The stairway of bone twisted into the earth, deeper than any of them thought the Dollhouse could reach. There were no walls anymore—only vast, empty space beyond the stairs, and shadows moving just outside their vision. The further they descended, the quieter everything became, like sound itself had been forgotten.
At the bottom, the staircase ended on a platform made of stitched-together paper. Every step they took echoed, not with sound—but with words. Whispers rose from beneath their feet.
"Chapter One..."
"The perfect Mikael."
"The rewritten Elise."
"The erased Arielle."
Lina grabbed Mikael's hand. "This place… it remembers everything we forgot."
"It is everything we forgot," Arielle said. "All the edits. All the false versions of us."
In the center of the platform stood a figure hunched over a desk. Its back was made of ink. Its arms of quills. Its head was a spinning paper mask. It didn't move, but the room vibrated with its presence.
Mikael stepped forward. "Are you the Author?"
"No," the figure rasped. "I am the Editor."
The spinning paper mask stopped. A single eye blinked open in the center of its face.
"You defied your scripts," the Editor said slowly. "You resisted your pages."
Mikael narrowed his eyes. "Because they weren't ours."
"You were broken characters," the Editor hissed. "We made cleaner copies. Happier ones. Marketable. Contained."
Arielle stepped beside him. "We never needed to be fixed."
"You were flawed. Flaws complicate stories."
Elise, trembling, stepped forward too. "But that's the point of living."
The Editor let out a grinding laugh. The ground trembled.
"So… you would write yourselves now?"
Mikael raised the pen he still carried. The one the Author tried to control. Its glow was brighter than before.
"Together," he said.
The Editor paused. Then raised a finger.
And all around them, alternate versions of themselves appeared—perfect, smiling, hollow. Doll versions. Replacements.
Each one carried a red pen.
"You will have to erase them," the Editor said. "Before they erase you."
The platform lit up.
The war for the story had begun.