Extra's Guide To Surviving The Apocalypse

Chapter 99: Chapter 98: Maybe I Really Did It

Chapter 98: Maybe I Really Did It

Iris opened her eyes.

For a moment, she remained where she was, staring through the branches overhead. The sky had already darkened while she was lost in the memory, and the two moons were now high above Velaris, their pale light spilling through the leaves and across the clearing.

She blinked slowly, letting the cool night air settle over her skin.

Velaris.

She was back.

The realization should have been enough to pull her completely out of the memory, but it didn’t. The images were still too fresh in her mind. Even though the Hail Estate Gate was no longer in front of her, she could still picture it with uncomfortable clarity. She could still remember Caleb being alive when the family reached the gate, and she could still remember what was supposed to happen afterward.

Except it hadn’t. Caleb had survived. Iris lowered her gaze.

That was where everything had started.

She hadn’t saved Caleb because she had made some carefully thought-out decision to rewrite the novel. At the time, there hadn’t been any grand plan behind it. She had remembered what happened at the Hail Estate Gate, recognized that Caleb was in danger, and acted before the event she knew from the novel could happen.

She had saved him because she knew he was supposed to die.

That was it.

Or at least, that was what she had believed it was. Iris rested her head against the tree and stared into the darkness between the branches.

Back then, she had been too focused on surviving to think about consequences. She had been trying to stay ahead of the apocalypse, trying to understand this strange world and figure out what she could use from her knowledge of the original story.

Saving Caleb had simply been one of the things she had done along the way.

But now that she had seen the original story play out again through the memory, she couldn’t look at it that simply anymore.

Caleb’s death had been the first major loss of the Hale family.

His absence had followed them through everything that came afterward. The family continued, but they were never truly the same. The journey became harder, the losses accumulated, and eventually the family that had once been whole was reduced to one tragedy after another.

Iris swallowed. She knew how it ended, She had read it.

And yet, she was sitting beneath a tree in Velaris with Caleb somewhere in this world, alive.

Her fingers moved absently through the grass beside her.

That alone should have been enough to prove the story had changed.

But there was more.

So much more.

The original novel had never mentioned everyone having Systems. Iris remembered that clearly. There had been no second layer of systems appearing among survivors, no strange mechanics that she had to account for, no world called Eldelon waiting beyond the reality she had once believed she understood.

And there had certainly been no System 003.

Iris’s expression tightened slightly. 003 had become such a constant presence in her life that it was easy to forget how impossible its existence actually was.

Then there was the Iris she had created. That was perhaps the strangest thing of all.

She had entered this world expecting to deal with characters and events she already knew. Instead, she had ended up making choices that created things the original story had never contained.

At some point, she had stopped following a story and started living in something else entirely.

Iris looked down at her hands. "How much did I change?"

The question escaped her before she could stop it.

The clearing gave her no answer. She let out a quiet breath. Maybe that was the problem.

She had been measuring every change individually when perhaps she should have been looking at everything together.

Caleb surviving had changed one thing.

But one changed event could affect another.

And another.

It was like pulling at a loose thread. She might have thought she was only moving one small part of the fabric, only to discover later that the entire pattern had shifted.

Her eyes wandered toward the dark forest.

If Caleb had lived, then the Hale family had experienced a future different from the one she remembered.

If the Hale family had experienced a different future, then the circumstances surrounding everything that came afterward had changed too.

And if enough things had changed, then eventually the entire storyline could become unrecognizable.

Iris slowly smiled.

She had been so afraid of missing something from the original novel. Maybe she should have been more afraid of assuming the original novel still mattered.

Her thoughts returned to the family.

Benjamin was alive. The thought felt almost strange after everything she had just remembered.

In the original story, Benjamin had watched his family disappear and eventually allowed revenge to consume what remained of him. He had died fighting against the people responsible for what had happened to them.

But the Benjamin she knew now was not a memory.

He was here.

Veronica was here too.

