Location: The Nowhere Margins (between timeline clusters)
Time: Nonexistent, but aggressively scheduled
It started with a sentence.
Not a scream. Not a web. Not even an explosion.
Just words, scrawled across the sky:
"Peter Parker was never supposed to win."
Peter stood beneath the glowing letters, shoulders tight.
Miguel O'Hara was beside him, scanning a temporal map the size of a warehouse and the density of a thesis.
Deadpool was eating a burrito that was slowly blinking.
Billy the Goat stared at the sky and let out a grunt so profoundly existential it shook nearby punctuation marks.
Peter pointed at the sentence. "Is that some sort of message?"
Miguel didn't look up. "It's not a message. It's a footnote."
Peter narrowed his eyes. "From who?"
Miguel looked at him — grim. "From the Author."
Who is the Author?
Nobody knows.
Not a villain.
Not a god.
Something worse.
The origin point of narrative entropy. The source of all outlines. The first breath in every hero's lungs.
The one who decides how the story ends.
And now?
They were making edits.
Miguel threw a device to Peter: a pen-shaped relic glowing with raw continuity.
"Hyperquill," Miguel said. "It can freeze edits. Maybe even rewrite a few… if you don't die mid-sentence."
Peter caught it, then paused. "Wait. So, what—are we storming some cosmic writing room?"
"Not quite."
Miguel pointed at the air. It peeled back — like pages turning.
Behind it was a massive library floating in nothingness.
Each book on the shelves was a timeline. Each word a life.
At the center: a desk.
Empty.
Waiting.
Miguel whispered, "That's the Drafting Table. The Author's altar."
They entered.
Immediately, Peter felt sick.
The gravity here wasn't physical — it was narrative.
A crushing pressure of decisions, arcs, character deaths.
He looked down.
His feet stepped across open books:
The Death of Gwen Stacy
The Clone Saga (revised and worse)
One More Day
Spider-Island
That Time With Morlun That Everyone Hated
Each step was painful. Not because of trauma — but because they were locked.
Peter couldn't change them.
But he could feel them still happening.
Still echoing.
Deadpool poked a spine labeled Peter Parker: Unwritten Vol. 3.
It bit him.
He yelped. "I liked Vol. 2 better."
Miguel pressed forward.
"The Author is in here. Somewhere. Hiding behind meta-armor."
Peter asked, "What's that mean?"
Miguel scowled. "It means we can't just punch them. They're protected by relevance, irony, and a thousand unpaid interns."
Billy the Goat licked the spine of Spider-Geddon and immediately passed out.
Peter looked up at the vaulted ceiling.
Words floated there, constantly rewriting.
Suddenly, a new phrase appeared:
"Peter hesitated."
Peter shouted, "No, I didn't!"
The moment he said it, he froze mid-step.
Literally.
His muscles locked.
His mouth shut.
Miguel rushed over. "They're testing edits. Rewriting you one line at a time."
Deadpool pulled a random sentence from the air. It read:
"Deadpool tragically sacrificed himself—"
He screamed and threw it like it was on fire.
Billy snorted in solidarity.
Peter fought the freeze — hard.
Focused on the Hyperquill in his hand.
One thought:
You don't own me.
He shoved the pen into the air.
It glowed.
And for one breathless second — the narrative paused.
The ceiling cracked.
And through the fissure — a voice emerged.
Dry.
Calm.
Unamused.
"You're off-script, Peter."
The Author stepped into view.
They didn't have a face.
Just a shifting blur of panels, scripts, and canceled issues.
Peter raised the Hyperquill. "Put the pen down."
The Author replied, "I am the pen."
Negotiations: Doomed.
Peter tried.
"I'm not your puppet."
The Author's reply was instant:
"You are. You just don't know which strings matter yet."
Peter: "I've earned every scar, every mistake."
Author: "And I've edited every one you didn't survive. You think growth is yours? I gift-wrapped it."
Peter lunged.
But the Author didn't fight.
They rewrote.
"Peter's foot slipped."
He did.
"He missed the webline."
He fell.
Until—
Deadpool tackled him mid-air with a full-body hug. "YOU ARE NOT DYING MID-CHAPTER."
Billy kicked an errant footnote into a wall. It exploded into exposition.
Miguel caught the Hyperquill, aimed it at the ceiling, and slashed a reality-thread.
The Author staggered.
Not wounded — just interrupted.
That was enough.
Peter stood.
Cut. Bruised. But focused.
"You want me to stay on-script? Fine."
He raised the Hyperquill.
"Let's write a new chapter."
And he did.
He wrote three words into the air.
Three simple, powerful words:
"Spider-Man resists editing."
The walls shook.
Pages fell from the ceiling.
The Author screamed — not in pain, but in revision.
Peter lunged. Miguel covered him.
Deadpool and Billy ran interference, yelling incoherent side-comments that bent panel structure and confused the story enough to give Peter space.
And then:
He wrote.
Wrote not his victories — but his failures.
Reclaimed them.
Owned them.
Named them not as flaws — but as proof.
That he grew.
That he mattered.
That he would not be deleted.
The Author collapsed.
Not dead.
Not gone.
Just… paused.
Frozen in the middle of a redraft.
Peter knelt.
Exhausted.
Still himself.
He looked up at the empty ceiling.
"I'm not your character."
A pause.
A flicker.
And then, across the entire library — a single, universal sentence:
"Peter Parker kept going anyway."