I couldn't breathe.
The abyss below me was no longer a void. It had become a living, breathing thing — pages stretched, shifted, and writhed like serpents in a pit, as if the story was alive, hungry.
I was falling, but it wasn't a free fall. The pages below me grabbed at my feet, pulling me into their dark depths, as though the very fabric of the narrative wanted me to become part of its endless cycle.
I reached out, desperate to hold onto anything.
A page tore from the swirling abyss and slammed into my chest, pushing me back up toward the edge. I gasped, clutching it like a lifeline.
The words on the page began to rearrange themselves:
"She had no choice. She must write to survive."
The ink was still fresh, dripping like blood from the page. I tried to tear my eyes away, but I couldn't. The words seemed to grow, crawling over my skin like an infection.
A familiar voice broke through the swirling chaos.
"You're still trying to escape?"
I turned, and there she was — the girl who had been upstairs. She stepped out of the shadows, her face twisted in a grin that didn't reach her eyes.
"This is it," she said, her voice strangely calm. "This is how it ends. How it's always ended."
I staggered backward, my heart pounding.
"What do you mean? What is this place?"
She gestured around her at the pages, now shifting and warping with every passing second.
"This is where stories live," she said. "And this is where they die."
Suddenly, everything stopped.
The pages stilled. The air went dead silent.
And in the distance, a new sentence appeared in the sky, glowing like a phantom light:
"Every ending is a new beginning. Every story has its author."
I reached for the page still clutched in my hands.
The words burned my fingertips as I read.
"She must write to survive."
The realization hit me like a ton of bricks.
This was no ordinary book. It wasn't just a place or a cursed object. It was a world. A realm built on the stories of those who fell into it. And every time someone opened it, it rewrote itself. The story was never complete. It was always being rewritten.
And I was now a part of it.
"You can't escape," the girl whispered again, her voice now cold and unfeeling. "The book chooses its endings. And if you don't finish it, it finishes you."
The pages began to crackle, turning on their own, faster, faster, as if the very world around us was being rewritten.
I didn't have time to think. I didn't have time to breathe.
Suddenly, the ground beneath us cracked open.
I saw a flash of light.
The next thing I knew, I was standing in front of the red book.
But it wasn't just any book anymore.
It was glowing, pulsating, as if alive.
The pages were no longer words.
They were eyes.
And they were all staring at me.