Amy's fingers danced across the keyboard, each keystroke punctuated by a snicker or cackle straight from a vintage cartoon villain.

"...and this chapter, dear followers, once again proves why Quest for Avalon is THE most egregiously overhyped piece of garbage ever to sully the manga industry," she typed, pausing to chug her third energy drink of the night before continuing. "Because honestly, was I supposed to feel something when Lain sacrificed herself? To be honest, I even laughed when she blew up. For some reason, I found it kind of funny at that time."

Amy leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling for a moment. The memory of Lain's supposedly emotional death scene replayed in her brain, and she couldn't help but smile. Still funny.

She hunched forward again, and after popping her knuckles she resumed typing.

"Anyway, those are my thoughts on chapter 225: a predictable mess of mainly nonsense desperately pretending to be a real story. One star. And I'm being generous. That star is purely because reading this garbage helped me procrastinate on my responsibilities for another hour."

Her cursor hovered over the 'Post' button. She could already hear the familiar chorus: her 3M+ followers hyping her up in the comments, rabid stans absolutely losing it, and the inevitable essay responses from basement-dwelling 40-year-olds. She couldn't wait.

Amy exhaled dramatically, and without further ado, she hit the button.

Click.

Within nanoseconds, her phone went absolutely feral. Notifications flooded in. Comments. Shares. Outrage.

Ahh~ nothing drives engagement like outrage.

She'd sacrificed sleep to catch the chapter drop, but the metrics made it worth it. Posting her nuclear takes immediately after release was algorithm gold.

"Another good day of work, you beautiful bitch."

She tapped her energy drink against the monument of empty cans on her desk. Then, feeling the familiar brain fog of exhaustion creeping in, she turned her monitor off and deactivated the notifications from her phone.

Amy jumped into bed and set her alarm for noon. By morning, the comments would be straight-up warfare, and she needed to be charged up for the absolute bloodbath. Tomorrow promised more drama, more views, and more bag. At this rate, by the time she turned 18, she would finally be able to move away from this place, something which her mother would definitely celebrate.

As sleep claimed her, Amy's face relaxed into a smile—she felt accomplished... fulfilled... somewhat happy.

Sure, her life had been shitshow recently, and dropping out of school had surprisingly only made it worse. Yet still, these small moments of just hating made her feel better, if only for a short time, she was allowed to feel fine...

The serotonin didn't last.

Somewhere in the liminal silence of her apartment, her computer screen glitched back to life.

A faint ping echoed through the room. Her phone, on Do Not Disturb mode but still awake, buzzed once. Then again. Then again, rapid and insistent.

Amy groaned, rolling over, eyes barely functioning as she glared at the cursed glowing rectangle on her nightstand.

A notification. No. Hundreds. Thousands. Her sleep-deprived brain couldn't process the numbers.

Her inbox was in shambles, but not with the usual hate comments.

One message sat pinned at the top, repeating on an infinite loop:

[Funny, huh?]

"What the fuck…?" Amy sat up, suddenly more awake than a few seconds ago. A shiver crawled down her spine.

The cursor on her screen began moving on its own, lines of text appearing, typed by invisible hands.

[Let’s see if you’ll still laugh when it’s your turn.]

A high-pitched ringing filled her ears. Her vision blurred. Amy held her head as her chest tightened and breathing became difficult.

Then, darkness swallowed her completely.

-————-　■　-————-

Amy's vision slowly returned. She blinked, trying to focus her eyes. Instead of her ceiling, she saw...clouds? No, not clouds, something more solid. Were those planets…?

"Huh…" she said as she slowly sat upright.

She wasn't in her bed. She wasn't even in her apartment.

Amy found herself on an endless marble floor that stretched beyond comprehension. Columns taller than skyscrapers surrounded her, holding up a dome that captured sunlight and cranked it to eleven. The air smelled like the moment before lightning strikes.

She pinched herself hard, flinching at the pain. Not dreaming, then. A hallucination? Was she drunk? Drugs? What the hell was going on…?

"Ah, you're awake," said a voice that somehow came from everything, everywhere, all at once. "Good."

Amy scrambled up, spinning in frantic circles trying to locate the source. "Hello? Is—is this some kind of prank? Am I on camera?"

Suddenly, a figure materialized before her. It was a woman—if such a basic term could describe the being that stood there. With features that would make beauty filters obsolete, she towered at least seven feet tall, skin pale as snow, eyes seeming to contain entire galaxies, and hair flowing like liquid gold.

Amy stumbled backward, landing hard. "What the—" She scrubbed at her eyes violently. “...maybe this really is a dream…"

“This is no dream, Amy Stake. No hallucination either."

Amy's mouth opened and closed several times before words came out. "Do I...know you? How do you know my legal name?" She never used "Stake" online—her brand was purely "Amy’sInsolent."

