I didn't chase him.
I couldn't.
I just stood there in the hallway—watching my other self fade into the distance, swallowed by the corridor that refused to end.
It wasn't fear that kept me still. It was recognition.
He walked the way I walked when I was pretending to be okay.
Hands in pockets. Shoulders forward. Eyes low. Like someone trying not to take up space in their own body.
He wasn't a clone.
He was a version.
And something told me if I chased him, I'd never come back the same.
[Status: Active Anomaly – Duplicate Detected][System Instability: 12%]
The hallway lights flickered. A low static began to rise — not sound, not really. More like presence. Like when you enter a room that someone just screamed in.
That's when I noticed the plaque on the nearest door.
Room 707.
I lived on the third floor.
But this… was the first.
I backed up.
"You weren't supposed to get this far."
I turned around.
A man stood at the end of the hall.
Tall. Hair slicked back. Black turtleneck, charcoal blazer. No glow in the eyes, no visible weapons. Just calm. Too calm.
"I'm sorry," he said, smiling faintly. "The script wasn't ready for you."
I didn't answer.
My legs were tense. Ready to run. But something about his voice held me in place.
"Who are you?"
"Someone who used to be you," he said.
That made something inside me lurch.
[Unregistered Entity: Scribe-Class][Title: The Editor]
"You've overwritten too early," he said, glancing up at the ceiling like he could see the code falling. "You weren't supposed to hit awareness until Act II. Now everything's off balance."
"I didn't overwrite anything," I said.
"You denied a sentence, Aren. That was enough." He started walking toward me. Slow, careful. "This world runs on narrative. Cause and effect. Line by line. You skipped ahead. You changed the pacing."
The closer he got, the heavier the air became.
Not from threat. From expectation.
"Why me?" I asked. "Why was I the only one reading?"
He paused.
And this time, when he spoke, it was softer. Almost regretful.
"Because everyone else stopped."
That hit harder than it should have.
He continued, voice steady. "Readers are predictable. They start strong. Drop off around Chapter 12. Never make it to the final act. But you… You read every single line. You let the story imprint on you."
"So now I'm… what? Trapped?"
"No," he said. "You're written in."
[Title Fragment Acquired: Living Annotation][Trait: Linewalker – You may exist between drafts, at cost.]
"What does that mean?"
"You're still thinking like a reader," he said. "There's no safe distance anymore. You're not watching. You're being watched."
I took a step back.
He sighed. "Don't waste your denial, Aren. You only get so many before the story turns on you."
"Do not waste your denial."
That wasn't him.
The voice had come from everywhere. Through the walls. The air. The floor.
And then—like a curtain pulling open—
Text appeared across the hallway walls.
"The Catalyst denies again.""The Archive will respond.""The rewrite will begin."
The Editor looked genuinely annoyed now.
"Well. That's Act Zero blown to hell."
He touched the side of his temple. A tiny click echoed, like a pen being uncapped.
And then—
The hallway shattered.
Not like glass. Like paragraphs torn apart. The floor folded inward. The walls fragmented into jagged, twisting script. I was falling—not down, but between pages.
Through flashes of other scenes:
A man digging his name out of his own skin.
A city where the sun had been redacted.
A girl holding a gun to a book, sobbing: "If I shoot this, will it stop?"
And over it all: the sound of typing. Furious, endless. Pages being written faster than they could be read.
Then—
Darkness.
I woke up on the floor of a train.
Real metal. Cold seat. A faint chime overhead.
"Next stop: Notation."
A neon-blue map flickered on the ceiling. All the stops had strange names:
Prologue
Refrain
Exegesis
Annotation
Redraft
And blinking faintly in the far corner:
"End."
I sat up.
The train was empty. No conductor. No windows. Just long corridors of ink-black glass reflecting back a version of me that looked… tired. Older, maybe.
My reflection looked at me and said—
"It's not about surviving the story, Aren.""It's about choosing the version of you that deserves to finish it."