Reality began with a page turning.
Not the sound — the act.
A thin sheet of existence tearing open the fabric of everything.
When the page flipped, worlds cracked. Stars bled ink. Time convulsed.
And Seth woke.
He opened his eyes to something impossible — the sound of paper breathing, whispering, laughing beneath his skin. Not fire, not static — but a dry, cruel rustle like the world was reading him alive.
The air shimmered like broken glass catching candlelight — pale, flickering, fragile as a dream that slips through your fingers and never returns.
He sat up, feeling the weight of forgotten centuries crushing his bones, his mind a blank slate stained with nothing but a name that didn't belong to him.
Where was he?
Not anywhere human.
Around him, endless shelves twisted and folded like a monstrous origami of memory and madness. The books breathed, some with spines forged from bone, others bleeding ink that pooled like shadows and fled like living nightmares.
He didn't remember who he was. Not truly.
Only fragments: a staircase that spiraled into oblivion, a hand reaching for a door stamped with a warning—DO NOT OPEN—NOT YET.
But the door opened.
"Name."
A voice slithered from behind him — neither male nor female, but something older than gods and demons, dry and expectant like the last judge of souls.
He turned. A figure cloaked in charcoal robes stood there, face hidden behind a mask alive with shifting letters — words crawling like serpents across pale porcelain.
"Name," it demanded. "Or shall I write one for you?"
"…Seth Virell," he whispered, the name tasting like ash and lies but settling in his mouth like a curse.
"Archivist Candidate 19B—Seth Virell. Status: Blank. Welcome to the Library of the Broken Spine."
The figure turned, dragging Seth deeper into the labyrinthine nightmare — aisles whispered dead languages, shelves bent and swayed like a drowning forest in a sea of forgotten stories.
"You were chosen," the figure said, voice like steel beneath silk. "Your soul survived the collapse of a reality. You are now bound to the Axis Realm. You are Unwritten."
Seth's gaze drifted to the narrow window — no sky, no stars, only endless white. Not fog. Paper.
No mercy here.
No escape.
Only stories waiting to consume him — and endings that will devour the world.