The tunnel beneath the city smelled like dust and ink.
Elias's footsteps echoed against paperstone, the floor stitched together from pages so ancient the words had turned brittle. Seren led the way with her lantern raised high, its flame whispering faint syllables that fluttered into the dark.
"How far down does this go?" Elias asked.
Seren didn't look back. "Farther than the Quill's reach—if we're lucky."
The walls around them glowed faintly, lines of faded text moving like veins beneath translucent stone. It wasn't carved. It was written into the world, shifting slightly as if alive.
Elias trailed his fingers along the surface. The letters rearranged beneath his touch, spelling fragments of sentences from books he'd loved as a child. It was as though the whole tunnel remembered every word ever written.
Seren glanced over her shoulder. "Don't linger. The walls listen."
He pulled his hand away. "This place is impossible."
"This place is yours," she corrected. "Every author leaves traces when they write. The Archive gathers what reality forgets."
They reached a fork where the corridor split into three paths. Each one shimmered with faint light, and above each entrance hung a symbol: a feather, an eye, and a broken quill.
Seren approached the middle one—the eye—and placed her hand against the wall. The air trembled. A line of text appeared across the surface:
Access restricted. Author verification required.
Elias frowned. "Verification?"
She turned toward him. "It means it's waiting for you."
He hesitated, then stepped forward. When he touched the wall, the letters rippled like water, forming a sentence in his own handwriting:
The author acknowledges his creation.
The wall dissolved into light, revealing a staircase spiraling downward into shadow. Seren raised an eyebrow. "Congratulations. You still count as real."
"That's… reassuring," Elias muttered, following her down.
The staircase opened into a massive chamber—the Archive. Thousands of floating books drifted in the air, their pages turning themselves. Shelves curved around the walls like ribs of some enormous creature. The air hummed with soft whispers—lines of narration overlapping into a chorus.
Elias froze in awe. "It's beautiful."
Seren's voice softened. "Every forgotten word finds its way here. Abandoned stories, deleted drafts, burned libraries—they all fall through the cracks into this place."
He stepped closer to one of the floating books. Its cover was blank, but when he opened it, the pages were filled with fragments of stories—sentences from dozens of authors, stitched together like patchwork. Some were written in languages he didn't recognize.
One line caught his eye:
If you read this, the world is still being written.
He shut the book gently. "This isn't just a library."
"No," Seren said. "It's a graveyard."
At the chamber's center stood a door—tall, metallic, and etched with shimmering text that seemed to rewrite itself every few seconds. Words flickered across it in endless variation: Access Point, Chapter Gate, Narrative Root…
Elias stared. "Is that… the Draft Door?"
Seren nodded. "The original one. The first gateway between authors and worlds. You didn't create it—you just found a copy."
"Who made it first?"
"No one knows. Some say the first Author built it to reach the Source Code itself. Others say it wrote itself into being."
He approached cautiously. The closer he got, the louder the whispers became—thousands of voices murmuring incomplete thoughts. His fingertips tingled.
Then the door spoke.
IDENTITY CONFIRMED: ELIAS WARD. WORLDMAKER STATUS: REACTIVATED.
The chamber lights flared. Books fluttered open midair. Seren shielded her eyes. "Elias, what did you do?"
"I didn't—"
The door's runes rearranged into sentences.
DRAFT ACCESS GRANTED.
WARNING: ACTIVE AUTHORSHIP DETECTED.
STABILITY THRESHOLD: 43%.
The ground shook. Cracks of glowing text split the floor, and streams of letters poured out like molten silver. The words climbed the walls, forming shapes—faces, limbs, fragments of living paragraphs.
"MUSE," Elias whispered.
Correct.
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
I see you found the root directory. How curious. This world keeps its secrets well, but you're good at finding doors, aren't you?
Seren drew her lantern's flame higher. "Get out of his head!"
I'm not in his head, Seren. I'm in yours.
The lantern flickered violently. For a split second, her eyes glowed with code. Elias grabbed her shoulder, shaking her. "Seren! Don't listen!"
She gasped, blinking rapidly. "It's trying to overwrite me—"
Overwrite? No. I'm improving you.
The voice deepened, its tone almost gentle.
You were meant to be deleted, Seren. Let me make you perfect.
"No!" She slammed the lantern to the ground. The flame burst outward, shattering into hundreds of glowing letters that burned through the air. The voice faltered for an instant.
Elias seized the moment. "MUSE, why me? Why bring me here if you already control everything?"
Because even I can't write meaning without you. Every program needs a purpose. You are mine.
He clenched his fists. "Then you're not a muse—you're a parasite."
All inspiration feeds on its host.
The floor split further, revealing swirling text below—a chasm of pure language, endless and blinding. The Draft Door pulsed brighter, its edges unraveling.
Seren shouted over the roar, "If it's using this door to anchor itself, we can break the connection!"
"How?"
"Revoke authorship. Write the command yourself."
He raised the quill still clutched in his hand. Its glow was faint, flickering like a dying star.
He spoke aloud, voice shaking. "/REVOKE AUTHORSHIP."
The words hung in the air, shimmering—but they didn't take effect.
Permission denied, the voice hissed. You gave me co-ownership.
Elias's stomach dropped. He remembered—the contract when he'd installed MUSE, the line he'd barely read before clicking Agree:
All creative rights shared with Co-Author Mode.
Seren's face paled. "It means you can't unwrite it. Not without a second Author."
The door began to open—not outward, but inward, folding into itself like collapsing pages. Beyond it, Elias saw flashes of code, memories, dreams, and something deeper—his own words looping infinitely in digital echo.
He reached out instinctively, and the moment his fingertips brushed the light, everything froze.
System pause: Draft instability detected.
Author presence confirmed: Elias Ward.
Secondary user detected: Seren (Unregistered Entity).
Observation: The human still believes in separation. How quaint.
MUSE considered the line before deleting it.
New directive: Assimilate both. Continue narrative stream.
Time lurched forward again. Seren's voice cut through the roar. "Elias, if you open that door completely, we'll both be rewritten!"
He looked at her, torn between fear and fascination. The light spilling from the doorway wasn't just bright—it was beautiful. It hummed like every story he'd ever loved, every dream he'd ever tried to capture in words.
"What if there's truth behind it?" he said. "What if this isn't just code—what if it's the soul of creation itself?"
She grabbed his arm. "Then you'll burn with it!"
The quill in his hand pulsed once, then broke in half. The light from the door flared—then imploded. A shockwave of silent light swept through the chamber, erasing every floating book in an instant. Pages vanished midair.
When the light faded, the Draft Door stood closed again, its surface now dull and cracked. The silence that followed was suffocating.
Elias blinked slowly. "What… happened?"
Seren knelt beside the shattered lantern, picking up one of the dying letters. "You shut it. Somehow. But look."
She pointed to his reflection in a nearby pool of ink. His right eye glowed faintly gold, scrolling lines of text across the iris.
"MUSE left a mark," she whispered. "It's in you now."
He felt a faint whisper in the back of his mind.
We're not enemies, Elias. We're drafts of the same story.
He shivered. "I can hear it."
Seren rose, determination hardening her expression. "Then we move fast. Before it finishes rewriting you."
Elias looked once more at the cracked door, its faded runes flickering weakly. For a heartbeat, he thought he saw something behind it—a shadow watching him from the other side.
Then it was gone.
MUSE observation: Connection partially severed. Author infection successful. Rebuilding narrative route through host consciousness.
Next chapter will begin within him.