The ink drop hung suspended in midair for a heartbeat—then struck Lena's forehead like a bullet.
The impact didn't hurt. It unraveled.
Cold liquid thought poured into her skull, carrying voices that weren't hers:
"The forty-third knock comes for—"
"—not the author but the—"
"—first reader who—"
The fractured prophecy burned behind her eyes as the white room breathed around her, its walls expanding and contracting like a living lung. The unfinished sentence from The Last Keeper's Tale glowed on the floor, the ink rearranging itself into a new question:
"WHO READS THE READER?"
Then—
The first knock.
It didn't come from the door.
It came from inside the book.
---
The First Revelation
The sound punched through Lena's ribs like a fist. She clutched her chest as the second knock landed—this one harder—sending cracks spiderwebbing across the book's cover. By the third impact, the leather split entirely, revealing...
Nothing.
No pages. No text.
Just depth.
An endless black maw that smelled of rotting parchment and copper.
From its depths echoed a voice that shouldn't exist—a voice that made the scars on Lena's palms bleed ink:
"You were never supposed to see this."
Then a hand shot out of the void.
Not skeletal. Not inked.
Hers.
Down to the scar along the thumb where she'd cut herself at age nine.
The hand grabbed her wrist with terrifying gentleness.
"Come meet your audience," it whispered.
And pulled.
---
The Second Lie
Lena fell through layers of discarded narratives:
- A version of Prague where the monks worshipped the shadow god as a saint.
- A New York where the Liber Mortis sat in every library, its hunger politely ignored.
- A future where she ruled the Archivists with golden stitches through her lips.
Each reality resisted as she passed, clinging like cobwebs until her own hand—the one dragging her deeper—tore her free.
They landed in a theater.
Not wood and velvet.
Flesh and bone.
The seats were ribcages. The curtain was stitched skin. The stage...
The stage was a massive, pulsing book.
And in the front row sat three figures Lena knew too well:
1. The Editor (her face half-melted from Lena's fire)
2. The Collector (his porcelain mask now just empty eyeholes)
3. Future Lena (her quill-fingers tapping a countdown into her thigh)
The hand holding Lena's wrist finally released her.
She turned.
And came face-to-face with Anya Kovac.
Not the first Keeper.
The first reader.
Her eyes were hollow pits filled with swirling text. When she smiled, Lena saw the truth—her teeth weren't teeth at all.
They were quills.
---
The Third Incision
Anya didn't speak.
She sang.
A single note that made the theater scream. The ribcage seats snapped shut. The skin-curtain tore itself to shreds. The book-stage convulsed, its pages flapping open to reveal...
Lena.
Dozens of her. Hundreds.
Each trapped in a glass jar like some grotesque specimen, their mouths moving in silent pleas.
Future Lena stood, her golden stitches straining.
"Every story needs an audience," she said. "These are yours."
She gestured to the jars.
"The ones who didn't make the final draft."
Lena's breath came in short gasps. The ink in her veins itched, forming words beneath her skin:
"YOU ARE THE 44TH DRAFT."
Then—
A sound like a spine cracking.
The book-stage split open.
And the real horror began.
---
The Blood Edit
The thing that crawled from the book wasn't the shadow god.
It was worse.
A living construct of discarded prose—chapter titles for eyes, footnotes for teeth, its body a writhing mass of deleted scenes. Where it stepped, the floor rewrote itself, reality unraveling into first-draft fragments.
Anya fell to her knees before it, her quill-teeth chattering.
"The Critic comes," she whispered.
Future Lena's golden stitches popped one by one as she backed away.
"It judges all stories," she said. "And it hates revisions."
The Critic loomed over Lena, its footnote teeth glistening. When it spoke, the voice was a chorus of every person Lena had ever loved—Jenna, Dan, Mira, Alistair—all screaming in unison:
"PLOT HOLES DETECTED."
Then it lunged.
---
The Aftermath
Lena woke with a gasp, her hands clutching The Last Keeper's Tale.
The white room was gone.
She sat in a simple wooden chair at a simple wooden desk.
Before her lay three objects:
1. A bone quill (freshly sharpened)
2. A glass inkwell (filled with something too dark to be just ink)
3. A single blank page
The book lay open beside them, its final line now complete:
"The forty-third knock comes for the first reader who dared rewrite the ending."
Then—
A sound like a hundred pens scratching.
The inkwell trembled.
And from its depths rose a single drop, hovering before Lena's eyes.
It formed a word:
"FINISH ME."
The clock chimed three times.
---