Location: Earth-616, Narrative Convergence Point (aka "The Spot")
Time Remaining Until Multiversal Collapse: 47:39:22
Previously…
The Unwritten Spider-Man was defeated—trapped in a capsule of memory.
The Anchor Gate sealed once more.
The Web stabilizing.
For now.
But the city felt different.
A subtle tension.
As if someone else was watching.
Not a villain.
Not a god.
Not a hero.
The Reader.
Opening: A Quiet Rooftop
Peter sat on the edge of a battered building that used to be the Baxter Building, sipping the worst vending machine coffee in history. Billy was curled around a pigeon, both of them blissfully asleep. Deadpool was juggling three tacos and narrating his own actions in a dramatic British accent.
Miguel stared at the sky, concerned.
"You feel that?" he asked finally.
Peter nodded. "Like someone's… flipping pages."
Deadpool stopped juggling. "You guys hear that whisper too? Kinda sounds like a middle-aged comic collector judging your power levels."
The clouds churned unnaturally overhead.
A soft rippling, like wet paper being peeled back.
And then—
A word appeared.
Just one.
Written in the sky.
"NEXT."
Peter stood slowly. "We're being read."
The Spot Returns… With a Twist
A portal opened. Small. Ragged. But familiar.
The Spot.
Or rather—a Spot. This one wasn't goofy. Or clumsy. Or meme-able.
He looked… unfinished. Lines still sketching across his frame.
His body bled ink.
"I didn't escape," he rasped. "I was extracted."
Peter narrowed his eyes. "By who?"
Spot looked up at the sky.
"Not who."
"What."
The Reader Manifest
The sky folded inward.
Literally. The panels themselves peeled apart.
From behind the fold stepped a silhouette—blurry, indistinct, like a being made of editorial notes and highlighted paragraphs.
Deadpool gasped. "No. No. No. No. We agreed—NEVER BREAK THE FOURTH WALL FROM BOTH SIDES."
Miguel's jaw clenched. "It's the Reader. Not metaphorically. Literally."
Peter: "But I thought the Reader was just..."
Spot nodded. "The Watchers watch. The Readers decide."
And the Reader spoke.
Not in sound.
In narration.
Words wrote themselves into the air:
"The hero hesitates. Not out of fear—but doubt."
Peter staggered slightly. "It's narrating us."
Miguel: "No. It's overriding us."
The Reader continued:
"The spider's web, once taut, now trembles."
Billy yelped.
The Core Thread around Peter's arm unraveled slightly—reacting to the Reader's presence.
Reality was now editable.
Flashpoint: Memory Theater
Suddenly, they weren't on a rooftop.
They were inside a vast white space.
Like an empty comic page.
Every direction stretched infinitely.
Panels hovered midair—frozen moments of Peter's past.
Gwen falling.
Ben dying.
MJ walking away.
Tony's hand on his shoulder.
Aunt May's final smile.
Deadpool muttered, "This place is 10% nostalgia and 90% emotional terrorism."
Peter stepped toward a panel showing himself, alone in a room, after the spell.
His shoulders slumped.
The caption read: "Forgotten, but not unloving."
The Reader was showing him his story—curated.
And then it asked:
"Would you like to rewrite it?"
The Temptation
Everything stopped.
Even Billy was silent.
Miguel: "It's a trap."
Deadpool: "Or a pitch meeting."
Peter stared at the panel.
If he said yes…
MJ would remember.
Aunt May would live.
Ned would still be in his life.
No one would have forgotten.
And he would not be alone.
He reached out—fingers trembling.
Touched the panel.
But stopped.
And whispered:
"No."
The Reader froze.
Peter turned.
"I don't want a better story.
I want the right one.
The hard one. The earned one.
The one where I kept going—even when no one looked."
The white space cracked.
Meta-Storm Unleashed
The Reader, angered, rewrote the battlefield.
Panels crashed like glass around them.
Narration twisted into storms of text.
Enemies appeared—villains from every forgotten draft.
Kraven with symbiote armor.
Carnage as Sorcerer Supreme.
Aunt May fused with Ultron.
Peter fought through them, not with strength—but with consistency.
Every punch was a callback.
Every dodge a motif.
Every line a truth.
Deadpool and Miguel backed him up, cutting through bad ideas and broken canon.
Billy, now glowing with pure editorial energy, headbutted a plot hole shut.
Peter screamed into the storm:
"I am the story that survived!
You don't write me.
I write back."
And the Reader—
Paused.
The Reader Responds
New text appeared.
Slow. Uncertain.
"Then continue the story, Peter Parker."
"I will only observe."
The sky sealed.
The panels faded.
And the world returned to the rooftop.
Deadpool collapsed on the floor. "I'm never doing meta again. I need three burritos and a three-act structure."
Miguel clapped Peter on the back. "You just refused cosmic retcon."
Peter, winded, smiled.
"No. I just remembered that stories aren't sacred because they're perfect."
He looked at the sky.
"They're sacred because someone keeps telling them."
Post-Credit Sequence
Somewhere else…
Inside a dim, cluttered room filled with Funko Pops and mint-condition comics…
A person—a Reader—closes the issue.
Sets it down.
Smiles.
And says, softly:
"Yeah. He still gets it."