It took them a day to prepare.
Just one.
Because in the Unwritten City, hesitation was dangerous.
If you waited too long, reality might decide your ending for you.
---
The sky turned purple the night before they left.
Not from magic.
But from pressure.
The doors had stopped appearing—but that didn't mean they were gone.
They were hiding now.
Waiting for weakness.
For curiosity.
For someone who still wanted a perfect ending.
---
Ketzerah stood before the six who would go with him.
Lian.
Elruyne.
Mira.
Watcher Eight.
The rival boy—whose name changed every time someone asked.
And himself.
No army.
No fanfare.
Just seven people with too much to lose.
---
The entrance to the Cut Continuity was beneath the Unwritten City.
Not a tunnel.
Not a stairwell.
A single phrase etched on the underside of the Codex Tree:
"Forget this and fall."
They did.
One by one, they let go of their certainty.
And the world dropped away beneath them.
---
They fell for thirteen seconds.
No more.
But it felt like weeks.
Ketzerah's hair whipped around his face.
Mira screamed.
Lian stayed silent.
Watcher Eight folded his arms like this was normal.
Then—
They landed.
---
Not on ground.
On text.
They stood atop layers of pages, stacked and rotting, stretching into the dark.
Each step they took crunched like autumn leaves, except the pages bled ink instead of sap.
Elruyne bent down and picked one up.
"…I remember this," she whispered. "This was me."
She held a scrap of dialogue—her own. Words she never got to say.
Then, the page crumbled in her hand.
Gone.
---
The place was vast.
Like a desert made of rejected prose.
Some pages floated in the air, trying to rewrite themselves.
Others twitched like wounded animals, looping the same scene again and again.
One fragment replayed a man's death over and over, but he never got to scream before the scene cut.
Mira covered her mouth.
"This place is sick."
Ketzerah nodded grimly.
"This is where stories go to die."
---
A shadow passed above them.
They looked up.
A structure hovered in the distance.
It wasn't a building.
It was a cut scene, frozen in midair.
An entire kingdom, mid-destruction. The explosion paused, the fire still.
They climbed toward it.
---
Inside the floating kingdom was a library.
But the books here didn't open.
Instead, they whispered:
"You're not supposed to be here."
"You were resolved already."
"Let us sleep."
---
Then they saw the first guardian.
A man made entirely of punctuation.
No skin.
No voice.
Just commas, periods, and red-pen slashes forming a humanoid shape.
It walked toward them, slow and deliberate.
Lian stepped forward.
"I can handle this."
She raised both hands and whispered:
"Incomplete is still valid."
The guardian froze.
A question mark grew on its chest.
Then it shattered—breaking udahaaa@aaaa@aaaa@aaa@aa@aaa@
---
Elruyne winced. "It won't be the last."
Ketzerah turned to Watcher Eight.
"Where is the Editor?"
"He doesn't live here," Eight replied.
"But he uses this place to process us."
"To what end?"
Eight looked at him, eyes completely silver.
"To refine."
"To clean."
"To remove who we are and replace us with who we were supposed to be."
---
They kept moving.
Soon, they reached the Endless Acknowledgment.
A canyon filled with titles that were never published.
They floated in the air like tombstones.
Each one shimmered when touched.
Elruyne passed one.
It read:
"The Last Smile of a Forgotten Hero"
She stopped.
"I remember this title. I was… going to be in this."
Then her hand started glowing.
Ketzerah yanked her back.
"Don't attach yourself. That's how it gets in."
---
Mira asked the question they were all thinking.
"What happens if we fail?"
Ketzerah didn't answer at first.
Then he said:
"Then this city—everything we've built—gets reduced to a single paragraph."
"And we all vanish into summaries."
---
Suddenly, they weren't alone.
A voice echoed across the wasteland.
Clipped.
Refined.
Cold.
"You wander. You resist. You are inefficient."
They looked around, trying to find the source.
But the voice came from everywhere.
"You were never meant to last. You are bloated with digressions. Redundant. Indulgent."
"Let me fix you."
---
Then it appeared.
Not as a body.
But as a cursor.
A glowing, blinking line in midair.
It hovered above them.
Waiting.
Mira took a step forward.
It moved closer.
"Don't," Ketzerah said.
But it was too late.
The cursor touched her chest—
And began to delete her.
---
Elruyne screamed.
Lian reached for her.
But Ketzerah moved faster.
He grabbed the cursor.
And the world shook.
---
For a second, he saw everything.
Versions of himself that had been considered but discarded.
A tyrant version.
A romantic lead.
A wise old mentor.
A child who never fought.
They all looked at him with emptiness in their eyes.
The Editor had tried to fit him into every mold.
And none had worked.
Because Ketzerah wasn't written.
He was refused.
---
He roared.
Not a sound of rage.
But of rejection.
"I. WILL. NOT. FIT."
---
The cursor burned in his hand.
Then vanished.
Mira collapsed, gasping—but alive.
A scar of red text burned into her shoulder.
It said:
"Too complex to salvage."
---
Ketzerah stood tall.
His voice steady.
"Show yourself, Editor."
---
For the first time, silence answered.
Then a door appeared—plain and white, with a golden knob.
Above it, a plaque:
The Final Revision Room
Ketzerah stepped forward.
"This is it."
Lian grabbed his arm. "We go with you."
"No," he said. "You hold this place. If I fail…"
He looked back.
"…make sure this version lives."
---
He opened the door.
Light spilled out.
And he walked into revision itself.
---
End of Chapter 18
🕯️ To be continued…
---