: Margins of the Forgotten
Wale walked through a world with no roads.
The sky was blank parchment. The ground, a flat stretch of grey mist. Here, beyond the End Page, no stories lived. No narratives breathed. It was a space meant only for things left behind—scrapped characters, severed plot threads, broken arcs.
He did not know how long he'd walked. Time here was not a character.
He was alone.
And then, he wasn't.
"Found you."
Wale turned.
A figure stood behind him—half-formed, flickering in and out, like a sentence never finished. Its face was and wasn't his. Its voice shifted through tones: a child's, a scholar's, a beast's.
"You're the ghost," Wale said.
"No," the thing smiled. "I'm what you left behind."
It took form—a jagged, burned version of Wale himself, cloaked in the ash of every memory he tried to suppress.
The Original Draft.
Back in the waking world, Chris stared at the broken horizon of the rewritten world.
Cities had returned.
The sun had resumed.
But something was wrong.
Grey approached from the ridge. "Still no sign of Wale?"
She shook her head. "It's like he doesn't exist here. Like he stayed beyond the page."
Grey knelt beside her, brushing soot from his gauntlets. "He made his choice."
Kairo's voice whispered through the air. "But that doesn't mean the story's done."
Wale stood across from the ghost of himself.
"You were the one who killed Seraphine," Wale said, voice low.
The ghost nodded. "She was never real to you. Just an obstacle."
"I didn't mean to—"
"No one ever does."
Wale closed his fists. "Why are you still here?"
The ghost of Wale stepped forward. "Because this place feeds on what you deny. You rewrote yourself into something noble. But you left me here to rot."
It smiled, cracked and cruel.
"Now I'm the margin. And you're just a note in the corner."
Chris knelt by the Earth, fingers tracing a glowing symbol burned into the ground. It pulsed like a heartbeat.
Grey approached warily. "What is that?"
"A tether," she said. "To the forgotten space. Where Wale went."
Grey's brow furrowed. "Are you saying we can reach him?"
"No," Chris said. "I'm saying he's calling us."
Wale fought.
Not with fists or fire, but with identity.
Each moment, the ghost tried to rewrite him. To drown him in guilt, in the decisions he never unmade.
"You were a liar," the ghost hissed.
"I learned."
"You manipulated them. Chris. Grey. Kairo."
"I needed them. That's what made me real."
"You're a monster!"
"I was. But not now."
The ghost laughed, cracked and cruel.
"Then let's see who the world remembers."
And they clashed.
Chris and Grey stood at the tether point.
"What happens if we cross?" Grey asked.
"We follow into the margin," Chris said, "where forgotten things linger. Where stories get stuck."
She looked him in the eye.
"If we go… we might not come back."
Grey placed a hand on her shoulder. "Wale came back for us. So we return the favor."
In the margins, Wale was losing.
The ghost grew stronger with every denial Wale made.
"You think being rewritten made you new," it taunted. "But you are still me. The liar. The manipulator. The void."
Wale fell to one knee.
Then he felt it—
A warmth.
Flickering flame.
And a voice.
"Get up," Chris said, stepping from the void.
Grey stood beside her, sword shimmering with concept.
"You're not alone, Wale," he said. "You never were."
The ghost recoiled. "No! This is my domain!"
Chris raised her palm.
The word "Truth" burned from her skin.
Grey whispered something—his real name—and it struck like lightning.
Wale stood.
Not as the old ghost.
Not as the broken boy.
But as the man between.
The margin.
The rewrite.
The author.
He spoke one word:
"End."
And the ghost shattered.
The margins tore open.
Light spilled in.
A bridge back to the rewritten world stretched before them.
Chris turned to Wale. "Ready to come home?"
Wale nodded.
But not before looking back—just once—at the place where broken things had lived.
Then he stepped forward.
Together.