Eros floated in nothing.
Not air, not water. Just a silence so complete it smothered thought. There was no pain, no weight, no body. He was only awareness, reduced to a shadow adrift in an endless void.
He tried to move. Nothing answered. His hands, his legs, his chest… all gone. Only his mind flickered weakly, a candle flame in infinite dark.
Only his mind flickered weakly, a candle flame in infinite dark.
He tried to hold on to that flicker, the last shred of himself, but the emptiness pressed in from every side. There was no sound, no shape, not even the rhythm of his own breath. For a moment, he wondered if he had already died for real.
The last thing he remembered was the book. Amanda's room. The pages screaming warnings at him. And then... falling out of his own body. The memory made his gut twist, though he wasn't sure he even had a gut anymore.
«Is this what death feels like? Just… floating? Nothing?»
His thoughts spilled out in the silence, chasing each other without walls to bounce off.
He thought of the guards back at the detention center, the way they had looked at him like a lost cause. He thought of the psychologist with his calm voice, telling him to control his anger. Anger… right now it felt distant, like a tool he no longer had the strength to lift. All that remained was fear.
Eros clenched onto the thought of Amanda, his older sister. Where was she? What had really happened a year ago? The news article had been nothing but a cruel reminder of how little he knew. Missing. One word to erase a whole person. One word that had devoured his only family.
Seventeen. That was his age. Too old to be a boy, too young to be a man. A year left, just one, and he would have been free from juvenile detention. But now? That escape had destroyed what little future was left. He couldn't go back. He wouldn't even live long enough to regret it if this void swallowed him whole.
The weight of it pressed harder than any fist in the yard ever had.
He thought about school, about how he had never cared for the lessons the state shoved at him. The one class he should have paid attention to—the one about why physical books had been banned—he'd ignored completely. He remembered the teacher's monotone voice, the endless slides, the way he had stared out the window instead of listening. He hadn't cared then. Now it felt like the most important piece of knowledge in the world, and it had slipped through his fingers.
«Why did they ban them? Because they were dangerous? Because of this?»
The irony made his chest ache. Or maybe that was just the void pulling him apart.
Amanda used to tease him for being lazy with his studies. He could almost hear her voice now, the way she'd roll her eyes but still make him instant noodles when he skipped homework. He wondered if she was still alive somewhere, waiting. Or had the world already swallowed her like it was swallowing him?
The thought cut too deep. He tried to push it aside, but in this darkness there was nothing to distract him, nowhere to hide. His own mind was a cage.
«Seventeen», he said the number again in his head, clinging to it as proof he still existed. People outside probably thought he was a criminal, a screw-up, just another file in the system. But Amanda had seen more. She had believed in him when no one else did.
That was before… before the night that ruined everything.
His thoughts stumbled toward that memory, the one he kept locked away. The mistake, the blood, the handcuffs. The moment that tore him from Amanda's side and locked him behind concrete walls. He had sworn never to think about it again.
"No," he muttered into the void, as if he could shut his brain off by sheer force. "Not now. Not here."
He shoved the memory down where it belonged, buried under layers of anger and denial. He couldn't face it. Not yet. Maybe never.
Instead, he forced himself back to Amanda. Back to her smile, to the warmth that still lingered in his heart like an ember refusing to die. She was the only reason he had run. The only reason he had risked everything. If this void was some kind of punishment, then she had to be the reward waiting on the other side.
The thought kept him alive.
For the first time since the darkness had taken him, he felt something close to resolve. If this was death, then he would claw his way back. If this was some twisted test, then he would endure it. Amanda was out there. She had to be.
Eros swallowed the emptiness, braced himself against the tide of fear. He was no saint, no hero. He was just a boy who had already lost too much. But even here, in nothingness, he couldn't let go.
He would find her. He didn't care what it cost.
Then something appeared.
A small book—no, a diary—hovered in front of him. It glowed faintly, pale light dripping from its edges, illuminating the black with a fragile halo. The diary opened by itself, its cover cracking like ancient leather, revealing the first page.
It was blank.
Eros' breath caught, though he wasn't sure he was breathing. His entire world was that page, empty and waiting.
A sound broke the silence.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Steady, mechanical, alien in this abyss. A typewriter. He had never touched one, never seen one in real life. But he knew the sound from the old period dramas that sometimes played in the detention center's TV room.
