Time: Undefined – as if a page turned before its time
Place: The Old City
No one knew where the Old City was on the map.It wasn't mentioned in any books, and no one ever spoke of it.But it existed—not as a city, but as a forgotten tale tucked in the corner of the world's mind.As if it once came into being through imagination, then reality refused to accept it, so it kept breathing on the edge of time.
Rain, Lima, and Niko entered through a long, dark tunnel.Its walls looked like they were made of burnt pages.The scent of old paper mixed with ash clung to their breath, and the air felt heavy and stagnant—as though the city only inhaled once every few minutes.
Lima whispered, brushing her fingertip against the wall:"This place… it's reading us."
They arrived at a small square, at its center a dry, twisted tree.Before it stood an old wooden house, leaning slightly, as if it sighed between moments.Above its door, a decaying wooden sign bore faint, barely legible words:
"Here lived the one who wrote… and then vanished."
Rain felt a strange chill crawl down his spine.There was something in this place that knew him.He'd never been here before—yet he felt as if his name had been written on its walls, in a time he never lived.
He knocked softly.The door creaked open… silently.
A young girl stood before them, no older than ten, holding a torn notebook.Its cover was made of black leather, and its pages looked ripped from other books.
She spoke in a calm, uncanny voice—nothing like a child's:"You… you're from inside the story, aren't you?"
They exchanged glances, but she turned her back and walked ahead, as if she knew they would follow.
Inside, the house was no warmer, but it was alive in an unsettling way.The walls seemed to whisper ancient words.Voices seeped from beneath the floorboards, between the cracks, from the slanted ceiling.It wasn't silent—it was filled with everything unspoken.
A young man in his twenties appeared.His hair had a grayish tint, and his eyes held a depth difficult to comprehend.He looked tired—like someone carrying stories yet to be written.
Without any introduction, he pointed toward a closed room at the end of the hallway and said:"Our father is in there. He stopped writing some time ago. Said the writing began to write itself."
Lima stepped forward and asked:"And your mother?"
He replied in a soft voice:"She was a Time Scholar. She tried to fix a fracture in time… but she disappeared. She didn't die—she melted between moments."
Before anyone could respond, the little girl said sharply, though still softly:"The killer came to visit us… but he didn't kill her. He just wrote her death."
Silence fell.The words struck their minds like a stone into still water.
Wrote her death?Could death be a sentence? Not an event?
They entered the room the brother had pointed to.It was filled with notebooks.Paper scattered in every corner.The scent of ink and old dreams lingered.Writing tools of odd shapes—some resembled raven feathers, others pens that hadn't yet been invented.
At the center of the room, on the desk, lay a single page.Blank, except for one line:
"When Rain enters this room… the story begins again."
Time froze.
Lima whispered, uncertain:"Did we… enter the tale?"
Niko replied with a shaky smile:"Maybe we entered the writer's mind."
There was fear in his voice he didn't want to admit.
The brother handed them a black notebook, sealed with a red string.The girl opened it and read with her delicate voice:
"At exactly four oh three, the girl will sit where her mother once sat, and read the line that restores what was broken."
As the words echoed in the room, a paper slipped down from the top of the shelf.
It was a picture.A woman in a white coat, standing before a shattered mirror.Behind her, the shadow of a man holding a pen.
The brother said, his voice changed:"That's not just our mother… that's her image as drawn by time."
The girl pulled a gray cloth off an old mirror in the corner.But the mirror didn't reflect them.Instead, it showed a live scene:The woman walking down a glass corridor, with letters burning behind her like flames.
Rain asked in a hushed, bewildered voice:"Is she… still alive?"
The brother answered:"Yes… but she's no longer here. She wrote herself into the story."
Rain stepped closer to the notebook, as if the words were calling him.He picked up a pen and wrote:
"But the reader chose to write a line of survival, not loss."
The surface of the mirror began to ripple like suffocating water.Then, a hand emerged from it—It was the mother's.Cracked and trembling, but she had returned.
She said with a tearful voice:"You changed the ending..."
Before they could rejoice, there was a knock on the door.
A gray-faced man entered, holding a pen instead of a weapon.He spoke in a cold voice, as if emerging from a void:
"One of you must read this page. Whoever reads it… learns the truth."
Niko took the page—it burned instantly.
But when Rain held it, it remained intact.
He read:
"In the end… Rain was nothing more than a memory written by his daughter—because she couldn't bear his absence."
His hands trembled.The words weren't just speaking to him—they were opening a door he thought he had sealed long ago.
Suddenly, he heard a voice inside his head.
It was soft—not Noelle's voice, his daughter—but deeper.As if memory itself was whispering something he had forgotten.
The girl's voice echoed inside him:
"Come back… It's not over yet."
The sound reverberated like an echo from a distant past—or a future not yet born.
Rain stepped back and looked at Lima and Niko.He said, voice trembling:
"Now I remember… how we came back."
Niko looked confused:"What are you talking about?"
Rain closed his eyes… and the memory surged.
…
Light was collapsing around them.The Old City began to crack, breaking apart like a story finished before it was ready.Letters in the air caught fire—as if the tales refused to be rewritten.
They ran through the dark alleys, haunted by unseen voices:
"You do not belong here…""You wrote the ending without the beginning's permission."
At the end of the alley, a glass wall opened.It breathed—like a mirror gasping the final breath of the tale.
Lima shouted, glancing back:"There! That's the exit!"
Niko went first.Then Lima followed.
But Rain… paused.Just for a moment.
He wanted to look back.
The room he had entered was vanishing, dissolving.
He heard the voice again:
"Remember who you were… to know who you will become."
He leapt into the light… and the city vanished.
…
They awoke in the ruins of an old station.The air was thick with dust. Everything was gray.
Niko opened his eyes, sluggishly:"Did we… come back?"
Lima helped Rain to his feet. She looked around and said:"This is… the Time Station. Before it was destroyed. But how?"
Rain replied, his voice strangely calm:"As if the story chose to bring us back… to finish it."
Then he lifted his head… and looked toward the horizon.
There, far away, a train was coming.
But it wasn't an ordinary train.It moved in silence—like it traveled inside memory.
Rain opened his notebook again and said:
"Now… we know the story hasn't begun yet.But this time… we're the ones writing it."
And a voice deep within him whispered:
"Those whom the past rejects… are rewritten by time."
End of Chapter 19