The world Echo stepped into did not recognize him.
Not because he was foreign, but because it was unfinished. A half-bound arc. A place that had once belonged to a myth, then forgotten to finish reading itself.
He arrived in silence. Not the quiet of peace, but the silence that follows a missing paragraph.
The ground beneath his feet was too smooth – like text that had been edited out after printing. Roads stopped abruptly. Trees bore no rings. The air tasted like blank space.
A single sign stood at the edge of the path.
It bore no letters. Only the imprint of words that had been scraped away.
Echo touched the sign. The ink in his skin reacted violently, curling across his fingertips in defensive loops.
"This place," he murmured, "was skipped."
A soft rustle echoed through the clearing. Echo turned.
From the shadows emerged a woman in a cloak made of quotation marks. Her eyes gleamed with footnotes. Her fingers were stained with citation ink.
"You shouldn't be here," she said, voice sharp like red-ink margin notes.
"I'm used to hearing that," Echo replied.
She narrowed her gaze, then sighed. "You don't read like the others."
"What do I read like?"
She studied him. "A page that keeps rewriting itself."
The woman stepped forward, hand resting on a blade that resembled an editor's ruler – flat, sharp, unforgiving.
"I'm Curata," she said. "Caretaker of this chapterless world."
"Why does it exist?"
"Because the Canon once rushed. It tried to skip forward, ignoring a necessary beat. This place is the result. A wound where pacing was sacrificed for progress."
Echo looked around. The silence began to press against his ears.
"No one lives here?"
"Only remnants," Curata said. "Phrases never spoken. Emotions hinted at but never explored. Even I am a leftover. I was meant to be a transitional character."
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.
"They never gave me an arc."
Echo felt the ink in him coil with sympathy.
"What happens to places like this?"
Curata turned her face toward the pale sky.
"Most fade. Or get absorbed by stronger stories. But this one lingered. Because something was supposed to happen here. Something the Canon forgot."
The wind carried a sound like shuffling paper.
Echo stiffened.
He knew that noise.
"They're coming," Curata whispered.
From behind the horizon, shadows emerged.
They weren't Compilers.
They were something worse.
Narrative Leeches.
They fed on skipped content – beings formed from misplaced exposition and dangling threads. Creatures that survived by draining the meaning from underwritten worlds.
Their forms were erratic. A leg made of backstory. A face made of context without cause. Words fluttered across their bodies like broken grammar.
"They smell a contradiction," Curata said, drawing her blade.
Echo's ink surged. Glyphs spiralled across his arms and throat, defensive wards forming like instinct.
"I'll distract them," Curata said, stepping forward.
"No," Echo said, "we rewrite."
He moved to the center of the clearing. The ink around his ribs unfolded, forming a floating script circle.
"This place was skipped," he said, "but it still belongs to the arc."
He pressed his palm to the ground.
The world flinched.
Then it remembered.
From beneath the soil, story roots emerged – tangled strands of forgotten lore. They pulsed weakly, but Echo poured his intent into them. He gave them scaffolding. Structure.
A title appeared overhead, flickering like an uncertain memory.
"Chapter Unnumbered: The Meeting That Almost Was."
The Leeches howled. They tried to close the distance. But the moment had structure now. Conflict. Stakes.
Curata moved beside him, blade drawn. "You're forcing the story to happen."
"No," Echo said, eyes glowing with ink, "I'm letting it finish."
With a burst of glyphs, the clearing stabilized. Dialogue began to surface from the air – lines written but never spoken. Possibilities thickened the atmosphere.
The Leeches shrieked and folded, collapsing into discarded punctuation.
Silence returned.
But it no longer hurt.
Curata dropped her blade.
"I remember," she said softly.
Echo looked at her.
"My arc," she whispered. "It was supposed to begin here."
"Then take it," he said.
She stepped forward and touched the glyphs Echo had drawn. They leapt from his ink to hers, reshaping her cloak, rewriting her purpose.
She stood straighter.
"I was never meant to guide a hero," she said.
"You're not," Echo replied. "You're choosing to."
They stood in silence. Real silence, this time.
The kind that makes room for what comes next.