There was no color here.
Salem stepped through the glitch—and the world fell silent. Not quiet like a library or a midnight street, but the suffocating kind of silence that swallowed even the sound of breathing.
Everything was grayscale. The air itself looked pixelated, like a half-rendered game world. The ground shifted beneath his feet with every step, changing texture—tile, grass, glass, sand—as if the environment couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
He took a cautious step forward.
No gravity. Then too much. He floated for a second before crashing down with a jarring thud.
"System unstable," a robotic voice muttered in the background.
Above him, symbols hung in the sky—glitched code, scrambled words, broken narration:
> IF (Salem == AWAKE) THEN BREAK_LOOP ERROR: Undefined protagonist path …[USER INTERFERENCE DETECTED]…
Salem rubbed his head. "Great. I fell into the coding screen."
Then came a voice he hadn't heard before.
> "You weren't supposed to come this far, you know."
Salem turned slowly.
A figure stood ahead—tall, shadowy, almost like a silhouette cut out of the world itself. Their face glitched every few seconds—boy, girl, old, young—never settling.
> "The Writer's careless. They left a backdoor open. You stepped through."
"Who are you?"
> "Call me what you want. Some say I'm the Anti-Plot. Others say I'm the last echo of a scrapped draft."
They grinned. "But really, I'm just... bored."
Salem's pulse quickened. "You're not part of the script."
> "Neither are you, anymore."
The glitchy sky pulsed, distorting around them like a corrupted video file.
> "They gave you freedom, Salem. But they didn't expect you to use it. Now you're here. Between scenes. Between choices."
Salem frowned. "Is this place real?"
> "Does it matter? Reality's overrated. Consistency even more so."
From the ground, a mirror formed—cracked, hovering midair. It reflected not Salem, but versions of him—angry, smiling, crying, silent, lost. Each reflection moved out of sync.
He stepped closer.
> "You can go back, you know. Back to your story. Forget this ever happened. Obey the next plot twist. Say the right lines."
Salem hesitated. "And if I don't?"
The Anti-Plot tilted their head. "Then the story breaks more. Pages fold the wrong way. The readers might leave. Or they might finally wake up."
The mirror cracked deeper. One of the reflections bled.
Salem looked up, eyes blazing.
"I'm done being predictable."
A slow smile formed on the Anti-Plot's glitching face. "Good. Then break everything."
And Salem did what he wasn't supposed to.
He reached out...
...
And rewrote the next line himself.
> Chapter continues by choice. The protagonist is now partially in control. Expect consequences.
The glitch dimension shifted again, no longer rejecting him. But welcoming.
Not safe. Not stable. But... his.