The story had no more pages.
Not because it ended.
But because it no longer needed them.
Mikael sat beneath the tree they'd written together—its roots tangled with poetry, its branches stretching beyond the sky. The wind carried old words and new ones, spinning them into something alive.
He wasn't afraid of silence anymore.
Elise walked barefoot across a path of letters. She no longer hid her tears, or her laughter. She had learned both were valid parts of a story.
Lina was painting the horizon with color no one could name. She sang to herself, rewriting melodies only she remembered. And that was enough.
In the distance, the Dollhouse stood—not as a prison, but as a monument. Its windows were wide open. Its doors unguarded. A place where no one was trapped, but where anyone could enter if they needed to remember something they had lost.
Arielle's notebook rested on a stone nearby. Open. Blank. Still waiting.
Mikael picked it up. Smiled.
Not every story ends with triumph. Not every wound heals cleanly. But some things—the important things—survive.
Like names.
Like voices.
Like the will to begin again.
He wrote one final sentence beneath everything they had built:
"The doll dreamed not of escape… but of waking up."
And then he closed the book.
Not to forget.
But to begin another.