The worst part wasn't the silence.
It was the feeling that the train was alive.
Not in some AI-techy way. Not with blinking lights or synthetic voices. But in how it breathed. How the air in the car subtly expanded and shrank in a rhythm. Like the whole machine had lungs. Like I was inside something that could exhale me at any moment.
Next stop: Notation.
The words kept blinking across the ceiling in pale blue font, flickering with the same pulse as the second hand on a watch I didn't own.
I stood up, slowly.
There were no ads. No graffiti. No human trash, no posters, not even an emergency lever. Just reflection.
Every wall was mirrored glass, warped slightly, like it remembered being liquid.
My reflection trailed slightly behind me as I moved.
Not like a ghost.More like… hesitation.
I walked toward the front of the train.
The doors between cars weren't locked. They simply opened when I made a decision.
No buttons. No hinges. Just a sentence that appeared across the door each time.
"You continue forward, unaware that the next car will change you."
I hesitated.
"...What if I go back?"
The sentence rewrote.
"Regression is no longer possible."
Figures.
The next car was different.
Dark, but not empty.
A single figure sat in the middle seat. Slouched. Arms resting on knees.
A boy. Probably my age. Maybe younger. Hoodie, black jeans, hair matted like he'd been in a fight with a timeline and lost. His hands were bandaged. One shoe was missing.
I stepped in.
He didn't move.
"Hello?"
He looked up slowly—and that's when I saw them.
Eyes made of literal text.Black pupils replaced with scrolling words. No whites. Just raw narration flickering behind eyelids like an overworked feed.
[Entity Detected: Fragmented Main Character][Title: Protagonist Discarded]
His voice came out hoarse. "You shouldn't be here."
"Neither should you," I replied, instinctively.
He laughed, bitter and sharp. "Yeah. That's the point."
I sat across from him, keeping my distance.
"What is this train?"
He didn't answer right away.
Then finally: "Transit for those who were written but never finished. Characters dropped by their authors. Killed off before purpose. Archived but still echoing."
I stared at him.
"You're saying… you're from another story?"
"Weren't we all, once?"
He held up his hand. Under the bandages, faint lines of glowing ink pulsed like veins.
"I was supposed to be the hero of Kingmaker Protocol. Had the whole world. A betrayal arc. A mentor with blood on his hands. Then the author hit chapter 86 and ghosted."
He shrugged. "So now I ride."
That silence again.
I looked around. "Are there more?"
"Dozens. Hundreds. Entire cars full. Some scream. Some rot. Some just forget what they were supposed to be."
I swallowed. "And me?"
"You're new." He looked at me, eyes twitching like radio static. "Smell like ink. Resonance fresh. Still being written."
"You're saying I'm still part of a story?"
"I'm saying you're part of something trying desperately to stay coherent in a collapsing archive."
A pause.
Then, quieter: "Be careful, Aren. The story will try to survive. Even if it has to kill the version of you that resists the most."
Suddenly, the train screeched to a halt.
No inertia. Just immediate silence.
Now arriving: Notation.
The doors hissed open, revealing a library with no roof.
Skies gray as graphite. Bookshelves spiraling infinitely upward like gothic trees.
Rain was falling in paragraphs.
Each droplet a single sentence. Some coherent. Some fractured. Some so broken they bled mid-air and never hit the ground.
[Location: The Notation Layer – Archive Level 3][System Warning: Unstable Text Density – Use of Voice May Trigger Rewrite]
My breath fogged.
The boy didn't move.
"Not going with me?"
He shook his head. "I don't walk into unfinished chapters anymore."
I stood, hesitated, then stepped out.
The moment my foot hit the stone floor, I heard something whisper.
Not from behind.
From inside my mouth.
"The next time you speak, something will be written."
And then I saw it.
In the center of the library, under a spire of broken typewriters and rusted quills—
A podium. And on it…
A book with my name on the spine.
PANDORA'S RESONANCEVolume 0: The Catalyst Draft
I reached out.
My fingers grazed the cover.
And the instant I made contact—
A scene tore open.
Not physically. Narratively.
I was suddenly standing in my childhood bedroom.
Except it wasn't right. The posters were all of stories I never read. The books on the shelf were half-blank. The photo on the wall showed me and my mother—but her face was crossed out.
"This is a version of you that was never meant to be read."
I turned.
The girl with the golden eyes was standing by the window again.
Notebook still in hand. This time it was open, bleeding ink across the pages like a wound.
"Why me?" I whispered.
Her eyes glowed brighter.
"Because you kept reading, even after the story stopped making sense."
She turned the notebook around.
And on the newest page, in messy, half-formed writing, it said:
"Aren Yeo becomes the only person who remembers what was lost."