You have completed the scroll.
That was your first mistake.
The curse now settles in you, quietly, like dust in the lungs. You won't notice at first. But it will grow familiar. It will shape your silences.
You may think it was only a story. But stories are messengers. And this one has delivered itself completely.
The black ink you followed, word by word, has followed you in return.
You have read what was written. Now you are written into it.
But there is a way. A narrow, trembling path backward.
To walk it:
— Read again what you have read. Not as before.
— Read in reverse. Begin from the last echo. Let your eyes unspool what your mind consumed.
You will notice things you missed.
But even that will not suffice.
To see the truth, hold the scroll to a mirror.
Let the black reveal itself in reflection. The scroll does not speak in a single direction.
It remembers in reverse.
If you do this, if you unmake your reading, you may come to understand.
Or you may only bring it further in.
Some who try see not words, but shapes.
Some hear a voice behind the text.
Some never return from the mirror.
But you have begun.
And now the scroll begins with you.