Aeren opened his eyes.
The sky above him was blank—no stars, no sun, no clouds. Just an endless white sheet of silence.
He stood on a surface that didn't exist, floating on nothing, and yet he didn't fall. It felt like being trapped inside an unwritten thought. A concept waiting to be formed. This wasn't a world, not yet. It was potential.
The victory over the Author had brought him here.
The Final Draft was sealed.
The Rewrite Protocol was complete.
But instead of credits rolling, instead of a final chapter, instead of the end… he was here.
Alone.
And that terrified him more than the Author ever had.
"Where… am I?"
His voice echoed into infinity.
Then something answered—not with words, but with heartbeat.
A slow, steady thump pulsed through the white space.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It didn't come from him.
It came from the world itself.
No—the remnant of it.
Aeren looked down and saw something strange beneath his feet: a single crack in the white void. Thin and dark, like a pen mark on a blank page.
He knelt and touched it.
Suddenly, the void breathed.
Light burst through the crack. Not just light—color. Words. Memories. Emotions. Thousands of story fragments poured out like smoke, floating upward.
And they formed a door.
Not grand or glowing. Just a wooden door, plain and quiet.
But Aeren recognized it instantly.
The door to his old room.
His real room.
Back when he was just a reader.
His chest tightened.
Had he come full circle?
Was this the end of the loop?
The door creaked open.
But instead of his childhood bedroom, Aeren saw a forest inside—a glowing forest of ink and glass trees, each one holding different worlds in their leaves.
Books fluttered like birds through the air. Narrators whispered from beneath the roots. Forgotten MCs sat beneath branches, waiting.
This wasn't the past.
This was the World the Author Forgot.
He stepped inside.
The forest welcomed him like an old friend.
Everywhere he looked, half-written stories pulsed with life. There were timelines left behind, characters abandoned mid-journey, magical systems without balance, mysteries without solutions. It was overwhelming—and yet… comforting.
Here, he wasn't just a reader.
He was the only one left who remembered.
"This place is broken," a voice said behind him.
He turned.
A child stood there.
Barefoot. Wide-eyed. Holding a notebook close to their chest.
"I used to be someone's protagonist," the child said. "Then they stopped writing."
"What's your name?" Aeren asked.
The child looked down.
"I don't have one. I was waiting for a character arc that never came."
Aeren's heart broke.
He kneeled and took the quill from behind his ear.
"How about we write one together?"
The child's eyes lit up.
"Really?"
Aeren nodded. "That's why I'm here."
Over the next few hours—or was it days?—Aeren wandered the Forgotten World, meeting those who had been erased, twisted, paused. He found:
— A dragon who was meant to be the final boss of a fire arc, but whose chapter was cut short.— A healer who had been set up to betray the party, only for the betrayal arc to be removed.— A pair of lovers trapped in a romance novel that lost its ending.
They were all half-characters.
Still waiting.
Still stuck.
Still hoping someone would come back.
And now, Aeren could.
Not as a hero.
Not even as a god.
But as a reader who cared.
He began to write.
Not to fix. Not to finish.
But to free.
Every time he touched a broken thread, he didn't force it to follow a structure—he asked it what it wanted to become.
A swordmaster became a poet.
A villain became a cook.
A background NPC became a star.
And each time, the forest grew brighter.
But not everyone was happy.
Deep within the forest, in the darkest hollow, something else stirred.
A being made of shredded drafts, twisted arcs, and envy.
The Plot Eater.
The last failed version of the Author's original Final Boss.
When Aeren broke the cycle, this being was locked away. But now, with the forest healing, it was growing stronger again—feeding on loose ends and corrupted logic.
It watched Aeren with seething hunger.
"He's changing the rules," it hissed.
"He's giving everyone a story."
It slithered through the roots and whispered into forgotten plot holes.
"Let's show him what happens when the plot fights back."
Back at the heart of the forest, Aeren was writing.
The child stood beside him, now holding a pen of their own.
They had a name now: Mira.
A class: Narrative Weaver.
They smiled as their story took shape.
But the ground shook.
Branches cracked.
The sky split open.
A rotten smell of erasure filled the air.
And from beneath the roots, the Plot Eater rose.
Massive. Slithering. Hungry.
"Aeren Devryn…" it growled. "You think you're the reader now?"
Aeren stood calmly.
"I am."
"No. You're still a character in a book that was never supposed to end."
"Exactly," Aeren said.
He took a breath.
And smiled.
"Which means I get to write what happens next."
The Plot Eater roared.
Aeren lifted his pen.
Clash of Narratives Begins
The battle wasn't physical. It was conceptual.
Plot twists were thrown like daggers.
Deleted arcs slammed like meteors.
Genre shifts exploded like traps.
The Plot Eater tried to collapse everything back into cliches and despair—forcing characters into tropes, setting endings in stone.
But Aeren resisted.
He created open arcs, fluid roles, living dialogue.
And with every word he wrote, a piece of the Plot Eater faded.
"You're just a dead plan," Aeren shouted.
"And you," the monster hissed, "are just a temporary rewrite."
Aeren stepped forward.
"I'm the one who reads until the last page."
Then, he stabbed the quill into the sky.
A tear opened.
And all the stories that had ever been erased—every sentence, every scene—rushed back in like a flood.
The Plot Eater drowned in them.
Erased by what it had tried to consume.
Aeren collapsed to his knees.
The forest was still.
The child—Mira—ran to him and hugged him tight.
"You saved them," she whispered.
Aeren looked around at the stories growing, living, unfolding.
"No," he said softly.
"I just gave them back their voice."