"I know many things about you, Amy." The being's voice resonated through Amy's bones. "Your morning skincare routine. Your core memory from age seven. The real reason you dropped out of art school. The…photos…you hide under your bed."

“!?” Amy felt her face flush. "Who ARE you, you creep?"

The celestial being smiled. "I have many names across many worlds. But in the realm you know as 'Quest for Avalon,' I am simply called the Goddess."

Amy tilted her head, her mind lagging behind, trying to process the woman's words. Then, a strangled laugh escaped her lips. "Quest for—wait, the manga? This is about a manga?" She looked around wildly. "Did the publisher set this up? What the hell is going—"

"You're too loud." The Goddess flicked her wrist, and Amy's mouth literally disappeared. She pawed at the smooth skin where her lips should be, pure panic as she tried to scream but produced absolutely nothing, not a single sound.

"Your review," the Goddess said, as a screen materialized between them. Amy's latest post floated there, with passages highlighted in aggressive red. "'A hackneyed mess created by a writer who clearly never experienced genuine human emotion.' 'Characters flatter than the pages they're printed on.' 'A waste of ink that should be studied in creative writing classes as cautionary tales.'"

The screen multiplied like a digital virus, splitting into dozens of floating displays showing years of Amy's brutality: blog posts, comments, videos, and more.

Amy's knees gave out. As reality continued to glitch, her confusion leveled up. Maybe she'd had a stroke? Brain blue-screen? Was she in a coma, dreaming this fever dream? Yet everything felt too real; her senses and thoughts were crystal clear...

The Goddess waved her hand, and the screens vanished. "You have been very cruel about this particular story for years now. Tell me, Amy Stake, have you ever created anything of your own?"

Amy's voice returned as suddenly as it had disappeared. "I—I—... This can't be real. Not possible." She pressed her palms against her eyes. "I'm hallucinating. Have to be."

"This is very real," the Goddess said, ice in her tone. "As real as your words. As real as the damage they cause."

"Huh...? What?"

"A critic. That’s what you like to call yourself, is it not?" The Goddess said, with scary cold-looking eyes. "You're no critic. You destroy without understanding, mock what others pour their souls into, and do it with such...glee."

Amy frowned and scratched her head. After some moments of silence, she finally found the courage to speak despite the surreal situation. "Look, I don't have the slightest idea of what's happening here, but aren’t you acting unreasonably…? If a story is popular, it should be able to withstand criticism. I'm not going to lie and say something is good when it's objectively bad."

"Objectively?" The Goddess's eyebrow rose, and with it, Amy felt herself lifting off the ground. "You speak of objectivity while using phrases like 'absolute garbage' and 'should be burned rather than read'?"

Amy dangled in the air, feet kicking uselessly. "OMG, I’m flying!?"

The Goddess exhaled sharply and yanked Amy closer until their faces were just inches apart.

"Focus, human," she hissed.

Amy gulped, suddenly very aware that this was too high effort to be just a prank, and too real to be a hallucination or a dream. Whatever was happening, she should at least take it seriously.

"Fine, fine!" she yelped, throwing her hands up. "Maybe I was being kind of…toxic. But come on—it's literally just words on the internet! Nobody actually cares that much! And if they do, they're probably just unwashed basement dwellers who haven't touched grass since prehistoric age."

Something about those words (in particular the “basement dwellers”) made the Goddess' expression twist in anger.

Amy suddenly had a bad premonition.

"Puny creature…!" the Goddess hissed, getting even closer to Amy’s face, their noses now touching. "Apologize now."

"Uhhh..." Amy knew she should just say sorry and move on, but something inside her refused to back down. Maybe it was her stubborn pride, or maybe it was the absolute craziness of the situation. Apologize? To someone claiming to be the fictional Goddess from a mediocre manga, one she didn’t even like?

"...no."

The Goddess blinked. "No?"

“No…” Amy doubled down, fighting to keep her voice steady. "Apologize for what exactly…? Spitting facts? We both know it's true..."

The silence that followed was deafening.

Then a slow, deeply unhinged smile spread across the Goddess's face.

Yikes. Amy could feel herself trembling. Alright, this was getting out of hand; she needed to de-escalate the tension.

"Look, oh venerable miss Goddess… I'm sorry but... I honestly don't think I did anything wrong. Freedom of speech, you know? Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and mine just happens to be that Quest for Avalon is ass." Amy tried to sound confident, but her voice wavered.

The Goddess's smile widened even more, revealing teeth that gleamed like polished pearls. "Freedom? How interesting of you to invoke such a concept while floating helplessly in my domain."

She flicked her wrist, and Amy dropped to the marble floor with a painful thud.

“Ow! That hurt…” Before Amy could scramble up, golden threads burst from the floor, wrapping around her wrists and ankles.

"Huhh…what is this?" Amy squirmed against the restraints, confusion plastered across her face.

