The blank world did not stay blank for long.
Where Mikael wrote, hills began to grow. Not perfect ones—crooked, uneven, wild with color and noise. Where Elise touched the air, stars blinked into place, some too bright, others barely visible. Lina laughed once, and a whole sky of birds appeared—messy, loud, clumsy, and beautiful.
They were no longer inside the Dollhouse.
They were no longer escaping it, either.
They were building something else.
Not a story made to impress.
A story made to feel.
They didn't always agree. Sometimes, Mikael's words tried to fix things too fast. Elise hesitated, doubting her lines before they formed. Lina wandered away halfway through paragraphs, forgetting what she meant to say. But no Editor scolded them. No whisper corrected them. There was only the page… and the freedom to change it.
One evening, they sat together beneath a sky they had created.
"Do you think anyone will read it?" Elise asked.
"Maybe," Mikael said. "But that's not why we're writing."
"We're writing so we remember," Lina added, "even if no one else ever does."
A quiet wind passed—gentle, not haunting.
And then… Arielle's voice returned.
Not aloud.
On the page.
A single line, written in familiar, looping red ink:
"You remembered me."
They all went silent.
Then Mikael laughed softly. "She never really left."
"No," Elise said. "She just waited until we could see her in what we made."
Their story wasn't done.
But it was theirs.
Not rewritten.
Not censored.
Not clean.
But full.
Real.
And open to the next chapter.