The room had become a maze of pages.
They swirled around me, folding in on themselves, becoming something far worse than mere paper. They were alive. They were the essence of the book, its heartbeat pulsing with every flicker of ink.
I stood there, frozen, surrounded by the words that had shaped my every move, every choice. The story had taken on a life of its own.
I could hear the whispers — soft at first, but growing louder, suffocating.
"Finish it," they whispered. "Complete the tale."
And then, from somewhere deeper, a voice — calm, yet cold:
"You know what has to be done."
I looked around, searching for the source of the voice. But there was nothing — just the endless stream of words, flickering and twisting in the air.
The girl — the one who had guided me here, or perhaps trapped me here — appeared again. But this time, she was different.
Her eyes weren't hollow anymore. They were burning, filled with an unnatural light. The story had marked her, too.
She stepped forward, her voice low, almost comforting.
"You don't have to do this," she said. "You can still choose. You can still leave. Just close the book. Walk away."
I shook my head. The words didn't make sense. Every moment I hesitated felt like another piece of me being consumed by the pages, swallowed by the story.
"I can't escape, can I?" I whispered.
She didn't answer immediately, her expression unreadable.
"No one can escape this book," she said quietly. "It has claimed us all. And it will claim you too if you don't finish it."
I looked down at my hands. The ink was still there, bleeding into my skin, pulling me toward the book.
"Finish it," the voice repeated.
It was the book speaking. It was no longer a collection of pages. It had become something else — something that didn't want to be closed. It had become a mind. A consciousness. It could feel me resisting, and it wanted to keep me.
The book was everything — my past, my future, my very identity.
But I could rewrite it. I could finish the story on my own terms.
The words danced in front of me again:
"She must write. She must finish the story."
The sentence was clear, almost as if it had been waiting for me to accept it. I wasn't just the reader. I was the writer.
Suddenly, the pages around me started to shimmer. They twisted and reformed, creating something new.
The ending was being written.
I felt the pull, the urgency, like my body was being rewritten as I stood there. The book was consuming me, but I could feel something else — a power within me.
With trembling hands, I reached out for the book, the weight of it heavy in my chest. The words were no longer just on the pages; they were part of me, part of my soul.
"Finish it," the voice said one last time.
I closed my eyes.
And I began to write.
The ink spilled out of me like fire, burning with every stroke. I wrote of escape. I wrote of freedom. I wrote of a world beyond these pages.
The words bled together, swirling, rising.
And then, something changed.
The pages stopped moving.
The book… stopped.
I stood there, trembling, the ink now flowing like a river in my veins. It was done.
The ending had been written.
For a moment, everything was still.
Then, a single sentence appeared on the final page:
"The story is finished. The author is free."
The room, the book, the eyes — everything started to disintegrate. It was as if the very essence of the story was being undone, erased by the power of the words I had written.
I could feel it.
The weight lifting from my shoulders. The chains breaking.
I was no longer a part of the book.
I was free.
The girl appeared one last time. This time, her eyes were soft. No longer burning.
"You did it," she whispered, her voice filled with something close to admiration. "You wrote your own ending."
But there was something strange in her eyes. She wasn't entirely free. She was still trapped in the pages, her existence tied to the story.
I reached out, my fingers brushing her arm.
"You can leave now too," I said.
She smiled softly, but it was bittersweet. "I've already left. You were the author, after all."
And with that, she vanished, dissolving into the last of the pages.
I was standing in an empty room now.
The book was gone.
The world I had been trapped in — was gone.
The story was finished. I had written my escape.