I couldn't breathe.
The words surrounded me — floating in the air, pulsing with an energy I could feel in my bones.
"She chose to write the end."
But where was the end?
I reached out, fingers trembling, and touched the swirling sentence. Instantly, the air around me grew cold, and the world shifted.
I was no longer in the room.
I was in the book.
The pages were everywhere.
Walls, floors, ceilings — all made of thin sheets of paper, crumbling with every movement.
It felt like I was drowning in stories.
Each word whispered a promise — or maybe a warning.
A page flipped in front of me.
"Ruhani was the first. She didn't finish. You're next."
My heart raced. The words weren't just written — they were alive.
I turned around, and I saw her.
Ruhani.
But she wasn't the girl I remembered.
Her skin was pale, her eyes hollow, like she had been drained of life. She walked toward me, each step deliberate, the pages beneath her feet tearing as she moved.
She stopped in front of me, her voice a ghostly whisper.
"You shouldn't have come here," she said, her eyes unblinking. "The story always finds you. It never ends."
I stepped back, my hands shaking.
"What do you want from me?"
"You're the one who opened it," she whispered. "You wanted answers. But every question comes with a price. And now, it's your turn to finish the story."
I looked around in panic. There had to be a way out.
But the book — the story — it was consuming everything.
Suddenly, the pages began to turn faster. Faster than I could keep up.
"One more chapter. One more twist."
I reached out and grabbed the nearest page. It felt like paper, but when I pulled it, it didn't tear.
It stretched.
It pulled me.
I was falling, tumbling through the endless pages.
A voice echoed all around me, a low, guttural growl.
"You can't leave. No one leaves."
Then I felt it — a hand, cold and thin, closing around mine.
I turned, terrified.
The girl.
The one who had been watching me. The one who lived upstairs.
Her eyes were black now, completely devoid of light.
She smiled.
"We're all part of it now."
The ground beneath us cracked open, revealing a dark abyss. But the abyss wasn't empty.
It was filled with endless pages.
And I was being pulled into it.