Sora had always believed books were safer than reality.
At sixteen, while others chased friends, games, and fleeting crushes, he spent his nights buried in fictional worlds. His bedroom was less of a bedroom and more of a library on life support—sagging shelves, stacks of paperbacks on the floor, and one stubborn desk lamp that fought against the darkness.
The window was shut tight, curtains drawn, leaving only the soft hum of his phone charging on the bedside table. He lay sprawled across the bed, a hardcover balanced on his chest, eyes tracing the lines like he was drinking them in for the last time.
He read the same paragraph twice without realizing it. Because tonight… his mind wasn't in the story. It was on the life he'd wasted.
He had dropped out of clubs.
He had stopped answering calls.
He had built a wall of paper and ink around himself because reality had never been kind to him—and he wasn't brave enough to try again. There was comfort in knowing how stories would end. People? Not so much.
Somewhere deep inside, a thought kept whispering:
If only I could live in a story instead.
The charger beside him made a faint clicking sound, but he barely noticed. His phone vibrated once—an unread notification. He ignored it. He always ignored them.
The faint smell of plastic came next. Sharp. Acrid. But he didn't notice the story in his hands had stolen every ounce of his attention, trapping him inside a world that wasn't his own.
The cord at the base of the charger glowing faintly red, like an ember in the dark. It sparked once. Twice. Then— **Ffffsshhht.** A flash. The plug exploded into heat, the curtains caught, and in seconds the room was breathing smoke.
Panic clawed at his chest. He dropped the book and lunged for the door, but the fire spread fast, faster than he could think. The air grew thick, the smoke clawing down his throat like it wanted to drag him under.
He coughed, stumbling back, eyes stinging. The flames reflected in the glossy covers of his books, consuming worlds he'd never finished.
And it hit him—not the heat, but the regret. He had spent his whole life hiding between pages… and now he'd never know what it felt like to write his own.
His legs gave out. The smoke pressed down like a blanket. In the haze, he saw one book fall from the shelf and land open in front of him.
A book with a blank cover that he didn't remember having. Its last page fluttered in the firelight, and for a heartbeat, the letters seemed to shift.
"The Keeper is born when the Reader's story ends."
He blinked. Was that always there?
The words blurred. His vision dimmed.
Somewhere far away, the flames roared like an audience clapping at the end of a show. And Sora, surrounded by burning stories, closed his eyes— —and turned the last page of his life.
The last thing I remember before everything went white was the way the flames looked through the curtain of rain — beautiful in the ugliest way possible.