the manuscript before the crossover had not returned—they appeared to be left behind in the pseudo-historical world.
Dorothy then reached into her robe pocket, searching for the piece of fruit she had tucked away—only to find nothing.
"So… objects from the fabricated history world can’t be brought back into the real world..."