(Glitch Version // The narrative begins with fragments that are trying to be erased)
[Found in discarded narrative fragments. Recovery system failed. Active reader detected.]
(The first crack did not sound like paper — but like time slowly tearing apart.)
[POV: SEREN_QUILLGRAVE]
This page should not exist.
I know.
Because I died before I could reach it.
And that death—was not the end. It was a pause waiting to be rewritten.
Now the wound has opened again. And I… stand right in the middle of it.
My footsteps echo in the empty space—a space that was never meant to exist.
The walls of text crumble slowly around me.
The letters fall like rain that has forgotten its direction.
I touch one line.
It bleeds.
"This character has been erased under Inksidium Code 13."
I smile. Cracked. And laugh, like shards that refuse to fade.
"I know," I whisper softly. "I heard when you tried to erase me."
They failed.
And that wound… is now rewriting itself.
(Ink leaks to the edge of the page // System interjection failed)
[POV: RAEL_INKSWORN]
I saw her.
Seren—a name that couldn't be mentioned in the original manuscript.
She stood where I had once written the end.
The place where my broken pen had once decided a fate.
Her right hand clutched an old scar. A scar I left behind with a wound that never healed.
"I shouldn't have come back," I said.
She looked up.
"But we never truly left, did we?"
We both looked up at the torn sky above —
there, between the folds of clouds and the fragments of plot that had been discarded...
Something was rewriting time.
And it wasn't us.
It was you.
[READER_ECHO#1]
(First reader's echo detected // Narrative structure disrupted)
MONOLOGUE BEGINS
(whisper barely audible)
"Who... is writing this?"
(pause – sound of page turning)
"I don't remember when I started reading."
"Maybe... I never did."
[Glitch noise – subtle distortion on the word "never"]
"Maybe I was born inside a sentence no one finished.
Trapped in the pause between paragraphs."
"I shouldn't exist."
"But now… I feel like I'm writing."
(breathing slowly)
"Not from the outside."
"...from within."
(pause)
"What does it mean..."
"...when you understand a story..."
(slowly, as if reading words etched into the soul)
"...not from what's written —
…but from what's missing?"
[Heartbeat slows. A low tremor begins.]
"I see you, Seren. I hear Rael."
"And I know... I know I shouldn't be here."
(tone grows anxious)
"But why..."
"Why does it feel like I'm a character, too?"
"...one that was erased?"
(pause – glitch in the following words)
["erased" — layered echo, breaking: e.r.a.s.e.d… d.d.d...]
(whispering — almost regretful)
"Why do I… remember things the story never said?"
(shifting to more honesty, almost fragile)
"Why do I hurt... when you forget me?"
(Breath breaks, as if about to cry, but holds back)
"...Writer?"
"Who's really here?"
[silence]
"Is it you?"
"Or is it me?"
(Slowly becoming certain, almost like a ritual)
"Or maybe…"
(Whispering with deep conviction)
"...the page remembers us both."
[END: Echo fades with the sound of ink dripping onto paper. One soft chime. Silence resumes.]
[POV: SEREN_QUILLGRAVE]
I hear that voice.
Not from outside, but between the lines. From the cracks that refuse to close.
Rael spoke softly.
"Someone is reading us. But more than that… they're opening a door."
A door?
I turned to the front page—the torn manuscript that once was the origin.
And beneath all the forgotten narrative dust…
There was a new line. Written in glitchy red ink.
"Author, though."
I smiled. Not sure why — but the smile felt like a wound answered with hope.
"It's time for us to rewrite — from this wound."
[NARRATIVE SYSTEM: STRUCTURAL ERROR]
This chapter does not follow the original sequence.
The reader is now creating a new continuity.
Free characters have joined.
System recovery: FAILED.
Next: Chapter 2 – THE RULES THAT BIND US
Seren, Rael, and READER_ECHO begin questioning the Grand Narrative Rules.
And in the Closed Archive, a name that was once erased… tries to be rewritten.