Arthur is no longer just reading the script—he is bleeding it. But in a world where your face can be a lie and your savior might be a parasite, who can you trust? The ink is running thin.
They say that in the moment of total darkness, your other senses sharpen to compensate for the loss of sight. They lied. When the world turned black in that vault, my senses didn't sharpen; they screamed.
I couldn't hear Clara's breathing anymore. I couldn't hear the hum of the city's power grid. All I could hear was the scratching. It was the sound of a thousand needles dancing on glass—the sound of the pencil writing frantically, even though my hands were clamped shut over my ears.
"Arthur?"
The voice didn't come from the room. It came from inside the darkness itself. It was my voice, but it sounded like it had been dragged through gravel and soaked in a century of regrets.
"Who are you?" I whispered, my words disappearing into the void.
"I am the version of you that didn't write 'Darkness'," the voice replied. "I am the version that let Clara touch his forehead with the Eraser. I am the blank space you are trying to fill."
A spark ignited. Not a flame, but a cold, purple flicker of light. It was the Eraser. Clara hadn't moved. She was standing exactly where she had been, but she was frozen, like a glitch in a video game. The purple light from her device was suspended in mid-air, illuminating her face in a ghoulish, static glow. She looked like a wax figure, her eyes wide, her hand outstretched, trapped in the millisecond before she would have ruined me.
I looked down at the notebook. It was glowing too. The word DARKNESS wasn't just written on the page; it had physically torn through the paper, leaving a jagged, bottomless hole that seemed to be sucking the light out of the room.
My hand, as if possessed by a magnetic pull, reached for the pencil. It was even shorter now. A mere sliver of wood. I felt its desperation. It was dying, and it wanted to take me with it.
"RUN," it wrote. The word appeared on the frozen air itself, etched in gray smoke. "THE SCRIPT IS REBOOTING. YOU HAVE FORTY SECONDS BEFORE REALITY RESUMES."
"Where?" I panicked. "Where do I go?"
The pencil jerked my hand toward the back wall of the vault—a solid slab of reinforced concrete.
"DO NOT LOOK AT THE WALL," the pencil commanded, the lead burning into my skin. "WRITE THE WORD [DOOR] ON YOUR OWN CHEST."
My heart hammered. Write on myself? In Viridian, we were taught that our bodies were sacred property of the State, never to be marked or altered. To write on my skin was the ultimate desecration. But the count was ticking in my head. Thirty seconds.
I pressed the stubby pencil against the fabric of my blue technician's suit, right over my heart. I pushed hard, feeling the sharp point pierce the cloth and graze my skin. I wrote: DOOR.
The sensation was agonizing. It felt like my ribs were being pried apart by invisible hands. I didn't see a door appear on the wall; instead, I felt my own body become the opening. The world tilted. The concrete wall in front of me didn't move, but it suddenly looked like water—transparent and inviting.
Twenty seconds.
I looked back at Clara. Her frozen eyelid flickered. The "Script" was fighting back, trying to stitch the fabric of time back together. If she woke up while I was halfway through that wall, I'd be severed in two.
Ten seconds.
I lunged forward, not into the wall, but through it. It felt like diving into a pool of ice-cold oil. My lungs seized. For a moment, I was nowhere. I was between the lines of a story that hadn't been edited yet.
And then, I was falling.
I hit a pile of something soft and suffocating. The smell hit me instantly—the overwhelming, dusty scent of a million rotting dreams. I opened my eyes.
I wasn't in the tunnels anymore. I was in a room filled from floor to ceiling with books. Real, physical books. Thousands of them, their spines cracked, their pages bleeding ink. This was the Last Library. The place the Script told us was a myth created by terrorists to incite nostalgia.
"You made it," a voice said.
I scrambled back, clutching the notebook to my chest. Standing by a high, arched window was Clara.
No, that was impossible. Clara was back in the vault, frozen in the purple light. But this woman... she had Clara's face, Clara's hair, but she was wearing a tattered red dress and holding a glass of amber liquid. She looked older. Tired.
"You aren't Clara," I gasped.
She smiled, and it was a real smile—crooked, imperfect, and terrifying.
"I am Clara Vance. But not the one you know. The one in the vault is a 'Draft'. A version of me the Script keeps on a loop to watch you."
She walked toward me, the heels of her shoes clicking on the wooden floor—a sound so alien it made my teeth ache.
"You've used up half the pencil, Arthur," she said, nodding toward my hand. "A few more words, and you'll disappear just like the others."
"What others?" I asked, my voice trembling.
She reached out and pulled a book from a nearby shelf. She opened it to the middle. There, pressed between the pages like a dried flower, was a pencil. It was identical to mine, but it was nothing more than a microscopic splinter.
"There have been dozens of Arthurs," she whispered, leaning in close. I could smell the alcohol on her breath—the smell of a world that was allowed to decay. "And every single one of them thought they were the hero. Every single one of them thought the pencil was their friend."
She took a sip of her drink, her eyes locked on mine. "Do you want to know what the last Arthur wrote before he died?"
I didn't want to know. Every instinct I had told me to run, to find the 'Door' I had come through. But my hand was already moving. The pencil was starving for ink. It dragged my hand across the cover of the nearest book.
"ASK HER ABOUT THE BASEMENT," the pencil wrote.
Clara's smile vanished. Her hand tightened around her glass until I thought it would shatter.
"The pencil is a liar, Arthur," she said, her voice dropping to a hiss. "It's not an object. It's a parasite. It's the Script's way of finding the people who are 'awake' and tricking them into writing their own exits. If you keep using it, you won't save the world. You'll just finish the book."
Suddenly, the floor beneath us groaned. The books on the shelves began to vibrate, their pages flapping like the wings of dying birds.
"He's coming," Clara said, her face pale. "The Director. He doesn't like it when the characters talk to each other behind the scenes."
She grabbed my arm. Her grip was like iron. "You have one word left before the pencil becomes too short to hold. One word to change the scene. Choose carefully, Arthur. Because if you write the wrong thing, I won't be able to bury you with the others."
I looked at the pencil. It was now so small it was painful to hold between my thumb and forefinger. I looked at the thousands of books around me—the graveyards of previous Arthurs.
Who was lying? The pencil that saved my life in the vault? Or the woman with the face of my enemy who claimed to be my only friend?
The door to the library burst open. A man stepped in. He wasn't wearing a suit. He was wearing a lab coat stained with ink. Director Silas Vane. But he didn't look like a director. He looked like an author who had lost control of his characters.
"Arthur," Silas said, his voice echoing with a strange, double-layered sound. "Stop writing. You're bleeding out."
I looked down at my chest. The word DOOR wasn't just written on my suit. It was carved into my skin, and instead of blood, black ink was pouring out of the wound, staining the floor.
"The pencil isn't writing on the paper, Arthur," Silas said, stepping closer. "It's writing on you."