There were no stars in this sky. Only blotted ink stains bleeding through parchment clouds. The wind had gone silent again — not still, just… muted. Like even the air was afraid of being overheard.
They were deep now.
Too deep for most characters to survive.
But the man with no name — and the Quill that pulsed with buried memories — walked on.
Page followed close, one hand always on the folds of her coat, where she kept a hidden relic that whispered to her when she slept. Her steps were careful. Intentional. This part of the world was known as the Undraft — the layers of forgotten outlines and canceled arcs buried beneath every existing narrative.
"This place feels…" he began, trailing off.
"Wrong?" Page finished, her eyes scanning the walls.
He nodded.
"You're not wrong," she said. "You're remembering it."
He turned toward her. "What do you mean?"
"This layer exists only for stories that were erased before they were written. This place wasn't built. It was… abandoned."
The walls around them weren't stone or metal. They were made of unwritten parchment, some bleeding with unfinished sentences. Scraps of plots hung like roots from the ceiling. Some of them whispered if you got too close.
"She was supposed to—"
"In the end, the father—"
"But what if the villain was—"
Each one broke off. Every voice was silenced.
The man kept walking.
He didn't want to listen.
"What are we looking for?" he asked after a long while.
Page's answer came quietly.
"A story that never made it."
He frowned. "You said this place was the Undraft. What good is a story that never got written?"
"Because it almost did," she said. "Something here is tied to your origin. To who you were before the Narrator erased you. We need to find the fragments."
They reached a crumbling stairwell carved into the floor, its steps descending into a black spiral of character files and idea threads. As they descended, the whispers grew louder.
The man paused mid-step.
A voice.
Familiar.
"Don't forget me."
He turned.
No one there.
He touched his chest.
His heartbeat was fast — but uneven. As if something inside was trying to knock its way out.
He kept moving.
At the bottom of the spiral stair, a circular room spread out before them. It resembled a reading chamber — only everything was scorched, as if burned by lightning. The bookshelves were hollow. The table at the center was cracked. And the chandelier above dripped with melted story cores — crystal shards that used to power entire universes.
The only thing still intact… was the mirror.
Tall. Slim. Standing alone at the far end of the room.
It shimmered without reflection.
The man approached.
Not too close this time.
"Another memory?" he asked.
"No," Page said. "A test."
He turned. "Test?"
She walked forward slowly, eyes hard. "This mirror doesn't show what was. It shows what the world would look like if you never existed."
He stared at her.
"I thought I wasn't supposed to exist."
"You weren't," she said. "That doesn't mean you didn't change things. Even the smallest contradiction can echo through the genre. Look."
He looked.
Inside the mirror, the world was wrong.
The sky was clean — too clean. Flat. Uniform. A single cloud repeated like a background loop. Characters walked in straight lines. All of them spoke in tropes. The same dozen words again and again.
"I must protect my sister."
"I won't forgive you!"
"You dare insult me?"
He watched them fight. Clash. Smile.
It was perfect.
It was dead.
There were no contradictions. No emotion that wasn't scripted. Even their pain had structure. Every hero had a past. Every villain had a reason. Every arc had a shape.
Except…
One thing was missing.
Page.
She wasn't in this world.
The unnamed man clenched his fists.
"You said it shows the world without me."
She nodded.
"Then why aren't you in it?"
She hesitated.
Then: "Because I'm only here… because you are."
He stepped back from the mirror, breath sharp.
This story went deeper than he thought.
"What am I really?" he whispered.
Page didn't answer. She simply handed him something.
A torn scrap of parchment. Burned around the edges. But in the center, just legible, were a few words.
"Name: Auro—"
"Origin: Class-0 prototype, narrative breaker. Not to be written."
"Status: Quarantined. Memory sealed."
"Directive: Contain at all costs."
His heart stopped.
He looked up.
"You knew?"
"I suspected."
He read the next line on the parchment.
"If reactivated, proceed to the Archive Below."
He looked around.
"This isn't it?"
She shook her head. "This is the threshold."
With trembling fingers, he touched the Quill.
It pulsed once.
And the floor vanished.
They fell.
Not through air — through concept.
There was no gravity here. Only momentum. Words spiraled past them like galaxies. Forgotten drafts, lost worlds, dead epics, and whispered poems all drifted in the void.
They landed with no sound.
No impact.
Just… existence.
The room they found themselves in was circular and endless, its walls lined with doors — each one labeled in ink that faded the moment you looked at it.
"This is the Archive Below," Page whispered. "The place where the world keeps the stories it's afraid of."
He stepped toward a door.
But it opened before he touched it.
Inside was him.
Younger. Smiling. Sitting on a windowsill with a girl who looked like—
He gasped.
"Is that you?"
She didn't answer.
The memory continued.
"Someday, I want to write a story so powerful, no one can erase it," the younger Page said.
"Then write me into it," his younger self answered.
They both laughed.
"Promise?"
"Promise."
The door slammed shut.
The man stumbled back.
His chest burned.
"I… I knew you."
Page finally nodded. Her voice was shaking. "Before the Narrator rewrote everything. You were my main character."
Another door opened.
This time, a battlefield. He watched himself covered in ink and cuts, dueling a being made of punctuation and fire.
The Narrator.
The memory blurred.
He saw himself lose.
Saw himself erase himself to protect Page.
Then—
Nothing.
He looked down at the Quill.
It had begun to glow again.
Alive with memory.
"Why did you bring me here?" he asked.
Page stepped close.
"Because if you don't remember who you were… the Narrator will win again. And next time, he won't leave pieces."
More doors opened.
Each showed a version of him — hero, villain, god, ghost.
He watched each fade.
Not from time.
From decision.
As if the world had chosen to forget him.
He stood in the center of the Archive.
Let the echoes burn into him.
And then, slowly, he began to write.
Not on paper.
Not with ink.
On the air itself.
Words formed like stars.
"I was never meant to exist."
"So I will write my story myself."
"Line by line."
"Memory by memory."
"Even if the world forgets…"
"I will remember."
The Archive pulsed.
Every door lit up.
Every story opened.
And a voice — his own voice — filled the chamber.
"Welcome back, Auron."