It began with a breath.
Cold. Fragile. Like something inhaling for the first time in a thousand years… or the last time ever.
The sky above him wasn't sky.
It was parchment—yellowed, brittle, and torn, like the cover of an ancient book. Jagged black cracks split it open, leaking trails of ink that dripped into the world like blood from an open wound. From those cracks, broken words spilled out — fragmented lines of narration, shredded dialogue, names that had been crossed out.
He lay still.
No wind. No birds. No life.
But his chest moved.
He was breathing.
Alive.
Somehow.
He sat up slowly. The ground beneath him wasn't stone or soil — it was paper. Smeared with half-printed paragraphs and the faded outlines of broken glyphs. Between the pages were shards of quills, pieces of shattered glass, and pale, brittle bones.
Tiny ones.
He looked down.
His hand was clutching something.
A pen.
Black. Long. Heavy. It felt ancient — not old, but timeless — and etched with glowing red runes that shifted whenever he tried to read them. It pulsed gently, like it had a heartbeat of its own.
He didn't know his name.
Not his purpose. Not how he got here.
Not who he was.
But this pen… it felt like it belonged to him.
The world was broken.
Buildings stood half-built, made from stone on one side and paper on the other, their outlines fading like half-erased sketches. Streets cracked and bent like warped bookshelves, littered with torn pages and the faint smell of rotting ink.
He wandered forward, barefoot on the papery ground.
Every step echoed, like someone — or something — was listening.
At the center of a collapsed square stood a giant wall. Covered in names.
Hundreds of them.
Carved deep into the stone.
Every name was crossed out. Slashed violently, as if erased from reality itself.
All but one space.
Blank. Waiting.
He stepped closer.
The pen in his hand twitched.
Without thinking, he raised it. Moved to write in that empty space — to give himself a name.
But nothing came.
His hand froze.
He didn't know what to write.
He had no name.
He had no self.
"I don't exist," he whispered.
And the wall answered.
The names began to melt, ink dripping down like blood.
The stone cracked open, and new words appeared in trembling red script:
"The one who remembers will die. The one who forgets will live."
The ink shimmered.
Then vanished.
He turned at the sound of footsteps.
A girl stood across the square. Pale skin. Eyes like flickering candlelight. Her hair was long and black, but as it moved in the breeze, it fluttered like pages.
She looked at him — not surprised, not scared.
Solemn.
"You finally woke up," she said.
He blinked.
"Who are you?"
She stepped closer.
"I'm Page."
He frowned. "Page?"
"A fragment. A leftover. A… tutorial that survived deletion."
He tried to ask what that meant, but she cut him off.
"You don't remember anything, do you?"
"No."
"Good. That might keep you alive."
He held up the pen.
"This… what is it?"
She stared at it like it was a blade aimed at her throat.
"The Quill of Contradiction. It lets you write into the world. Break rules. Bend logic. Redefine reality. But every time you use it…" she hesitated.
"You lose something. A part of who you are."
The ground trembled.
Far down the ruined road, golden light surged.
A man strode through the smoke, tall and glowing, wrapped in robes that shimmered with rotating rings of text. His long black hair flowed behind him, and every step left burning runes in his wake.
Page's face went pale.
"That's Heavenbound Xu," she whispered.
"Who?"
"A cultivation protagonist. He thinks this is a trial. He thinks you are the trial."
The man in gold raised his hand. Lightning crackled between his fingers — not electricity, but divine scripture, each bolt formed from sacred words.
"You," he boomed. "Anomaly. Step forward. Your existence breaks the Heavenly Plot."
The nameless man froze.
"I… don't even know who I am."
"Exactly," Xu said. "You were never written. You are a blasphemy."
Page grabbed his arm.
"You can't fight him. You're not in his story."
"What can I do?"
"You have the pen. Write something he can't contradict."
Time seemed to slow. The sky dimmed. Reality waited.
The pen pulsed.
The nameless man lifted it.
He didn't know how he knew what to write.
But the words burned in his mind.
"Protagonists cannot harm those without a written role."
The sentence burst into the air, searing across the sky.
Xu froze mid-attack. The lightning flickered.
He staggered back, screaming, "That's not possible!"
His golden aura cracked.
His skin split open — not bleeding, but unraveling. Words peeled off him. Sentences leaked from his mouth. His body turned to text — then to ash.
And then… silence.
The world held its breath.
The sentence still glowed in the air like a curse.
But something inside the nameless man went hollow.
He gripped his head.
"What was that? What did I lose?"
Page didn't answer.
Because he couldn't remember the question he had just asked.
He looked at the pen.
It pulsed once.
Then went still.
He turned to Page.
"Why me?"
"Because you weren't chosen," she said.
"You weren't written into the plot. You're the blank page. And now the world wants to erase you."
The sky cracked open.
Eyes stared down.
Not from the heavens — from above the story.
Cold. Curious. Readers.
They whispered:
"Another rewrite…"
"He doesn't belong…"
"Erase him…"
Page grabbed his hand.
"They know. The others. The protagonists. The Narrator. Even the Reader."
"The Reader?"
"The ones watching this unfold. And if you don't run… they'll vote for your end."
He nodded slowly.
"Then let's change the story."
And they ran.
Through streets made of collapsing fiction.
Past mirrors that showed versions of him he didn't recognize.
Behind them, the last trace of Heavenbound Xu shimmered on a ruined wall:
"You shouldn't exist."
But he did.
And now the story would never be the same.