Chapter 6: The Voice with No Mouth
> "Silence is not the absence of sound.
It's the presence of something waiting to be heard."
— From a torn page in the black notebook
---
The page in the sky dissolved behind him.
Now he stood in a hallway —
endless, shifting —
walls made of thought instead of brick.
There were doors on both sides.
Hundreds. Maybe thousands.
Each had a name carved on it.
None were his.
---
Except one.
His door had no name.
Just a mirror — shattered in the center —
reflecting not his face,
but someone watching him from the other side.
He didn't knock.
He never knocks.
He listened.
---
And behind that mirror came a voice.
It had no sound.
No pitch, no breath, no mouth.
Yet somehow...
it spoke directly inside his head.
> "Do you remember when you stopped dreaming?"
He didn't answer.
> "Do you remember who taught you how to forget?"
Still silent.
> "You were not meant to write, Ranzō.
You were meant to be written."
---
He raised the pen.
The mirror cracked again.
Blood — or ink — dripped upward from the crack,
spelling words in reverse:
> ❝THE AUTHOR IS INSIDE THE CHARACTER❞
---
The hallway dimmed.
Doors began to disappear,
one by one,
as if someone was erasing them.
Then came the footsteps.
Not heavy.
Not fast.
Just inevitable.
Ranzō didn't run.
He turned around.
But there was no one.
Only his shadow — now split into two.
One walked beside him.
The other walked away.
---
And for the first time,
he whispered —
not to himself,
but to the thing behind the mirror:
> "If you wrote me,
then you should fear what I write next."
---
> Some voices have no mouth.
But their echo never fades.