When Aarav opened his eyes, the darkness was gone.
He was lying on a bed — soft, clean, and far too ordinary. The walls around him were painted white, sunlight pouring through spotless windows. There were no bloodstains, no whispers, no echoes of the Abyss. Only silence.
He sat up slowly, the blanket slipping from his body. For the first time in what felt like centuries, the air smelled of something… normal. Flowers. Morning. Coffee.
It didn't feel right.
Aarav swung his legs off the bed and touched the floor. It felt too warm — almost pulsing beneath his bare feet. He froze. Then he looked closer and realized the floorboards weren't made of wood. They were made of paper — millions of pages stacked, pressed flat.
Words bled faintly through the surface. He leaned closer, reading the nearest line:
> "Aarav wakes in a quiet room, pretending to believe he's safe."
He stumbled back, breath shaking. "No. No, no, no—"
Every step left faint black footprints on the white pages, as though the ink beneath them was alive, trying to rise to the surface.
The window across the room showed a peaceful world — children laughing, trees swaying, cars moving. But when Aarav pressed his hand against the glass, his reflection didn't move.
The reflection smiled.
"Welcome back," it said, its voice muffled, as if spoken through water.
Aarav stumbled backward, heart pounding. "What is this place? Where's Aisha?"
His reflection tilted its head. "You don't remember her voice?"
Before Aarav could respond, words began to bleed across the walls in long, trembling strokes — forming sentences in Aisha's handwriting.
> Aarav. Don't trust what's written.
It wants you to finish the story.
The story feeds on endings.
He reached out, touching the ink with shaking fingers. The letters pulsed once, warm and alive, then began to fade — like something was erasing her words as quickly as she could write them.
"Aisha!" he shouted. "Where are you?"
> Behind the page.
The voice didn't come from the room. It came from inside his head, gentle and terrified.
Aarav turned. The door at the far end of the room had appeared — tall, wooden, carved with unfamiliar symbols. From behind it came a faint scratching sound, like someone dragging a pen against a wall.
He pushed the door open.
The world beyond wasn't real — not anymore. The hallway twisted like melted wax, and the air smelled of old books and smoke. At the center of the corridor sat a desk, old and splintered, with a single candle burning atop it.
And on that desk… lay a pen.
It wasn't made of metal or plastic. Its handle was pale, curved, almost organic — like it had once been part of a bone. The nib dripped red.
A voice spoke from the shadows behind the desk. Calm. Measured. Familiar.
"You've finally found it."
Aarav's chest tightened. "Who are you?"
The figure stepped forward — a man in the same torn clothes Aarav wore. Same face. Same eyes. The reflection from the window.
"I'm you," it said. "The version that never stopped writing."
Aarav's throat went dry. "This can't be real."
"Oh, but it is," the reflection smiled. "You see, the Abyss was never a place. It was a contract. You wrote it the moment you began this story — and every chapter since has been feeding on you."
Aarav stared at the pen. "Feeding?"
The reflection nodded. "Every life you've written, every scream, every shadow… it was your memory, your time, your soul. That's why you can't remember the beginning anymore. You didn't forget it. You gave it away."
The walls shuddered. Lines of text began crawling up from the floor like vines, covering everything — his name written hundreds of times.
Aarav grabbed the pen. The moment he did, he heard breathing — deep, rhythmic, all around him. The ink on the walls began to tremble.
"Aisha?" he whispered.
> You can still end it, her voice whispered. But not by writing. By refusing to.
The reflection sneered. "Don't listen to her. She's already part of the story. Endings are what give meaning. You owe the book that much."
Aarav's hands shook. The pen vibrated in his grip, whispering to him in countless voices — all of them his own.
He slammed it down onto the desk and began to write:
> This is the final chapter.
But the moment he wrote it, the candle flickered — and the words twisted into something else on their own:
> The story writes itself.
Aarav dropped the pen, stumbling back. The reflection laughed, its voice echoing like shattering glass. "You see? Even now, you can't stop it. You're not the author anymore. You're the ink."
The pen floated into the air, moving on its own. The paper on the walls began to fold, pages ripping themselves free, forming a storm of words. Aarav screamed, shielding his face as sentences tore through the air.
Then — silence.
The storm froze. The pages hovered in the air, suspended like dust. And from the center of the chaos, Aisha stepped out.
Her body flickered like static. Her eyes glowed faintly white. "I told you not to write."
Aarav reached for her, trembling. "I was trying to bring you back."
"You can't bring back what was written to die."
Her hand touched his chest — and for a moment, Aarav saw what lay inside him. Not blood. Not a heart. Just words. Lines of black text swirling in his veins.
"You were never the writer, Aarav," she whispered. "You were the story all along."
The pages began to collapse, folding inward, erasing everything — the desk, the candle, the reflection, even Aisha's fading light. Aarav fell to his knees, screaming as his body began to unravel into sentences.
As his vision dimmed, he saw the final words appear on the last surviving page, written in a hand that wasn't his:
> "Chapter 32 — The Living Don't Write Back."
End of Part One: The Author's Wake.
Then, beneath it, one last line appeared — slow, deliberate, like a whisper burned into eternity:
> "Part Two Begins: When the Dead Start Reading."