"Since you believe so firmly in your right to critique," the Goddess said, her voice now eerily calm, "I've decided to grant you a unique privilege, Amy Stake."

With a wave of her hand, the vast marble hall transformed. The columns twisted and stretched, the ceiling dissolved into a night sky crowded with unfamiliar constellations, and the floor beneath Amy became transparent, revealing countless worlds spinning below.

"Um... Miss Goddess?" Amy's voice was small now, her earlier bravado evaporating, and a tint of fear appeared.

The Goddess gestured downward, and the scene shifted again. Below Amy, one of the countless worlds zoomed into focus—a medieval city with streets lined with towering spires and glowing runes that looked straight out of a fantasy RPG loading screen.

Amy's breath caught in her throat. She knew this place, she had seen so much fanart and so many illustrations that it had been ingrained in her memory.

It was Eldoria's capital city, where the academy stood.

A setting ripped directly from Quest for Avalon.

Her stomach lurched."W-Wait, hold up. No way. This isn't happening. What are you—?"

The Goddess knelt down, gripped Amy's chin between two fingers, and whispered in her ear. "You who delights in mocking its every flaw shall now live it."

Amy’s blood ran cold. A word that had been at the back of her mind for a while suddenly took over her brain.

Isekai.

No way, this was too ridiculous. There was no way this was happening! And of all things, it had to be Quest for Avalon, the story of bad endings and tragic tales. Hell no!

The golden threads tightened, lifting her up. The wind howled around her as the world beneath her feet drew closer.

"Wait, wait, WAIT!" Amy screamed, thrashing against the golden threads. "This isn't fair! I'm just a reviewer! I didn't—"

"Critics like you should walk through the worlds they judge so harshly. Maybe then you will understand the impact of their words."

"But—but people DIE in this story! In the worst ways! Remember Ash? The one who got eaten alive by rats?" Amy's voice cracked with panic. "You're not seriously sending me there!"

"Oh, so you do care about the characters' fates. Interesting how vividly you recall them now, for someone who claimed their deaths had zero emotional impact."

"That's not—I mean—"

The goddess shook her head and let go of Amy's chin. “Such a pitiful, insolent creature… You are lucky I am not without mercy."

Amy looked up, a glimmer of hope in her eyes. "You're... not sending me there?"

The Goddess laughed. "Oh, I most certainly am."

Amy's face fell.

"But," the Goddess continued, raising one elegant finger, "I will give you something no other character in Quest for Avalon has ever had."

With a graceful motion, the Goddess pressed her palm against Amy's forehead. A warm sensation flooded through Amy's body, like someone had injected hot honey directly into her veins.

"Hope," the Goddess whispered. "Power that grows stronger with every person who comes to stan you."

“...I don't understand."

"It's pretty simple, actually," the Goddess said, circling Amy like a predator. "The nature of your special ability and its strength in addition to your very survival in this world will depend on how much the readers like you and what they believe you to be."

"Readers?" Amy stammered. "What readers?"

"Quest for Avalon is a fictional story in your world, so it obviously possesses an audience. The moment you cross into it, you'll become part of the narrative. If the readers believe you possess a certain power, you’ll possess that power; the more they like you, the stronger your power will become." The Goddess's eyes sparkled with amusement. "And the more they hate you... Well, I'm sure you can imagine."

Amy swallowed hard. "So I have to... make people like me…? "

"Precisely."

Amy furrowed her brows. “Why is this happening to me? This isn’t fair…”

"Perhaps not. But it sure is poetic, isn’t it?" the Goddess said with a serene smile. "You, who have built a career on being cruel and caustic, must now learn to be loved. The hardest of the challenges that I could ever give a creature of such malevolence as you."

Rude…

"One more thing, Amy Stake. You know as well as anyone that Quest for Avalon is a tragedy. Every path leads to sorrow, every hero falls, every love story ends in tears."

"Yeah, that's why it's garbage," Amy muttered, then quickly clamped her mouth shut when the Goddess glared at her.

"Your challenge is this: change the ending. Find a way to turn tragedy into triumph." The Goddess leaned close. "Do that, and I will return you to your world."

"Seriously?" Amy asked, voice shaking.

"Yes."

"Seriously? You'll actually return me?"

"That's what I said."

"For real? On god?"

“Yes! I said yes, human. Stop asking the same question over and over again!”

The golden threads tightened around Amy's limbs as the world beneath her grew larger.

"Wait! I'm not ready! I don't even know the whole story! I just skimmed most chapters for the highlights!" Amy thrashed uselessly. "I only wrote those reviews for the engagement! Please!"

The Goddess tilted her head. "Perhaps that makes this lesson all the more necessary."

With a flick of her wrist, the threads snapped, and Amy plummeted toward the world below. The wind rushed past her ears as she fell, her screams disappearing into the void between realities. The last thing she saw was the Goddess's face—completely unbothered yet somehow... expectant.

Then darkness swallowed her whole.