Mira banged her fist against the rooftop door, her breath coming in ragged gasps. But it wouldn't open. The handle rattled uselessly in her grip, like someone on the other side was holding it shut.
She turned, eyes scanning the empty rooftop. The boy was gone. So was the crumpled page. Only the wind remained, cold and sharp, biting at her skin.
"Let me out!" she screamed, pounding the metal again. Her voice echoed into the twilight, swallowed by the hum of the city below.
Silence answered.
Then, from somewhere above her, a soft fluttering sound. Mira tilted her head back. The sky overhead was clouded and darkening fast, but through the gray she saw white shapes drifting down—pages, hundreds of them, like snow.
She reached out, catching one in trembling fingers.
The words on it shifted and twisted, letters dissolving into black smudges before her eyes. But one line stayed clear:
*"This is where you disappear."*
Mira dropped the page as if it burned her skin. She stumbled backward, clutching her chest, her heart pounding so loud she could barely hear the wind anymore.
"No," she whispered. "I'm not going anywhere."
Another page landed at her feet, then another. Some stuck to her hair, her arms, her shoulders. Each one bore a sentence, like pieces of a script:
*"She tried to fight, but the world erased her anyway."*
*"Nobody remembers her. Not even the narrator."*
*"The end."*
Mira screamed, tearing the pages away. They turned to dust in her hands, dissolving into the wind. She fell to her knees, shaking, tears streaming down her cheeks.
*"Stop it,"* she whispered. *"I'm not done. I'm not done…"*
Then, from the far corner of the roof, a voice:
"You don't have to be."
Mira jerked her head up. A figure stepped out from the shadows—tall, wrapped in a long dark coat. His face was hidden beneath a hood, but his voice was familiar.
"Rion?" she whispered.
He nodded once. "But not the way you remember me."
She scrambled to her feet, hope flaring bright through the terror. "What's happening? Why is the story trying to erase me?"
He looked past her, at the drifting pages dissolving into the sky. "Because you're changing it. That's not supposed to happen."
Mira swallowed hard. "I don't care. I won't let them erase you again."
Rion stepped closer, lowering his hood. His eyes were the same soft gray she remembered from the old days, but they looked older now. Tired.
"They can't erase me completely," he said. "Not while you remember."
Mira reached for him, but her hand passed through empty air. He flickered like a glitching projection, static crawling across his shoulders and face.
"I can't stay," he whispered. "But you can. You can finish the story."
"How?" Mira choked. "Tell me how!"
A gust of wind tore across the rooftop, scattering the last of the falling pages. Rion's voice broke, crackling like a broken speaker.
"Write your own ending…"
Then he vanished, swallowed by the wind.
Mira stood alone in the gathering dark, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. The pages were gone. The door behind her swung open with a soft click, as though it had never been locked.
She stepped through it without looking back, her mind spinning.
Write her own ending.
She clutched the book in her bag tighter, her footsteps echoing down the stairwell. Whatever this was—whoever was writing her life—she