Hinata ran through the labyrinth of shelves, her breath ragged, the manuscript pressed tight to her chest. Behind her, the Writer's shrieks cut through the silence, tearing at the edges of reality itself. Books flew from shelves and slammed to the ground, their pages burning away into black ash.
A cold wind blasted through the stacks, snuffing out the overhead lights one by one. In the growing darkness, shadows twisted into long, clawed shapes that snatched at Hinata's hair and clothes, whispering her name with voices that bled ink.
"Hinata… Hinata…"
She stumbled into an open reading area, lit only by the glow of an old emergency lamp. Her heart pounded so hard it hurt, but she forced herself to keep moving. She needed to find Alya. She needed to find the missing pages.
"Where are you?" she gasped, scanning the room. "Alya, please… help me…"
Then, through the flickering glow, she saw her. Alya was slumped against a toppled bookshelf, translucent, her edges fraying like torn paper. Her eyes met Hinata's, hollow and terrified.
"She's… she's rewriting everything," Alya whispered. "She's changing the past… cutting out the parts where I exist…"
Hinata dropped to her knees beside her. "No. I won't let her. We can find the ending—"
But before she could finish, the air split with a loud crack, and the floor beneath them shuddered. The Writer's voice echoed around them, deep and monstrous, no longer human.
"IT DOESN'T MATTER. YOU'RE JUST WORDS ON A PAGE."
Alya screamed as her hand dissolved into drifting ink, splattering across the floor. Hinata grabbed her, but her fingers passed through smoke.
"No!" Hinata sobbed. "Stay with me—please—"
The shadows surged forward, swallowing them both in freezing darkness. For a heartbeat, Hinata couldn't breathe. Then, just as suddenly, the shadows shattered like glass, leaving her sprawled on the floor, gasping.
She looked up. The reading room was gone.
Instead, she found herself in a cavernous hall lined with endless shelves that stretched into black nothingness. Each shelf held identical books, their titles blank, their pages empty.
Alya's voice echoed weakly from somewhere far ahead. "Hinata… here…"
Hinata stumbled forward, following the voice. The floor beneath her feet was soft, shifting, as though she walked on old, crumbling paper. Every step sent up clouds of dust and broken letters.
At last, she found Alya kneeling before a massive book that lay open on the ground. Unlike the others, this book pulsed with a soft light. Lines of text wrote themselves across its pages in real time—snippets of conversation, descriptions of Hinata's own thoughts and movements.
"It's… us," Hinata whispered. "It's writing our story right now."
Alya nodded, her face pale and strained. "This is the source. The Writer's pen is connected here… if we change the words, maybe we can change the ending…"
But before Hinata could reply, black ink bled across the page, consuming the text. The words shrieked as they vanished, and the Writer's voice boomed from above.
"I WRITE THE ENDING."
Suddenly, a giant inky hand burst from the book, seizing Alya around the waist and dragging her toward the page. She screamed, clawing at the air, her form glitching, dissolving into static.
"Hinata!" she cried. "Help me—!"
Hinata lunged forward, grabbing Alya's wrist. But the ink burned her skin, and the force was too strong. Alya's body flickered, fading in and out of existence, her screams growing weaker.
"I won't let go!" Hinata sobbed, ignoring the pain. "I won't let you disappear!"
The shadows swallowed them both, pulling them toward the yawning blankness of the book. But just before the darkness closed completely, Hinata screamed into the void, her voice shaking with rage and love:
"YOU DON'T GET TO CHOOSE HOW THIS ENDS!"
And the book hesitated, the ink hand freezing for a single heartbeat. Enough for Hinata to yank Alya free.
They tumbled backward, away from the devouring page, clutching each other as the inky hand shattered into droplets and sank back into the paper.
Breathing hard, Hinata looked at Alya. "We have to rewrite the ending ourselves," she whispered. "Before she tries again…"
Alya nodded weakly, tears streaking her fading cheeks. "Then let's do it… together…"
But in the shadows, the Writer was already stirring. And the story was far from over.