Iris remembered the woman she had just watched break beneath grief in the original timeline. She remembered how the loss of her children had slowly taken everything out of her until there was nothing left for her to hold onto.

Yet Veronica was still alive.

Henry was alive as well.

The man whose medication eventually ran out in the original story had not reached that ending here.

And then there was Iris herself. She had died in that story.

Yet she was sitting beneath a tree, alive enough to complain about being tired, hungry, confused, or whatever else this world decided to throw at her next.

The realization settled over her gradually.

Her family had not merely survived one event.

They had survived a future that was supposed to destroy them.

Iris’s expression softened.

She didn’t know whether she should laugh or cry.

The memory had felt so real that for a while she had almost forgotten which version of her family she was looking at. She had watched their suffering with the same helplessness she might have felt if it were happening to her now.

But it wasn’t happening now.

That was the part she needed to hold onto.

It had already happened in the story she remembered.

It had not happened here.

A small smile appeared on her face.

"Maybe I really did it."

The words were barely louder than a whisper.

She almost laughed at herself immediately afterward.

Did what?

Change the story?

Save her family?

Destroy the original plot?

She didn’t even know which one applied anymore.... Maybe all three.

Iris tilted her head back against the tree.

For so long, she had thought her knowledge of the novel was her greatest advantage. It had told her which people to trust, which events to fear, and which dangers were waiting ahead.

But lately, that same knowledge had started becoming less reliable.

Not because she had forgotten it.

Because the world had changed.

The more she interfered, the more uncertain the future became.

At first, that had terrified her.

What good was knowing the original story if every choice she made could alter what came next?

But now she was beginning to see another side of it. Maybe uncertainty wasn’t necessarily a disadvantage.

Maybe it meant she was no longer trapped inside someone else’s story.

Iris glanced toward the sky again. The twin moons remained bright above the trees, their light washing the clearing in a quiet silver glow.

She thought about the original Iris.

That girl had never been given the chance to see what happened after her own death. She had never known whether her family survived, never had the opportunity to make different choices, and never got to wonder whether things could have turned out differently.

Current Iris had that chance.

Not because she was somehow stronger than the original Iris. Not because she knew everything.

Simply because she had arrived before the ending and refused to let some of it happen.

That thought made her smile again.

Perhaps she had been too hard on herself.

She had spent so much time worrying about whether she was changing things that she hadn’t stopped to appreciate the fact that some changes were exactly what she wanted.

Caleb was alive. Her family was still together. And she was still here.

Whatever else had changed, those things mattered. Iris drew her knees closer and rested her arms over them.

There were still countless questions waiting for her.

What exactly was 003?

Why did Systems exist when they had never appeared in the original novel?

Why was this world called Eldelon when the story she remembered had never been like this?

And how far had the changes already spread?

She didn’t have answers. Not yet.

But she didn’t feel the same urgency to find them this second.

The memory had reminded her of something more important.

She had been living as though the original ending was always waiting for her somewhere ahead.

Now she knew better.

The ending she remembered belonged to a different version of the world.

A world where Caleb died at the gate. A world where the Hale family slowly fell apart. A world where she never made it this far.

This world was different. She was different.

And perhaps the future was different too.

Iris slowly got to her feet.

Her legs were slightly stiff from sitting in the same position for so long. She stretched them before brushing the dirt from her clothes, then glanced around the clearing.

The memory was finally beginning to feel distant.

Not erased.

She doubted she would ever forget it. But it no longer had the same weight. She had seen the ending.

Now she could stop looking at it. Iris turned her face toward the path ahead.

There was no Chapter waiting to tell her what would happen next.

No page she could turn to find out whether her family would survive.

No guarantee that the next event would unfold the way she remembered.

For once, that didn’t bother her.

She had spent enough time looking backward.

Whatever happened next would have to be dealt with when it came.

Iris took one last look at the two moons before turning away from the tree.

A faint smile remained on her face.

Maybe she really had changed the story.

And maybe that wasn’t something she needed to be afraid of anymore.

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