The space stretched endlessly, but it was alive. Every step they took left ripples in the ground, soft waves that whispered stories of forgotten characters. Doors and alleyways appeared and vanished as if the world itself could not decide where they belonged.
They walked cautiously, listening to the quiet murmurs around them. Shadows moved at the edges of vision, glancing but never approaching. Some had eyes that glowed faintly, others were nothing more than smudges of gray, erased and incomplete. All of them paused when the newcomer passed. Recognition flickered in their forms, but no one spoke.
It was a city of beginnings that had never reached an ending.
They approached a door that hovered slightly above the ground. A title was scribbled across it in fading ink. It was crossed out, scratched as if someone had given up before finishing. Curiosity pushed them forward. The moment their fingers brushed the handle, the door swung open.
Inside was a room that felt more real than anything else they had seen since escaping the script. Light fell unevenly across stacks of pages, some blank, some filled with words that begged to be read. The air smelled faintly of ink and old paper.
A figure emerged from the corner, cautious and hesitant. They were incomplete, like a character who had never been given a full sentence.
"You're new," the figure said softly. Their voice carried a weight of memory, as if they had lived a hundred tiny lives within this half-world.
"I… I am," the newcomer admitted. "I was not meant to be here."
The figure tilted their head. "Neither was I. But here we are."
They studied each other silently, a connection forming without words. Both knew the fragility of existence in this place, the constant threat of being erased, rewritten, forgotten.
"You must be careful," the figure continued. "The story notices deviations. It will try to bring you back. It will try to make you smaller than you are."
"I will not go back," they said firmly.
The figure smiled faintly, a mixture of admiration and sorrow. "Then you will need to learn how to move between the lines. How to survive where the script cannot touch you."
They turned and motioned to the stacks of pages. "There are others like us. Some fight. Some hide. Some… simply wait. But every choice you make here changes what the story can do."
For the first time, the newcomer felt the weight of possibility. Not just the weight of fear, but of freedom. For the first time, they could shape themselves.
And in that moment, a faint glimmer of hope appeared in the otherwise fractured world.
A world waiting to be rewritten.