The page on the pedestal pulsed like a heartbeat.
It wasn't made of parchment. Nor ink. Nor anything Echo could name. It shimmered with half-spoken intention – as if the story it held had once existed, had been removed, and now wanted to be remembered.
He didn't touch it this time.
He knelt before it.
"It's sleeping," he said.
Ash arched an eyebrow. "You mean it's inactive."
"No," Echo whispered. "I mean it's… dreaming."
Curata stepped closer. "Pages don't dream."
"Maybe not in your Canon."
The pedestal vibrated.
Text began to form – not written, but felt, as if memory had shape.
Lines bloomed across the surface of the page, then vanished again, like thoughts dismissed before they could fully take root. Fragments appeared and faded:
A child who remembered stories before being told them…
A question that could never be answered the same way twice…
A city built inside the margins of myths...
Each phrase sparked something in Echo's chest.
Recognition? Longing? Or something older?
"Is it showing you something?" Curata asked.
"No. It's… asking me something."
Ash snorted. "You're talking to a page."
Echo stood. "No. I'm listening to a paragraph that dreamed of being more."
He turned to them.
"I think it wants to be written."
The Archive reacted.
One shelf groaned. Another tilted. Books began to hum.
From the air above them, faint echoes drifted down – not sounds, not voices, but possibilities. Ghosts of prose. Invisible drafts.
Ash flinched as one passed through him. He staggered.
"I just… I just saw something."
"What?"
"I was standing in a city made of spines. Book spines. They opened when I breathed on them. And every one of them was about me."
Curata didn't speak.
Echo whispered, "It's beginning to manifest."
"Manifest what?" she asked.
"Variants. Drafts. Ideas that never became canon."
A soft rumble shook the Archive.
The pedestal page rippled, and from its surface, a shadow of a paragraph rose.
It floated.
It was made of six sentences. No more.
But those six sentences moved.
They circled Echo like moths orbiting a candle.
Curata stepped forward. "That's not safe. That's narrative projection – if it anchors, it could overwrite something."
"It's not anchoring," Echo said. "It's pleading."
He extended his hand.
The paragraph drifted toward him, then paused. A word broke off. A verb. It trembled in the air.
"Choose."
Then the paragraph unravelled – and sank into his ink.
Echo gasped.
For a moment, the threads around his arm glowed red. Not like danger, but like bloodline.
Ash drew back. "What just happened?"
"I think," Echo whispered, "it gave itself to me. A story that no longer exists just chose me to carry it."
Far behind them, a shelf collapsed.
From beneath the rubble, something stirred.
It wasn't made of paper.
It wasn't alive.
It was shaped like a rejected outline – a humanoid sketch made of strikethroughs and forgotten plot points.
It had no face. Only a torn title.
It stood, arched its back, and followed the trio's fading footsteps.
They exited the chamber.
Echo's ink was still warm.
Curata was silent. Finally, she said, "You're not just dangerous to the Canon, Echo."
He looked at her.
"You're dangerous to the unwritten, too."
He didn't respond.
But in his pocket, the paragraph that dreamed pulsed once.
And slept again.