The Hall of Unfinished Stories had never been a quiet place, not truly — even in its stillest hours, it carried the faint hum of countless narratives waiting to be completed, a low murmur of potential that lived beneath the silence like a heartbeat beneath skin. But nothing in that familiar hum had prepared the Forgotten Reader for what was happening now.
*The Story of the Ninth Reader* continued to write itself.
Pages turned without pause, one after another, faster than any hand could have managed, faster than any ordinary force of magic should have allowed. The Forgotten Reader had tried everything he knew to slow it — old wards, careful invocations, even a direct appeal to the First Manuscript itself, hoping its ancient authority might exert some calming influence over the rogue volume. Nothing worked. The book simply continued, indifferent to every attempt made to still it, as though it were following a current far stronger than anything within the Hall's power to redirect.
