It was difficult to describe the sensation of stepping from reality to a realm beyond its borders. Words fall flat in their attempt to articulate such a moment, which, for most, will forever remain an enigma, a secret, a truth that cannot ever truly be understood. To experience the threshold between what is and what isn't is to touch infinity. And yet, to try and convey that infinite to another being is a futile task. Even the gods, in their omnipotent glory, would struggle to find language sufficient enough to communicate the depth and breadth and majesty of that crossing over.
To step from one side of the boundary to the other, is to lose sight of yourself. Who am I, when I stand here in the twilight, in the half-light, in the no-place and the no-time and the no-space that lies between worlds and stars and sunrises and dreams?
The transition was not a physical journey. Not a trip from Paris to Lyon, or a flight from France to Japan. This is not a trek from the North to the South. From the East to the West. There are no directions to follow. No maps to read. Only the feeling of dislocation and vertigo and the sudden awareness of how very, very small and insignificant we are. How fragile. How brief. Our lives, and the universe in which we live, are but the smallest of grains of sand upon the shore of an endless ocean.
"Insight is Invitation."
That was her advice, or a warning.
All I could hear was the sound of a pen scrawling on a paper, and the ticking of a grandfather's clock.
No, was it the sound of someone typing on a keyboard?
Or, was it the scratching of a quill on parchment, a thousand, a million times in a second, a billion lines of ink flowing, bleeding onto an eternal, blank page, a canvas stretching to eternity, and the writing never ceasing.
"No, was it the sound of someone typing on a keyboard?"
What?! What was that voice?
Wait...
—Third POV
The lights came on without a switch. We were standing on a chess board. The squares stretched away from us, and the horizon curved upwards. Above, there were constellations, clusters of stars in shapes I'd never could've imagined. Here and there, a galaxy burned, or a nebula unfurled. All of them were in motion. Growing. Dying. Reaching for the sky and falling towards the center and swirling in spirals and spinning and pulsing and breathing, and it was all beautiful, terrifying, maddening.
He stood at the edge of a velvet curtain, blinking under the sterile white cone of light. The audience beyond was veiled in dense shadow—row upon row of faceless heads, unmoving, barely distinguishable from the darkness behind them. The stage was empty, save for a podium carved of bone-white wood.
And someone was already standing there.
A figure of perfect stillness. Faceless, featureless—so empty it seemed the light itself refused to reveal it. As if illumination was afraid to touch the nothing of its skin.
But he knew.
He didn't need to see the thing to recognize it. The One Who Killed Him.
That wasn't a name. That was the truth. A phrase etched into the back of his mind like a sentence branded onto flesh.
The being leaned forward. Though it had no mouth, he knew it smiled.
"Ah," It said. "If it isn't my favorite puppet."
Its voice was not spoken—it was typed. He heard the clicks of invisible keys as the sentence assembled itself in the air. A pause. Another line, typed slower this time.
"Pathetic," the monster mused.
He could almost taste the venom dripping from that word. Almost feel the contempt radiating from the face of his enemy.
The scent came next—a foul odor, like rot and mold and old books left to moulder in the rain.
"Ask yourself," the monster went on. "How did it come to this?"
He couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Couldn't scream.
The stench was overwhelming, filling every part of him, clogging his nostrils, burning his throat. Making his head spin and his lungs burn. But worst of all was the silence that followed the question. It lasted for what felt like an eternity.
"You killed me."
"I did, yes."
"Why?" He choked on his own tears. He wanted answers. He needed them more than air. More than water. More than life itself.
"You built your cage from reason. Then handed the key to your fear."
Fear.
Yes. Fear was a prison. But he wasn't the only inmate. He could hear the voices of others, whispering through the walls of their cells. Whispers filled with terror. Filled with desperation.
—Six names echoed in his head.
Jean-Baptiste. Romane. Basim. Axel. Maëlle. Lia.
Six weights. Six reasons. Six chains. Six graves.
"You think of them as anchors," the creature continued. "In truth, they are the bricks with which you build the walls that surround you." There was no sympathy in its words. Only mockery. Only scorn.
Only hatred.
"They are the only things that make me real!" His fists trembled, but not out of rage or despair. Out of frustration at how useless, how powerless he was before the Author. How helpless he was. How utterly, utterly helpless.
Silence.
Then—applause.
One beat. Two. Three.
It came from the audience, rolling in a slow, steady wave toward the stage. And with each clap, another voice joined. Until soon there were hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands, rising together. Hands that weren't quite hands clapping , not quite in sync. Eyes that were not quite eyes staring at something that could never be seen. A sea of puppets watching a puppeteer perform. Adoring the show. Loving every minute of it. Worshiping every second.
And the thing on the podium, the one that was speaking to him, let out a breathless laugh.
"That's the tragedy, isn't it? You're the player who can never leave the game. You're the piece that cannot be moved from its square. You are the one that is always in check." Its voice rose in triumph.
"You are real. But you are not true."
———————'s hand ran across his hair, and he could not help but laugh. He laughed, not because of anything particularly amusing, but simply because it was too much to bear otherwise. It was either laugh or cry. So, he laughed until he had no choice except to sob, to break down completely and weep like a child who had lost his mother.
The creature stopped at center stage again before gesturing upward, as a director might to indicate a scene change. A mirror descended above them like a noose on a rope.
And in it: a girl. Pale skin. Raven hair. Eyes like gold. She bit her lower lip in sadness, in pain. Her gaze met ———————'s in the reflection, and she raised a delicate, white hand towards him, reaching desperately, as though to touch him, to save him, to pull him away from the nightmare he found himself trapped in.
"Did you think she was imaginary? Did you believe that the reflection in the mirror was a trick of the light, or perhaps some sort of hallucination brought about by stress, or fatigue?" the entity chuckled. "How pitiful. Your delusion runs deeper than I could have ever imagined. That the Queen was a metaphor? A metaphor doesn't bleed, child." It sighed dramatically.
The mirror flickered. Her face became his. Then hers again.
"You're not her twin," the creature hissed. "You're her shadow. Her dark side. Her nemesis. The part of herself that she wishes she could deny. You're the lie she tells to keep herself alive." It was grinning now, revealing rows upon rows of needle-like teeth. "And the worst thing, the very worst thing of all, is that you know it."
It paused to let that sink in. To let it sting and stab and sink its hooks in and drag him down. It savored every second of his agony, of his horror.
——————— managed to find his voice. Just a whisper, but enough.
"Then, who is she?"
The Author tilted its head.
"The one who committed your crimes." Its voice was soft, almost kind. As if it was offering him comfort. Reassurance.
The creature leaned closer to him, until their faces almost touched, and he saw something else reflected in those featureless eyes: a memory, playing over and over in an endless loop.
"How can I be guilty for what she did?"
"The law does not care who holds the pen. Only who signed the name."
The mirror shattered. Pieces rained around him, and the fragments reflected a thousand versions of himself, all wearing different masks, each mask representing a different identity. Different roles to play in the script of life, different characters to inhabit, to embody, to pretend that they were the real him, the real person behind ———————.
The shards surrounded him in a sphere of broken glass. Each one showed him a version of his face that was familiar and yet strange, as though the person looking back at him wasn't really himself at all, but someone else entirely.
Someone else...
And the Author's final line was a whisper typed in fire:
"Her sin is yours to bear."