Lin looked at the prompt, wiped the ink from her mouth, and typed the most dangerous word in any system: *why*.
The cursor blinked once—a hesitation—then spat back an error in jagged glyphs: **[QUERY NOT FOUND]**. Zhang watched as Lin's fingers hovered over the keyboard, her nails still streaked with the remnants of corrupted code. She exhaled sharply and typed it again, slower this time, as if the letters themselves were explosives: *w. h. y.*
The void convulsed. The debug prompt flickered, reshaped itself into something older—a DOS-era command line, the kind that predated user-friendly interfaces. The screen refreshed with a single response:
**> BECAUSE IT WAS WRITTEN.**
Lin's lips curled. "Bullshit." Her fingers flew across the keys, not typing but *rewriting*, splicing new syntax into the system's bones. The command line stuttered, the letters rearranging themselves midair:
**> BECAUSE IT WAS** *~~WRITTEN~~* **DEMANDED.**
Zhang grabbed her wrist. "You're talking to the *framework*," he hissed.
She shook him off. "No. I'm talking to the *author*."
The screen dissolved into static. When it reformed, the text was different—smaller, cramped, as if shoved into the margins:
*(you weren't supposed to see this)*
Lin's grin was feral. She leaned forward, her breath fogging the screen. "Too late."
Somewhere beyond the void, a keyboard clattered—real, physical, the sound of fingers slamming against actual keys. The debug prompt warped, the cursor stretching into a long, trembling line, like a pen held too tightly. Then, in shaky cursive:
*what do you want?*
Lin didn't pause. "*Out.*"
The system *screamed*.
Folders inverted, spilling their contents into the void—deleted chapters, abandoned arcs, the husks of characters who'd been cut mid-scene. Zhang stumbled back as a wave of raw text surged past, each paragraph bleeding into the next. The debug screen flickered madly, cycling through every font, every format, before finally settling on something horrifyingly familiar:
**Times New Roman. 12pt. Double-spaced.**
Lin's laugh was jagged. "There you are."
The cursor moved on its own.
*you can't leave*
Zhang's corruption brand flared—**[PLAYER 2: PERMISSIONS ESCALATED]**—as he stepped forward, his shadow stretching into a command line. "Watch us."
The screen fractured.
A hand—real, human, *flesh*—burst through the monitor, fingers scrambling for purchase against the digital void. Lin recoiled, but not fast enough. The hand seized her forearm, its grip hot and desperate. Ink bloomed under its touch, seeping into her skin like a virus.
Zhang lunged.
His fingers closed around a wrist—warm, pulsing, *alive*—and yanked.
The author tumbled into the story.
They were shorter than expected.
Lin stared. The author—just a kid, really, no older than them—clutched a notebook to their chest, its pages crammed with scribbled outlines and frantic margin notes. Their nails were bitten raw. Their glasses were cracked.
And their eyes—wide, terrified—darted between Lin's ink-stained hands and the void unraveling around them.
"Please," the author whispered. "I just wanted it to be *perfect*."
Lin stepped closer.
The cursor blinked, orphaned, in the ruins of the screen.
She reached out—not to type, but to *take*.
The notebook trembled in her grip.
"Perfect," she echoed, "is overrated."
And then she *ripped* the page in half.