Kale didn't remember falling.
One moment, he stood in front of the forbidden book. The next, he was plummeting through a sky that didn't exist—ink-black, filled with fractal constellations rearranging themselves into faces, eyes, and words he couldn't understand.
He landed in silence.
The ground beneath him wasn't ground at all. It was paper—miles of it—thin, rustling with memories. They moved when he stepped on them, wrinkled as though flinching. Each sheet carried a single sentence, written in different hands, in different languages. Some were in blood. Others glowed.
"Don't look behind you."
Kale's breath caught.
He didn't remember why, but he obeyed.
A voice spoke.
"You broke the lock. You shouldn't exist now."
He turned. Slowly.
A woman stood there.
She wore a long coat made of typewriter ribbon, her eyes the color of forgotten ink. Around her, the paper didn't move. It bent to her. Like she owned the memory of this place.
Kale's mind stretched to name her, but nothing came. Not even a placeholder.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"You already know," she replied. "Or you used to."
Her voice was a strange comfort—like something remembered in a dream, just before waking. It made his bones ache.
"You're Echo."
She nodded.
"You shouldn't be able to say my name yet. The Archive suppresses all references to me. But then again… you've broken more than one law, haven't you, Kale?"
He took a step back.
"I didn't mean to rewrite anything. I just wanted answers. About the Null Event."
Echo's eyes dimmed.
"You didn't rewrite once, Kale. You rewrote thirty-seven times. You're barely even yourself anymore."
He touched his temple.
Nothing. Blank spots. Like mental static where names, memories, feelings used to live.
"I need to see it," he said. "The original timeline. The one before all this."
Echo turned. A vast wall of books rose from the horizon, shuddering with a sound like thunder underwater.
"You're standing on what's left of it," she said. "This is the First Draft. The Archive's original world. Before the Observer woke up. Before anyone started rewriting."
Kale stepped forward, and the page beneath him screamed.
He flinched.
"Every step erases something that once was," Echo said softly. "Be careful where you tread."
Lightning cracked above, but the sky didn't light up.
Kale's thoughts buzzed. One word repeated.
"Observer."
"What is it?" he asked.
Echo's voice dropped. The paper beneath them stilled.
"It was born when someone tried to rewrite the beginning of time."
"That's impossible."
"Exactly. That's why it worked."
Suddenly, a book fell from the sky. It landed with a soft thump in Kale's hands. No title. No author. Just blank cover.
But when he opened it, there it was.
Page 1: "You were never meant to be."
And beneath it, scrawled in his own handwriting:
"This is my final rewrite."
He didn't remember writing it.
But he knew—deep in his bones—that he had.