Mira woke to a sound she hadn't heard in years.
A knock.
Not polite. Not frantic.
Just steady.
Measured.
It wasn't the knock of someone looking for help.
It was the knock of someone who already knew what was inside.
She rose slowly. The house was still dark, morning light leaking through the curtains in soft amber streams. Jamie was already up—she could hear the gentle clink of ceramic, the hum of the kettle on the stove.
But he hadn't answered the door.
He was waiting, too.
The knock came again.
Three times.
Exactly like the first.
Mira reached the front door and placed her hand on the wood.
It was warm.
Not from sunlight.
From memory.
She opened it.
The person standing there wasn't a stranger.
Not exactly.
They wore a coat the color of old books and their skin was dusted with soot, like they'd walked through a fire that hadn't burned them. Around their neck hung a silver chain with a broken key—the teeth worn smooth.
They looked young. But not new.
And their eyes—Mira knew those eyes.
She'd seen them once in the Archive.
In the hall of abandoned echoes.
"You're from the building," she said, not asking.
The person nodded.
"We're from something under the building,"* they replied.
Jamie stepped up behind her, mug in hand.
"You shouldn't exist," he said.
"Neither should you," the person replied gently.
They reached into their coat and pulled out something wrapped in cloth. Unfurled it.
A page.
Burned at the edges.
Ink running across it like it had been soaked in water—and blood.
Mira's heart clenched.
It was written in her own handwriting.
"THE ORIGINALS NEVER LEFT."
The words pulsed faintly.
Not with light.
With intention.
The stranger stepped past the threshold. The house didn't resist.
"There's something the rewrite didn't reach," they said. "Something deeper than recursion. Buried beneath the first sentence. Older than the building. Older than choice."
Jamie set the mug down slowly.
"You're talking about the Root Draft."
The stranger nodded.
"You rewrote the narrative structure. You made it breathable. Mutable. But the root..." they paused, voice trembling, "...it's waking up. It's remembering its first purpose."
"Which was?" Mira asked.
"To make everything forget."
They sat around the kitchen table.
Ansel joined them last, barefoot, holding a folded piece of paper.
He took one look at the burned page.
And sat without a word.
"The Originals," Jamie said quietly. "The ones who built the building. Or maybe became it."
"The architects," Mira added. "The ones who wrote the first loop."
"Not architects," the stranger corrected. "Not people."
They looked up.
Eyes shimmering.
"They were ideas."
The room fell quiet.
Only the wind outside.
Only the soft creak of old floorboards.
Only the page, pulsing gently with forgotten memory.
Mira closed her eyes.
She saw it—not a building, but a void given form. A thought that tried to erase all others. The Root Draft wasn't a prison. It was the blank page as weapon.
"If it wakes," the stranger said, "everything starts collapsing inward. The Hollow House. Continuum. The rewritten world. It'll all fold into absence."
Ansel's voice was quiet but sharp.
"Why us?"
The stranger smiled sadly.
"Because you were the first story that didn't end in silence."
That night, Mira stood at the edge of the woods behind the house.
She looked up.
The stars were flickering.
Not twinkling.
Glitching.
As if the sky was forgetting itself.
Jamie stood beside her. "Do we go back?"
"No," Mira said. "We go deeper."
"To where?"
"To where the page starts."
Inside, Ansel unfolded the paper in his hands.
One sentence.
Written in black ink:
"Some stories are too dangerous to finish—but too true to erase."