The Guardian Of The Multiverse: A Hero's Burden

The Beginning of Trust

(Marvel, DC, images, manhuas, and every anime that will be mentioned and used in this story are not mine. They all belong to their respective owners. The main character "Karito/Adriel Josue Valdez" and the story are mine)

Heroes live short lives.

That's not poetic. That's fact.

It's easy to romanticize the idea—caped figures standing tall against the storm, smiling in the face of doom, saving the day with a speech and a spark of power. But real heroism is rarely glamorous. It's sleepless nights and broken bones. It's being too late to save the first life, and still charging in to save the second. It's holding the line when you know you'll be buried beneath it.

People forget that.

They forget that most heroes aren't born. They're made—by pain, by necessity, by the simple, stubborn refusal to watch the world fall apart. And when they're gone? Maybe a plaque. Maybe a name in a book. But more often than not, they vanish like smoke. Their legacy fades faster than the bruises they took.

Because the world moves on.

It always does.

But even among heroes, there's another layer. A deeper shadow cast behind the spotlight. A harder truth no one likes to acknowledge.

There are some protectors who will never be named at all.

They don't save people.

They save stories.

They're called Guardians.

And their lives are even shorter.

Guardians don't wear colors. They don't pose for statues. You'll never find them on posters or action figures. Their names are erased the moment they're spoken. Their deeds vanish into the margins of fiction.

Because Guardians live behind the narrative.

They aren't part of the plot. They protect the plot.

When a story begins to bend the wrong way—when a protagonist starts breaking character, when a villain suddenly wins too soon, when the world stops making sense—it's not always bad writing.

Sometimes, it's corruption.

Sometimes, something outside the story is trying to rewrite it.

That's when a Guardian steps in.

Unseen. Unknown. Unwelcome.

They enter quietly—through cracks in the fiction, between the folds of what readers believe is "canon." They fix timelines that shattered before they hit the page. They purge twisted dialogue that was never meant to exist. They erase monsters not created by the writer, but by something darker—something born of narrative decay.

You've read their work before.

You just never knew it.

Because when they succeed?

The story continues.

The hero wins the right way. The world feels whole again. The characters become who they were always meant to be. And no one questions how close it all came to collapse.

Because they weren't supposed to notice.

No one ever does.

And that's the job.

To protect fiction, even from itself.

To fight in scenes that don't exist. To die in chapters that will never be written.