The train rattled into motion on tracks that Mira couldn't see. Rain lashed the windows, smearing the city lights into blurs of white and gold. She sat curled in the corner, clutching the notebook to her chest, her breath shallow and ragged.
The overhead lights flickered, buzzing like insects. Shadows crawled along the floor, stretching long, reaching for her ankles. She shut her eyes tight, whispering the words over and over:
"I won't vanish. I won't vanish."
A voice slithered through the dark, soft and hollow. "We warned you. Now the story will swallow everything."
She snapped her eyes open. Across the aisle, a figure sat hunched in the seat, face hidden beneath dripping black hair. Ink oozed from its fingertips, staining the floor.
"Get away," Mira hissed.
The figure smiled with broken teeth. "You can't run from the ending."
Mira slammed the notebook onto the seat beside her, tearing open a fresh page. Her fingers were numb, smudged black with old graphite and rain, but she forced the pencil across the paper, scrawling out each letter with shaking hands.
*"Mira wouldn't stop. Mira wouldn't vanish. Mira would burn the ending to ash."*
The creature screamed. The train lurched violently, the windows cracking, the lights bursting in showers of sparks. Mira kept writing, pushing the pencil so hard the wood splintered and broke.
*"Mira writes the last page herself."*
A roar filled the train, louder than thunder, shaking the walls. Shadows poured from the ceiling, clawing at her arms and throat. She shrieked, thrashing against them, the notebook nearly torn from her grip.
Then, through the chaos, she heard a voice. Rion's voice.
"Mira—look at me!"
She turned. At the far end of the car, framed by the shattering lights, stood Rion—solid, real, his hand outstretched.
"Come on!" he shouted. "Now!"
Mira hurled herself forward, clutching the notebook, stumbling past seats that crumbled into dust as she passed. The shadows snapped at her heels, but she didn't look back. She grabbed Rion's hand.
His grip was warm and strong. He pulled her through the doorway into blinding light.
For a moment, everything went white. She felt the world crack beneath her feet, like glass spiderwebbing under a hammer.
When the light faded, they stood in a blank, endless space. White walls stretched away in every direction. No train, no shadows, just emptiness.
Mira gasped, clutching the notebook. "Where… where are we?"
Rion squeezed her hand. "Outside the story," he whispered. "You did it. You broke through."
She looked around wildly. "What now? Where do we go?"
He smiled faintly. "Wherever you want. The script can't touch you here."
Mira swallowed hard. Her hands were bleeding from where the pencil had splintered. The notebook felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
She flipped it open to the last page and wrote, slowly, carefully:
*"Mira chooses her own ending. Mira chooses to live."*
The white space around them trembled. Black cracks spidered across the floor, opening into infinite pages of words, shifting and changing.
Rion brushed her cheek gently. "It's your story now," he said. "Write it however you want."
Mira closed her eyes. For the first time, she wasn't afraid.
She pressed the pencil to the page again and whispered to the world:
"I choose to begin."
And the white emptiness bloomed into color—light and sound and breath and hope. A new world unfolding, page by page.