Beneath the skin of narrative, deeper than subtext, older than oral tradition, the marrow of Story shuddered.
It had been quiet for too long.
Too long since a single will walked unbound across the lattice of expectation and tore at the ligaments holding reality together—not out of cruelty, but compassion.
And so the marrow screamed.
It was not sound, but sensation. Every storyteller in every realm paused, suddenly struck by a feeling they couldn't explain: that something was watching them from the other side of the page.
And then the paper bled.
Not ink.
Not blood.
Possibility.
---
In the Chapel of Endings, where every conclusion was canonized and bound in holy ellipses, the Priests of Closure chanted in vain. Their voices—once so firm, so absolute—now trembled with every syllable.
The Final Chapter writ itself backward.
A blasphemy.
