He sat alone at the edge of a dead hill,
where no bird sang,
no wind whispered,
and the grass had long since forgotten how to grow.
The world below spun on, gilded in golden Codexes, blessed Readers, floating realms, and divine ink —
but none of it belonged to him.
His name was Sheng Luò,
and this world was a page that had never written his name.
---
A torn scrap of parchment fluttered beside him —
a line half-burned, half-saved:
> "He who reaches for the sky...
does someone already live up there?"
"Then why does rest never reach me?"
He sighed and lowered his eyes.
> "I tried everything."
> "I screamed for the Codex.
I gave up love, family, even my name."
"I lit fire to my blood and offered it.
Nothing heard me."
---
But he remembered someone who had been heard.
Saahil.
His only friend.
His dream companion.
They had grown up on the same streets, shared the same hunger.
Both wished to become Writers — gods of fate, authors of destiny.
Yet the Codex answered only one.
Saahil's awakening came at the edge of death —
just one breath before his body would've shattered against stone,
the light bloomed from his chest,
and the Codex rose like a second soul.
---
Saahil had grown strong.
He wandered realms.
Wrote truths.
And fell in love.
Sheng Luò remembered the first poem Saahil sent him in secret ink:
> "No one ever looked at her the way I did...
so she looked at me."
"Even fate blushes when someone sees without reading."
Sheng had smiled.
He had thought Saahil had found peace.
He had been wrong.
---
He recalled the day he climbed that forgotten ridge.
The sky was soft grey, like bruised parchment.
Saahil stood beneath a rusted arch,
the girl beside him — laughing softly, her eyes closed.
Then silence.
Then steel.
Saahil's hand —
a blade.
Her heart — pierced.
Her smile — frozen.
No war. No demon. No rage.
Just a choice.
Just… an edit to his own story.
---
Sheng Luò had stood there, unseen.
And something in him died.
Not loudly. Not all at once.
But in layers —
like pages being torn,
one by one.
---
Back in the present, he stood again at the cliff's edge.
The same silence.
The same ache.
He looked down.
Below was not death.
Below was nothing.
No structure.
No lines.
Only the end of someone who had never begun.
---
> "I spent my life trying to become something the world refused to write,"
he whispered.
"And I failed."
> "But perhaps… failure is the first real word I've ever owned."
He stepped forward.
And fell.
---
But he didn't fall into stone.
He fell into memory.
---
The world inverted.
He found himself standing in a place without sky, without ground —
a void made of fragments: Saahil's laughter, broken poems, ash-cracked hands.
> "I know how to become immortal," he muttered.
"But I'm not allowed to live long enough to reach it."
Then came the pulse — deep, ancient, alien.
A flutter behind his chest.
He reached in.
And pulled out something not of this realm.
---
The Travel Butterfly.
A Rank 7 Codex, illegal, divine, untraceable.
Its wings shimmered with impossible ink —
patterns that changed based on who looked.
It allowed travel between realms,
between worlds,
between timelines —
but it demanded a price:
> Two years of life for every activation.
> "To sail, you need a ship," Sheng Luò whispered.
"To move across time… you need to bleed into it."
---
As he stood suspended in the void,
the sky above reopened — and they came.
Codex Agents.
Dozens.
Draped in divine silk, wearing lines of ancient poems like armor.
Readers.
Rank 7. Rank 8.
Some with titles.
They hovered above like birds of judgment.
> "You do not deserve that Codex."
"It belongs to us. To Heaven."
"You were never chosen."
One pointed a finger.
> "You are a parasite in the page."
But Sheng Luò smiled.
---
> "Even if I run, I die.
If I fight, I shatter."
"If I win, I break."
"So I'll do none of those."
He pressed his hand to the Codex.
The Travel Butterfly opened.
The void trembled.
---
Wings wrapped around him.
His body began to blur, shimmer, crack with light and ink.
The agents tried to rush forward — but the air rejected them.
The Codex obeyed only the one who bled for it.
---
He looked up at the collapsing sky.
And down at the hunters.
Then at his hand — beginning to fragment.
> "Two years? Take them."
"Take five. Take ten."
> "In this life, I never succeeded.
But I made one promise to myself."
> "If this world cannot hold my verse…"
The wind surged.
> "…then I will become the curse beneath its lines."
---
He floated higher.
> "In my next life,"
"I'll not be a man."
He was smiling now — a soft, calm, horrifying smile.
> "I'll be a demon."
---
And with that…
He let go.
Not into death.
Not into peace.
But into something outside the story itself.