Teaser: They step into the Glitch Zone, a place filled with characters who were never completed missing arcs, broken personalities, no memories and one of them used to call Mira "little sister."
It felt like walking into a memory that never finished rendering.
The sky flickered between night and day.
Grass appeared, then vanished.
Buildings twisted halfway through loading.
And the air smelled like deleted drafts.
"This is worse than the Graveyard," Yuto whispered.
"No it's not," Rion muttered. "The Graveyard had logic. This place… breathes chaos."
They walked through a half-built village. One house floated sideways. Another was all door, no wall. A child waved at them—no eyes, no mouth, just a smile placeholder tag that said `Insert Emotion`.
Mira slowed. Her body tensed.
"Something feels familiar."
---
A man sat by a fountain that poured sideways.
He was tall, unfinished, with hair that kept changing colors—white to blue to gray. His coat was detailed on one side, sketch lines on the other. One hand looked real. The other? Pure text code.
When Mira stepped into his line of sight, he blinked once.
"...Mira?"
She froze.
Rion stepped forward. "Who are you?"
The man smiled faintly. "They called me Caine. I was a mentor character in draft version 2. Then… scrapped."
Mira stared. "No. I remember you."
He looked at her closely.
"You used to call me your big brother," he said softly.
---
Yuto whispered, "Wait. You have a brother?"
"No," Mira said. "I mean—yes. But no. He was from an old build. The one before I even had a name."
Rion checked the scanner. "Caine Elen. Role: Guide. Discarded after world draft 2.0. Never rendered fully. Status: forgotten."
Mira's eyes widened. "He shouldn't even *exist*."
"But I do," Caine said. "This place… it's where we stayed. Characters too incomplete to delete. We just loop. We try to remember who we were supposed to be."
Behind him, others stirred.
Half-made schoolgirls. Knights missing weapons. A grandma with no face but a perfect laugh track. All paused, watching Mira.
"We don't want to be fixed," Caine said. "We just want someone to remember that we were real once."
---
Then the sky glitched.
Hard.
A red system flare tore through the zone.
> "UNAUTHORIZED CHARACTER DETECTED IN STABLE ARC."
> "GLITCH ZONE BREACH."
> "PURGE INITIATED."
Dozens of beams shot down from above.
Yuto screamed. "Are they trying to *delete the whole zone?!*"
Rion activated a shield. "It's a purge script! They're wiping everyone who doesn't serve a genre!"
Caine stood slowly. "Go, Mira. Save your story. Ours was never meant to finish."
But Mira stepped toward him. "I don't care. If you existed long enough to say my name, you deserve a damn ending."
She reached for her patch tag—
But it *melted* in her hand.
> "ERROR: ENTITY TOO INCOMPLETE TO PATCH."
Mira cursed. "No no no—!"
---
Caine smiled again. "Little sis. It's okay."
He held her wrist. "Tell them we lived. Even if the page was blank."
Then the light hit him.
And he shattered.
Like chalk dust.
No sound. No scream.
Just a soft goodbye.
---
The zone collapsed behind them.
As they fell into the next portal, Mira didn't look back.
Rion tried to say something.
Yuto cried.
But Mira only whispered,
"I remember."
---
(Next: They fall into the Genre Core—where the main story is being rewritten, and Mira is *accidentally cast* as the villainess again… but this time, the readers *love her.*)