"The first chapter does not merely begin the story—it justifies all that follows. Tamper with it, and even memory forgets how to remember."—Archivist Prime (last annotation)
I. Memory Fractures
Kairo woke up screaming.
Except, in this version of the world, he had never screamed before. Not as a child. Not as a man. Not ever.
Cassian rushed to his side. "What did you see?"
Kairo clutched his head, eyes wide.
"I saw... nothing. I saw the space where I was supposed to be. I saw my own first sentence... erased."
His hand trembled. The People's Codex flickered beside him, dozens of lines grayed out. Unanchored.
Across the camp, Aria murmured a phrase over and over:
"When did we meet? When did we meet? When did we—"
It was happening.The Origin Chapter was being backspaced.
And like a poorly edited manuscript, the world was forgetting itself.
II. The Origin Chapter
In myth, the Origin Chapter was never meant to be opened.
It wasn't just the start of the world—it was the intention behind it.
The moment of creation, penned by the First Author, sealed in a recursive narrative lock buried beneath the System Core.
But with the Codex destroyed, and the Prologue Circle wielding unbound authorship...
"They've found it," Cassian whispered. "They're rewriting the beginning."
Vyre slammed her fist against a tree. "If they change that… then none of this will matter. We won't matter."
Aria looked up, eyes hollow.
"It's already started. I can't remember my brother's name."
Toma shook his head. "You never had a brother."
"Exactly," she said softly.
III. A Race Against the Rewrite
The journey to the Origin Site was unstable.
Each step threatened collapse.
Whole forests inverted—trees growing downward into the soil, roots reaching skyward like skeletal fingers.
Villages they passed had no names.
Even time refused to behave.
In one moment, they aged years in seconds. In the next, entire hours vanished between blinks.
But Kairo pressed on.
Driven not by purpose—but by instinct.
The instinct of someone who knows he is being deleted.
IV. Prologue Circle Ascendant
They reached the crater where the Origin Site was once buried—only to find it open.
A spiral staircase of pure glyphs descended into infinite pages.
At the bottom stood the Prologue Circle.
Verin Page waited, arms outstretched. Behind him, the Origin Chapter floated—an unwritten scroll the size of a continent, flickering between languages not yet invented.
"We expected you," he said, smiling like a poet about to commit arson. "After all, your story can't end unless it's been properly begun."
Kairo stepped forward, hands clenched.
"You're destroying reality."
"No," Verin said. "We're refining it. Telling it right. Without the flaws. Without the hesitations. A perfect story."
"There's no such thing."
Verin laughed.
"That's why we're writing it."
V. Rewriting the Protagonist
One of the Circle—a girl with blank eyes and a tongue made of ink—stepped forward.
She held a quill.
And then, calmly, she crossed out Kairo's name.
He staggered.
Suddenly, he couldn't remember why he was important.
Cassian grabbed him. "You're still here. You're still here."
But Kairo's outline flickered.
"They're writing me out…"
Verin held up a page.
"Your arc was always too messy. Too contradictory. You didn't even have a clear goal until Chapter Thirty. Frankly, you were a pacing problem."
"I was human."
"That's the problem."
Verin began to write a new protagonist.
A golden child, born flawless.
Destined to save the world.
Perfect, obedient, complete.
Kairo looked around. His allies, once strong, were losing detail—becoming silhouettes of themselves.
"Stop…" he whispered.
VI. The Margin Note
Then came a voice. Soft. Shaky. Real.
"I disagree."
Everyone turned.
Aria stepped forward, her form stabilizing.
She held something in her hand: a margin note—one of the few surviving annotations from the Archivist Prime.
She raised it.
"This world didn't start perfect. It started broken. Conflicted. Alive. You don't get to erase that."
Verin narrowed his eyes. "You don't understand the cost of imperfection."
"No," Cassian said, stepping beside her. "We understand that without it—there's no meaning."
The ground rumbled.
The Origin Chapter stuttered.
Kairo, fading fast, reached toward the floating scroll—and whispered the line he had written a hundred times before:
"My story begins… in defiance."
The scroll paused.
VII. A Shard of Self-Writing
In that instant, the Codex quivered.
From the People's Codex, a shard broke free.
It shot into the Origin Scroll—embedding a clause Kairo had never consciously written:
"This tale will resist its own erasure."
Reality shook.
Verin screamed as the scroll rejected his edits.
The other Circle members began to vanish—unwritten by their own attempted overwrite.
And Kairo collapsed—
—but whole.
VIII. Aftermath
They awoke on the edge of the crater.
The Origin Chapter was sealed once more, now scarred with Kairo's clause.
No one spoke for a long time.
Then Aria whispered, "We almost lost everything."
Kairo looked at his hands. They were shaking.
"We still could."
Cassian placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Then let's keep writing. Together."
Kairo nodded.
And behind them, far above, the sky finally held a sun that stayed still.