"Not all authors are awake. Some dream... and let nightmares hold the pen."
Location: Tsukimura Mental Institute – Observation Room 6B
The room was white. Sterile. Quiet.
Inside, a girl no older than sixteen lay strapped to a bed. Her hands trembled—but not from fear. From writing.
Dozens of pens floated around her, scribbling on the walls, the ceiling, even the air.
She was asleep.
But her thoughts weren't.
One pen wrote in kanji:
"Void-born. Thread-bound. Erased once, now returning."
Another carved in Latin:
"Sanguine Scriptura: Hiragi must fall."
Flashback: The Visit
Earlier that day, Hiragi and Ishigami had visited the institute after the Book III incident. The director was already waiting.
"You're here about the Dream Scribe?" he asked.
"We heard she writes about things before they happen," Hiragi said.
"Not just that. She writes things into happening."
Back in the Present
A nurse screamed from the hallway.
The pens began carving into the walls:
"The Librarian lives."
"Ink never dies."
"Pageburner awakens."
One pen turned toward Hiragi and stabbed into the wall:
"HE'S WATCHING YOU."
The air went cold.
"She's channeling someone," Ishigami whispered. "Something that survived the manuscript purge."
"Or something that was never sealed to begin with," Hiragi added grimly.
Sudden Spike
The girl's heartbeat monitor began blaring. Her mouth opened slightly, still unconscious, and from her lips came a fractured whisper:
"...he burned the first book to live…"
Hiragi froze.
"What did you say?"
But the girl didn't respond.
A final message wrote itself across the ceiling in blood-colored ink:
"Pageburner walks. And he remembers the day Hiragi died."
Outside the Room
Airi was waiting with a thermal scanner.
"Her body's normal. But her shadow shows three hearts and two minds."
"Possession," Ishigami said.
"Or worse," Hiragi muttered. "She's not possessed… she's becoming a page."
The Implication
If the girl kept writing in her sleep, she wouldn't just predict reality—she'd overwrite it.
And someone, somewhere, was feeding her the script.
To Be Continued…