Falling through the drain wasn't like falling through water. It felt like being pushed through a meat grinder made of velvet. One second, Rayan was suffocating in the sterile, bleach-heavy air of the bathroom; the next, the world expanded into a terrifying, hollow vastness.
He landed hard. Not on tile, and not in mud, but on something dry and rustling.
Rayan coughed, his lungs burning with the scent of old paper and dust. He opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn't. He was lying at the bottom of a pit—a canyon, really—whose walls were made entirely of stacked, leather-bound books. Millions of them. They stretched upward for miles, disappearing into a ceiling of swirling grey fog.
This was the Archive.
The silence here was heavy, the kind of silence that has weight, pressing against your eardrums until you can hear the rush of your own blood. Rayan scrambled to his feet, clutching the tape recorder like a talisman. The rusted key in his pocket felt cold now, as if it had died.
"Looking for something, Rayan?"
The voice didn't come from behind him. It came from the books.
Rayan whirled around. On the wall of books to his right, the spines were shifting. Titles were changing in real-time. 'Rayan's First Lie', 'Rayan's Forgotten Sister', 'The Day Rayan Killed a God'. "Who are you?" Rayan shouted, his voice echoing weakly in the vast canyon of paper. "Show yourself!"
From a gap between two massive encyclopedias, a girl stepped out. She couldn't have been more than ten years old. She wore a white nightgown stained with soot, and her feet were bare. But it was her face that made Rayan's skin crawl. Her features were constantly flickering—one moment she had the eyes of an old woman, the next, the mouth of a jagged predator.
"I'm the Index," she said, her voice a chorus of a dozen different tones. "And you're trespassing in the 'Unwritten' section. You shouldn't be here. You're supposed to be in the 'Tragedies' wing."
"I'm not a book," Rayan spat, though his hand trembled. "I'm a man. My name is Rayan Miller, and I want to know how to get out of this hellhole."
The girl—the Index—tilted her head. "Rayan Miller died in Oakhaven. I have the receipt. Would you like to see it? It's signed in your father's blood."
She began to walk toward him, her steps silent on the carpet of loose pages. "The Archivist is coming, Rayan. He's very upset. You stole a page from his face. That's like stealing a piece of his soul. He's going to turn you into a bookmark for a very, very long novel about suffering."
"I don't care about the Archivist," Rayan said, backing away until his heels hit the wall of books. "Tell me about the Miller estate. Why did my mother have silver eyes? Why is there a version of me hanging in a bathroom stall?"
The Index stopped. Her face settled for a second—into the face of a girl who looked hauntingly like Rayan. "Because you're not the original. You're an echo. Every time Oakhaven resets, a new Rayan is born to try and solve the puzzle. You're... let me check..." She squinted at a book spine near her head. "Ah, yes. You're number 104. Most of the others didn't even make it to the bathroom."
A distant, metallic clank vibrated through the floor. Clang. Clang. Clang. The Archivist was near. The sound of his rusted chains dragging against the floor of the upper levels sent a wave of cold dread through the air.
"If I'm an echo," Rayan said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous hiss, "then I have nothing to lose. Tell me how to stop the cycle."
the Index smiled, and for the first time, she looked genuinely afraid. "There is a room. The 'Author's Chamber'. It's at the very top, behind the fog. But you can't get there as a man. You have to become a secret."
She reached into her nightgown and pulled out a small, glass inkwell. It wasn't filled with ink, but with the same golden liquid Rayan had seen in the bathroom.
"Drink this," she whispered. "It will dissolve your body and turn you into a thought. A thought can go anywhere. A thought can't be caught by chains."
Rayan looked at the golden liquid. Don't let the gold touch you, the phone had warned. But the phone was gone, and the chains were getting louder. The walls of books began to bleed ink, the black liquid staining the floor, rising like a dark tide.
From the fog above, the Archivist's hook descended, swinging like a pendulum, searching for flesh.
Rayan looked at the inkwell, then at the hook, then at the girl who had his own eyes.
"What happens to the thought when the story ends?" Rayan asked.
The Index's face flickered one last time, turning into a perfect mirror of Rayan's current, terrified expression.
"It gets erased," she whispered. "But at least you'll know the ending."
Rayan grabbed the inkwell. He didn't drink it. He threw it at the descending hook of the Archivist.
The explosion was silent. A blast of golden light erupted, clashing with the iron hook. The metal didn't break—it began to rewrite itself. The hook turned into a fountain pen, then a rose, then a screaming human hand.
In the chaos, Rayan noticed something he had missed. Behind the girl, there wasn't just a gap in the books. There was a ladder. A ladder made of human ribs, sparking with the same purple light as his rusted key.
He didn't wait for the Index to speak again. He lunged for the ladder and began to climb.
As he ascended into the grey fog, he looked down. The Archivist had finally arrived at the bottom. But it wasn't a monster. Now that the golden light had hit it, the robes of chains had fallen away.
Standing there, looking up at Rayan with tears of ink streaming down his face, was a man. An old man, wearing a tattered suit and a name tag that read: H. Miller - Head Librarian.
"Dad?" Rayan choked out.
The old man didn't answer. He simply pointed his jagged hook—which was slowly turning back into metal—toward the very top of the ladder.
"Run, Rayan," the old man's voice echoed, not from his mouth, but from the books themselves. "Before He finishes the last chapter."
Rayan climbed faster, his hands bleeding as the bone rungs cut into his palms. He reached the fog, his head breaking through the grey mist into a room that was blindingly bright.
It was an office. A perfectly normal, 21st-century office.
There was a mahogany desk, a laptop, and a steaming cup of coffee. Sitting in the chair was a man whose face Rayan couldn't see because of the glare of the desk lamp.
The man was typing.
Click. Click. Click.
Rayan stepped off the ladder, his boots clicking on the hardwood floor. He walked toward the desk, his heart hammering. He looked at the laptop screen.
He saw these exact words being typed: Rayan stepped off the ladder, his boots clicking on the hardwood floor. He walked toward the desk, his heart hammering.
The man stopped typing. He didn't look up.
"You're early, Rayan," the man said. "I haven't finished the ending yet. But since you're here... why don't you tell me? Do you want to live, or do you want the truth?"
The man turned the laptop screen toward Rayan. On the screen was a folder titled: PROJECT OAKHAVEN - DISCARDED SAMPLES. Inside the folder were 103 files. Each one was named Rayan.exe.
And then, Rayan felt a cold, sharp sensation in his back. He looked down. A silver blade was protruding from his chest.
He turned around. Standing behind him was the woman from the porch. His mother. Her silver eyes were glowing.
"The truth is," she whispered in his ear, "you were never the protagonist, Rayan. You were just the distraction."