The rhythm was hypnotic. And under it, he thought he heard… a voice.
Female. Flat. Emotionless. Like the echo of someone reading aloud.
The first letters crawled across the blank page in neat, black ink:
"Reader's Notes."
Eros stiffened, or would have, if he still had a body.
The diary flipped with a gust of wind that didn't exist, turning to the next spread. Two more blank pages stared at him. Then the typewriter clacked again, and more words stitched themselves across the paper.
"Reader's name: Eros
Rank: [Beginning Reader]"
Eros' eyes widened.
"How the hell…? My name?!"
The letters continued, indifferent to his panic.
"Character: [Prometheus]
Type: [Mythological]
Role: [The Outcast]"
Prometheus. The word again. It had appeared before, in the cursed book in Amanda's room. But what did it mean?
Eros' head swam. His schooling had been shallow, broken by fights and survival. He knew the names of basketball players better than figures out of myths. Prometheus might have been a brand of sneakers for all he cared.
"What… is this?" he muttered. His voice came out raw in the emptiness, swallowed immediately by silence.
The diary didn't answer. It only kept writing, as though a ghost's hands pounded unseen keys.
"Ability: [Immortal Martyr]"
The words froze there. The typewriter stopped. For a long moment, nothing. Then the diary drifted closer, settling weightlessly into his hands.
Eros stared down. The phrases burned into him.
Beginning Reader. Prometheus. The Outcast. Immortal Martyr.
They meant nothing. They meant everything.
"What the hell is Immortal Martyr supposed to mean?" His voice cracked. "What do any of these even mean?!"
The pages glowed. The typewriter's hammering returned, louder, urgent. The woman's voice accompanied it, reading as words scrolled into existence beneath his desperate gaze.
"[Beginning Reader] – The lowest rank among Readers. Untrained, fragile, yet standing at the threshold of something greater.
[Prometheus] – The Titan who gave fire to mankind, defying the gods and suffering eternal torment for his theft.
[Mythological] – A character drawn from the myths and legends of ancient civilizations, reshaped into living trial.
[The Outcast] – One who stands apart, neither hero nor villain. Marked by solitude, feared for the path only they can walk.
[Immortal Martyr] – To die, to rise, to carry the weight of pain eternal. Each scar a verse, each death a prayer, until nothing remains but ashes."
Eros' throat tightened. His fingers shook as he traced the words, even though the pages weren't made of paper, even though his touch left no mark.
He whispered to no one.
"Thanks… I guess."
The gratitude sounded hollow. Confusion screamed louder. He knew less now than when he started. He was no reader. No Titan. No martyr. Just a broken kid with scars no one wanted to see.
"What's happening to me?"
No answer. Only the ache of silence.
And then, something new.
Three embers bloomed beneath the last line, drawn in ink so black it seemed burned into the page. They flickered like tiny coals in a fireplace.
Beneath them, a sentence appeared:
"When the flames are extinguished, your soul will be destroyed."
Eros' heart skipped.
"What? Wait, my… what?!"
The words didn't move. They didn't need to. Their meaning was carved into his bones.
The voice returned, clearer now, cutting through the void.
"Your plot will be assigned."
The diary turned another page. The header blazed into being: "Plot."
The typewriter's clacking resumed, faster, frantic. Eros' chest hollowed with dread.
The letters scrawled themselves with merciless certainty:
"Prometheus has been freed from his torment.
It is time for vengeance.
His goal is simple: He must kill a god."
Eros' jaw dropped. "Simple?! You've got to be kidding me…"
The diary snapped shut with a thunderous clap.
The darkness shuddered. A shockwave of raw energy slammed into him, flinging his formless shadow backward. He was falling. No ground, no sky, only motion tearing through endless night.
Wind roared in his ears. The abyss pulled him down like a bottomless throat.
And through it, the voice whispered one final time, now tinged—he was sure of it—with something almost like mockery.
"Welcome, Reader. Fulfill your character's objective. Survive… or die. Good luck."
Eros' mind reeled. He swore there was a trace of laughter hiding in those last two words, a cruel smile wrapped in syllables.
Then everything went black again. Well, at least it was even darker as he lost consciousness.