The sky tore open like someone had reached down and flipped the page.The sound wasn't thunder—it was paper.
Behind it, the world didn't end.It just... paused.
Every sound froze midair.Raindrops hung like punctuation marks, suspended between moments.The crowd in the square didn't move, didn't breathe—an unfinished paragraph waiting for an author's hand.
✦
I should've been terrified.Instead, I was curious.
Because on the other side of that tear, I could see them.Dozens of silhouettes—some shaped like people, some like ideas pretending to be people.Each one glowed faintly with script etched across their skin.
They weren't gods.They were something worse.
✦
[ System Notice : Unauthorized Boundary Breach — Realm : Author's Section ][ Warning : Narrative Containment Failing. ]
Arjun's ember hissed. You broke through to the section where stories are made. Ishaan, that's not a place—it's a process!
"Then I guess I'm part of the process now."
✦
The nearest figure stepped forward.Her form shimmered, the words written across her face shifting faster than I could read.
"Ishaan Reed," she said, her voice layered with echoes—as if multiple narrators were speaking through her."You weren't meant to enter this page."
"I wasn't meant to exist either. Seems I have a pattern."
The other figures rippled faintly, their whispers overlapping.
He found the blank space.He broke the alignment.He carries the Pen's Memory.
✦
I raised an eyebrow. "You're authors, right? Shouldn't you be better at introductions?"
The woman tilted her head. "We are not what you think. We are what remains of those who wrote themselves out."
"Ghostwriters," I said.
Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "Close enough."
✦
[ System Notice : The Page That Shouldn't Exist is resonating. ]
The mark on my hand pulsed.The air around me rippled, revealing thousands of faint pages drifting in the void—each one holding fragments of stories that had been erased, rewritten, or abandoned.
"You collected all this?" I asked.
"No," she said softly. "You did."
✦
Something cold slid down my spine.Each floating page began to glow, one after another, until they formed a ring of light around me.The air thrummed like a living heartbeat.
Arjun's voice was a low murmur. Ishaan, these are drafts—failed timelines, deleted worlds.
"Then why are they moving?"
Because you're reading them.
✦
The woman's tone sharpened. "Every time you rewrite a rule, a piece of reality drifts here. You've filled our section with fragments that don't belong."
"I'm cleaning up your mess."
She laughed quietly. "Our mess was order. You brought entropy with syntax."
"Sounds poetic," I said. "You practice that one?"
Her eyes narrowed. "You shouldn't joke with those who hold the erasers."
✦
The space quivered.A thousand invisible hands began to write at once, their words wrapping around me in spirals of burning light.
[ Narrative Enforcement Protocol — Initializing ][ Objective : Erase anomaly Ishaan Reed ]
Arjun flared in panic. They're rewriting you out!
"Let them try."
I raised the Inkblade. Its edge glowed faintly—black text streaming up from its core.
The script around me twisted, rewriting its own intent.Instead of erasing me, it started circling the authors themselves.
✦
The woman's composure cracked. "That's not possible!"
"Neither was I."
[ Title Effect Triggered : The One Who Breaks the Script ]
Every word in the air froze, then bent backward—an impossible reversal.The authors staggered as their own names flickered, rewritten into static.
✦
One of them fell to his knees, his body unraveling into loose sentences.The others shouted, trying to reassert control, but the void had already turned against them—pages folding, merging, overlapping in chaotic symmetry.
"You see the problem now," I said. "You made stories to control. I made stories to survive."
✦
For a heartbeat, none of them moved.Then the woman stepped forward again, expression unreadable.
"If you keep doing this," she said quietly, "there won't be a story left to break."
I smiled. "Then maybe it's time we start a new one."
The tear behind me widened, light spilling through like a dawn that didn't belong to this world.
✦
Arjun whispered, If you step through that, there's no guarantee we'll come back.
"There never was."
I tightened my grip on the Inkblade and stepped forward.The light swallowed me whole.
Light folded.Then it bled.
The next thing I knew, I was standing in a hallway made entirely of words—living sentences crawling across the walls, rewriting themselves faster than I could blink.
Every footstep echoed like a keystroke.And at the end of the hall… a desk.
It was old, cracked, and covered in ink stains that looked suspiciously like constellations.
On it sat a stack of manuscripts, unfinished.And beside them—an empty chair.
✦
[ System Notice : You have entered the True Author's Section. ][ Access Level : Undefined ]
Arjun was whispering, voice strained. This place… it's older than the gods, older than the Script itself.
"Looks messy for something ancient," I muttered.
He didn't laugh.
✦
The air shimmered, and text began to crawl across the desk surface.Not carved. Written. Now.
You shouldn't be here, Ishaan Reed.
"I keep hearing that."
You've walked through your own story's spine. Do you understand what that means?
"It means someone left the door unlocked."
✦
The writing paused.Then, slowly, new words formed.
You think you're the reader. You think you're the character. But you've been something else since the beginning.
"I'm listening."
You are the continuation I never finished.
✦
For a second, my thoughts froze.The words on the wall slowed, like even the world was waiting for me to breathe.
Arjun whispered, He's talking to himself.
"Or to what's left of himself," I said quietly.
Meaning?
"The creator wrote me as his contingency."
✦
[ Data Corruption Warning : Identity Overlap – 61% ]
The chair at the desk creaked.No one sat in it—but its shadow stretched toward me, long and deliberate.
The papers rustled, flipping to the first page.It wasn't blank.
It was my story.
✦
Every word, every scar, every fracture I'd survived lay written in ink that glowed faintly red.At the bottom of the page, one line pulsed brighter than the rest.
And when he reached the Author's Section, he learned what he was never meant to know.
I exhaled. "You really love your cliffhangers, don't you?"
The page didn't answer.But the shadow did.
✦
It rose from the floor—humanoid, but not quite human.Its edges rippled like unfinished sentences.
"I wrote worlds to understand myself," it said."And you walked into them to prove I wasn't alone."
"That's not comforting," I said.
"It's not meant to be. It's an apology."
✦
[ System Notice : Entity Identified – The Forgotten Author ]
Arjun hissed. He's not a god. He's the first narrator.
The figure smiled faintly. "I made the stories. You gave them meaning."
"By breaking them?"
"By surviving them."
✦
He lifted his hand.The manuscripts on the table burned, turning into trails of golden dust.
"I've written my last world," he said softly. "The rest is yours now."
Before I could answer, he began to fade—his body unraveling into stray words that spun slowly upward like embers.
Keep writing, Ishaan Reed. Until the end means something again.
✦
He vanished.The light dimmed.Only the desk remained, now empty except for one final page—blank except for a single, faint line of script at the top:
Script Breaker – Volume II
I stared at it, then sighed. "Of course."
✦
Arjun's ember pulsed weakly. So what now?
I looked at the empty chair."Now," I said, sitting down, "we see what happens when the story writes back."
✦
[ Title Updated : The Author Beyond the Page ][ New Function : World Creation Unlocked – Access to Blank Realms Granted. ]
The pen appeared before me—familiar, glowing faintly with that same black light that once swallowed stars.It waited.
I took it.And began to write.
✦
The void rippled as the first word formed.A world began to breathe again.