Darkness.
It was not the absence of light, nor the suffocating void of nonexistence. It was a darkness filled with something—something vast, shifting, incomprehensible.
The moment they fell, Yeaia lost all sensation of time and space. It was as if their body had been left behind, as if they were nothing more than a thought drifting through an ocean of ink.
Then—awareness.
A slow, creeping return to existence.
Yeaia didn't open their eyes. They didn't need to.
They knew Klein was nearby.
He was breathing. Shallow, uneven. Like someone caught between dreaming and waking.
For the first time since the loop had begun, Klein was real.
The realization struck Yeaia harder than expected. They exhaled shakily, grounding themselves, trying to shake off the disorienting sensation of being pulled through a story rather than reality.
The air smelled…wrong.
Not like ink. Not like the musty pages of the Archive.
Something else.
Yeaia's eyes flickered open.
They were lying on a surface that didn't feel solid, yet it held them as if it were. The world around them was both dim and glowing, impossible to fully grasp. Shapes floated in the air—fragments of glass? Reflections? No, memories.
And then—footsteps.
A sound too familiar, too distant at the same time.
Klein stirred beside them, his mismatched eyes fluttering open. For a moment, he looked disoriented, as if waking from a dream he couldn't remember. Then, his gaze focused on Yeaia, and something in his expression shifted—sharp realization.
"We're out."
Yeaia sat up slowly. "Are we?"
Klein pushed himself to a sitting position, looking around the strange, unreal space they had landed in. His expression darkened.
"…No."
Yeaia felt it too. This wasn't the loop. But it wasn't outside it either.
They were in-between.
A place between pages. Between stories.
And they were not alone.
A shadow loomed in the distance, its form flickering like a mirage. It had no clear shape, shifting between outlines that never solidified, as if it refused to be defined.
Klein stiffened. His grip tightened on the thin air, as if expecting a weapon to appear—but nothing did. The realization made his frown deepen.
"…We're not supposed to be here," he murmured.
The shadow took a step forward. The air rippled.
Yeaia stood, watching it carefully. Their form still flickered at the edges, unstable. But they were more solid now. More real.
The shadow spoke.
No voice came out, but its words pressed into their minds, heavy and suffocating.
"You should not be here."
Klein clenched his jaw. "We didn't exactly have a choice."
The shadow twisted, as if considering his words.
Then—another pulse of unspoken speech.
"This was never your story."
The weight of the statement pressed into their very existence.
It wasn't a threat.
It was truth.
Klein inhaled sharply. Yeaia's mismatched eyes narrowed.
This thing—this entity—wasn't just watching.
It was reading.
As if Klein and Yeaia were nothing more than characters on a page.
As if everything that had happened, every loop, every manipulation, had been written, controlled, orchestrated.
A cold, sinking realization settled in Yeaia's chest.
The loop hadn't just been a prison.
It had been a story trying to overwrite them.
To make them fit.
To erase what didn't belong.
Yeaia clenched their fists. "Whose story, then?"
The shadow froze.
Then, it began to laugh.
Not with sound. Not with anything real. The air itself shuddered with amusement, as if the world itself found the question absurd.
And then—a voice.
Not from the shadow.
From everywhere.
From outside.
"You already know, don't you?"
Yeaia felt their blood run cold.
They knew that voice.
Klein knew it too. His entire body tensed, his breathing sharp and controlled.
They turned.
And there—standing just beyond the edge of the broken space—
Was Him.
The Fool.
Not Klein.
The one who was never supposed to be.
The shadow bowed.
And the Fool smiled.
"Ah," he said, tilting his head. "You finally made it out."
Klein's voice was barely a whisper.
"…No."
But the Fool was real.
And He was waiting.
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End of Chapter 63.
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