There was a rule Salem never agreed to but had always followed.
Don't remember too much.
And tonight, he broke it.
He didn't mean to. It started with a flicker—an old dream, a flash of a moment that didn't belong to this week, or this timeline. A birthday cake. A girl with half a face. A clock that wouldn't stop spinning.
Then came the sound. Static. Heavy, dragging through his thoughts like chains on a hospital floor.
And then…
> He remembered everything he had forgotten.
All at once.
---
He collapsed.
Not dramatically. Just quietly. Like a puppet whose strings had all been cut at the same time.
The floor caught him like a friend who didn't really care. Cold. Unforgiving. Real.
He didn't cry. He couldn't. Crying required stable memory. Emotions. Context. None of which he had anymore.
Names flooded his mind. People who weren't real. Or were. Once. Maybe.
The walls bent. He heard pages flipping, but no books nearby.
Then came a voice.
Not the Writer. Not the whisper.
Not even his.
> "You peeked behind the wrong door, Salem."
He looked up.
A mirror stood in front of him. He hadn't noticed it before. He didn't own a mirror.
His reflection wasn't him.
It looked like him—same hair, same eyes—but… cleaner. Straighter posture. No flicker in his gaze.
That version of Salem smiled faintly.
> "I'm what you were supposed to be."
> "What?" Salem croaked.
> "Before the skips. Before the memories broke. Before the story started falling apart."
> "Who… are you?"
The reflection tilted its head.
> "I'm Chapter Zero."
---
The mirror shattered.
Not with a sound. With a silence so deep, it echoed.
Salem gasped as reality stitched itself around him again—but this time, differently.
He was no longer in his room.
He stood in a corridor filled with doors—hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Some flickered in and out of existence. Others pulsed like heartbeats. Each door had a number. But none were in order.
03 → 17 → -5 → 404 → [REDACTED] → ✖
One of them was labeled "Me."
Another was labeled "Not Yet."
A third one? "You Shouldn't Be Here."
He walked forward.
> "Hello?" he tried.
A voice responded.
> "Congratulations, Salem. You've entered the Archive."
> "The what?"
> "The place where forgotten plotlines go to die."
He spun around. A glowing outline of a figure stood beside him. Their form shifted constantly—man, woman, child, monster, writer.
> "Who are you?"
> "I was the MC of another story. Then my author abandoned me."
> "That's—terrifying."
> "You'll get used to it. Or you'll fade like the rest of us."
---
Suddenly the doors began to open.
A flood of moments spilled into the corridor:
A fight he hadn't had yet.
A kiss from someone whose name he didn't remember.
A death scene that felt too real.
A time loop where he became his own enemy.
A childhood memory with no context—his mother's face, but not the voice he remembered.
He fell to his knees.
The voice whispered again, softer now:
> "Too much to remember, Salem. That's the price of awareness."
---
A screen popped into existence in front of him.
[WARNING: Salem.exe has reached cognitive limit.]
[Would you like to delete memories to proceed?]
→ YES
→ NO
→ What memories?
He hovered over "What memories?"
> A new line typed itself in: "The ones that hurt."
---
He laughed.
Not because it was funny. Because it was broken.
And somehow, that made it feel real again.