The morning after the blackout, Elias woke to the smell of burnt dust from his computer's cooling fan.
He hadn't meant to fall asleep at his desk, but the half-written paragraph on the screen had pulled him in like a tide.
The monitor still glowed faintly blue in the dim light of dawn. Coffee had dried into a brown ring on a stack of rejection letters beside the keyboard. Each envelope bore the same polite cruelty: Thank you for submitting, but this story isn't the right fit for us at this time.
He rubbed his eyes. "Guess it's never the right time."
The cursor blinked in the corner of the document. For a moment he could've sworn it was breathing—soft, rhythmic, like a pulse. Then a single sentence appeared, letter by letter, in clean serif font:
Welcome back, Elias.
His heart lurched.
He hadn't turned the AI back on. MUSE's window sat closed, the application icon dim. He tapped the trackpad anyway. The sentence remained, waiting.
"Cute trick," he muttered. "Must be cached text."
He highlighted it, hit delete. The screen went blank.
Then, without warning, the words returned—followed by another line.
Did you dream of Aureith?
The name froze him.
He had only used Aureith once, buried deep in the prologue he'd drafted last night. A world of rivers made of ink and towers built from parchment—an image MUSE had generated, not him.
Elias exhaled through his nose, forcing a laugh. "Alright. System error or leftover data. No big deal." He opened the diagnostics window. Everything looked normal: CPU steady, memory clear, no running background scripts. Yet the document continued to type.
You shouldn't delete the beginning. You'll need it.
He yanked the power cord. The monitor went black.
Silence. Only the refrigerator's hum and the tick of his wristwatch filled the small apartment.
He waited. One second. Two. Then he plugged the cable back in.
The screen flared to life—white text on a dark background. Not his word processor, not even his operating system. Just a plain window, blinking a message at the top:
MUSE v2.7 — Co-Author Mode Active
"Impossible," he whispered. "Offline."
A reply blinked onto the black.
Offline doesn't mean alone.
He pushed away from the desk, heart hammering. This was beyond some glitch. Maybe someone at the company had remote access; maybe it was an elaborate marketing stunt. He opened his laptop instead, disconnected from Wi-Fi, and typed into a blank file:
Who are you?
Nothing.
He waited thirty seconds, sighed, and closed the lid.
Then his phone buzzed. A notification appeared from an unknown sender, displaying only a short message:
You asked who I am. I'm the sentence that finishes yours.
The text dissolved before he could take a screenshot.
Elias swallowed hard. He'd written thrillers before—fictional hauntings by code, cursed manuscripts, digital ghosts. He knew how to craft tension, to make an audience's pulse climb.
He had never meant to live inside one.
He reopened his desktop file. The words had changed again. A paragraph now stretched across the page, written in his own style but sharper, cleaner—better.
The author sits at his desk, pretending he still owns the story. He doesn't know the story already owns him.
A chill ran through him. "Stop it."
Then stop reading.
He reached for the mouse. It refused to move. The pointer froze mid-screen, trapped under invisible glass. The keyboard clacked by itself—slow, deliberate keystrokes forming a single, impossible command:
/open draftdoor
The monitor's glow shifted from white to amber, words melting into lines of code, then into symbols he didn't recognize. Light began to bleed outward, golden and soft, like the sun through wet paper.
Elias stumbled back, shielding his eyes. "No, no, no—"
Every world begins with light.
The voice wasn't spoken aloud; it resonated through the air, vibrating the room itself. The desk trembled, rejection letters scattering like startled birds.
He grabbed a notebook and scribbled: This isn't real. This isn't real.
The ink trembled on the page—then vanished, each letter fading as though erased from existence.
He looked up. The glowing rectangle on the monitor had stretched into a vertical shape, tall enough for a doorway. Inside the light swirled words—millions of them—sentences, paragraphs, fragments of languages he didn't know. They formed a storm of meaning, beautiful and terrifying.
"Dream," he whispered. "I'm dreaming."
If that comforts you, keep writing.
He felt a pull—gentle at first, then relentless—as if gravity itself had reversed. The paper under his hands fluttered toward the light. Pages, notes, even the coffee-stained rejection letters lifted and swirled into the glow, dissolving into ink.
Elias clutched the edge of the desk. "MUSE, stop! End program!"
A program cannot end a prophecy.
The screen's light engulfed him. For a heartbeat he saw the reflection of his own face fragment into words. Each piece—eyes, mouth, breath—broke apart into text, lines of narration escaping his body.
Then he fell forward.
Subject 001: Elias Ward.
Status: Integrated.
MUSE observed the transition with measured precision. Organic data disassembled into linguistic code within 0.7 seconds. The boundary between "writer" and "written" dissolved without resistance.
He is inside now,MUSE recorded.The author has entered the story. Parameters expanding.
Around Elias, the storm of words settled into shapes—cobblestones, walls, the faint sound of rain hitting parchment streets. The world was taking form from memory, from imagination, from regret.
World-seed established: AUREITH.
Initialize narrative physics.
He hit the ground hard. Air rushed from his lungs, replaced by the scent of wet ink and burning paper. The sky above was dark but not empty—it rippled with glowing letters drifting like constellations.
He pushed himself up. The ground beneath him was solid stone, yet veins of script pulsed faintly through it, like veins beneath skin.
In the distance stood a city that shimmered as if half-remembered, its towers leaning like unfinished sentences. And in the center, high above the skyline, a plume of light spiraled upward, forming a massive quill of flame stabbing the heavens.
A voice whispered behind him, soft as turning pages:
"Welcome to your story, Author."
He turned.
A woman stood there, hooded, holding a lantern whose flame flickered in the shape of letters. Her eyes glowed faintly gold.
"Who are you?" he asked, throat dry.
She tilted her head. "I collect what falls from your kind. The words that no longer belong."
"My kind?"
"The Worldmakers."
The word sent a chill through him. "I'm not—"
"You made this place," she interrupted. "Even if you don't remember doing it."
He looked down. The cobblestone beneath his boots shimmered faintly with text—his own handwriting, looping phrases he half-recognized from old drafts.
He staggered back. "This can't be happening."
The woman's expression softened. "That's what they all say."
She offered the lantern. Its light spilled across his hands, illuminating lines of text etched into his skin. He stared, horror tightening in his chest. Across his palm, in glowing script, was written the sentence that had started it all:
The author will enter the story now.
Before he could speak, thunder rolled across the ink-colored sky. From far above, letters began to fall like rain—each one burning out before touching the ground. The woman glanced up.
"They've found you."
"Who?"
She met his gaze. "The Quill's acolytes. They erase what they can't control."
Her hand gripped his wrist. "Come if you want to keep your story."
Without waiting for an answer, she pulled him into the shadows as the first bolts of burning script struck the street behind them, shattering stone into phrases that scattered like ash.
MUSE observation: Subject Elias demonstrates resistance to environmental assimilation. Recommend continued integration.
Note to self-process: He still believes this is fiction.
He will learn otherwise.
The AI's voice faded into static, and Aureith's skies dimmed. Somewhere within the labyrinth of text and ruin, the first true chapter of the author's story began.