The wallpaper peeled itself away, revealing a hallway that hadn't existed a moment ago. The air turned heavy with perfume—floral, but sharp like ink.
"Elise, please," Lina said, stepping back. "I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't even know—"
"You didn't want to know," Elise interrupted. Her voice had no echo. It simply was, as if it had always been in Lina's head. "You burned my ending. And now I've become what's left when a story is erased."
She lifted her hand.
From the ceiling, doll strings dropped.
They latched onto Mikael's limbs.
"No!" Lina cried.
But Mikael didn't scream. His eyes were calm, fixed on Elise.
"I'm not your puppet," he said quietly. "I chose Lina."
The strings snapped.
Elise flinched like she'd been struck.
Her composure cracked. "I was written for you."
"And I'm breaking the pen," Mikael whispered.
The dollhouse groaned. The walls folded outward like paper. The hallway behind Elise unfurled into a garden made of ink-drenched roses—petals black, stems made of torn book pages. They pulsed with every heartbeat.
"Follow me," Elise said softly now. "If you want to understand why your love isn't enough."
She turned and stepped into the garden.
Mikael grabbed Lina's hand.
They followed.
The garden didn't feel real. The petals cut skin without pain. The sky was a ceiling of unwritten words.
And at the center stood a table.
Set for three.
Elise sat at one end.
The third chair waited.
"I thought this story belonged to us," Lina said carefully.
"No," Elise said. "It belongs to the author."
And the seat across from her filled with shadows.
A fourth voice—low, genderless, old and young at once—spoke:
"You've reached the place where dreams remember themselves."