From the shoulders down, the entity had the form of a giant, a monolithic figure of darkness. But where a face should have been, the book sat open, pages shifting like living flesh, words written in shifting ink that seemed to pulse with something unreadable, something forbidden.

  And yet… beneath the book, where a human jaw would be..

  There was a mouth.

  A mouth that belonged. As if it had always been there. Lips unmoving. Silent. Waiting.

  Emma inhaled slowly, her muscles tensing.

  She needed to move.

  To act before.

  Her pupils constricted.

  She couldn’t.

  Her body was frozen.

  Not by fear. Not by hesitation. Something... something unseen, held her in place.

  Her arms refused to lift. Her legs wouldn’t step back. Her breath was her own, but her existence was not.

  She was bound.

  A slow exhale escaped her lips. Then... Slowly..

  A small, almost amused smile formed.

  “Well,” she murmured, tilting her head slightly, voice calm, “this is awkward.”

  Her silver-white eyes flickered toward the towering entity, her gaze unmoving despite the weight pressing down on her. She knew she should be terrified.

  But terror required room to run.

  And she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Her smile curved slightly, a whisper of something reckless as she spoke again.

  “Ah… hello. Do you happen to know where we are? I got lost, actually.”

  Her voice was light, conversational. As if she were asking for directions and not standing in front of something that could unmake her.

  It was a dumb question. A stupid, meaningless attempt at normalcy when nothing about this place was normal.

  But Emma didn’t ask for its name.

  She had already made that mistake before.

  Back in the artificial dungeon. When she asked for Matana’s name.

  The weight of that experience still lingered. The consequences. The unraveling.

  So this time, she didn’t ask.

  The entity didn’t respond.

  Not at first.

  It simply stared.

  Or.. did it?

  It had no eyes. No face. No expression. Yet, something in the way it remained still, the way its book-head remained fixed upon her, felt like a gaze more powerful than sight

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  And In that moment...

  The world trembled...

  A voice, deep, vast, final, spoke.

  "WHAT IS AN EXTRA CHARACTER THAT HAS NO FUTURE DOING IN MY COSMOLOGY?"

  ***

  "Cosmology?"

  Emma’s voice barely rose above a murmur, the unfamiliar word lingering on her tongue like something foreign, something wrong. Her brows knitted together, confusion flickering in her silver-white eyes as she blinked up at the colossal being before her.

  She swallowed, her lips parting slightly before she spoke again, forcing a faint smile.. one that barely masked the growing unease coiling in her chest.

  "Sir, I think I don’t understand what you mean…"

  She hesitated, the weight of the unseen force still pressing against her limbs. It wasn’t fear that rooted her in place, it was something else, something far deeper, as though the very fabric of reality had locked her within its grasp.

  But she forced herself to breathe.

  Steady. Careful. Controlled.

  "...I got dragged in here by a deer-like beast," she continued, her tone light, casual, as though she were simply recounting a minor inconvenience rather than something that had nearly torn her apart. "And almost got killed by six of them combined."

  Her fingers twitched, a restless motion, but she kept them at her sides. Her heart beat a little faster, but she refused to let it show.

  The being with the book for a head did not respond immediately.

  Instead, it remained still.

  A stillness that wasn’t passive, it was absolute. A presence so vast that even silence became a crushing force.

  Then...

  "You did not only enter my Cosmology," it finally spoke, its voice deep, reverberating, a weight upon reality itself. "You also killed the Six Holders of Time within it."

  Emma’s faint smile faltered.

  The Six Holders of Time?

  She hadn’t known.

  She hadn’t understood what those things were, only that they had tried to kill her. That she had fought. That she had survived.

  But now...

  Her throat felt dry.

  The entity continued, unrelenting. "Beings beyond dimensionality and time. Beings I, the Author of this Cosmology, created to balance Time itself."

  Its voice did not rise. It did not need to. The weight of its words alone made the air feel thicker, heavier, as though space itself bent beneath their meaning.

  "How can a mere character defy the balance of my Cosmology?"

  Emma's fingers curled into fists.

  A character?

  That word. Again.

  She exhaled slowly, her chest rising and falling with intentional control before she looked up at the towering entity once more.

  "...Please don’t be mad," she said, tilting her head slightly, voice carrying an edge of something careful, not submissive, but calculated. "But… can you explain what 'Cosmology' means?"

  She blinked.

  "And while you’re at it, what does 'Author' mean?" Her lips quirked up, the faintest trace of a smirk, as she added, "And what do you mean by 'character'?"

  She didn't expect an answer.

  Not really.

  Something about the way the entity had spoken before, the way it carried itself, told her it was prideful. Not in the way humans were, but in the way something above human understanding could be.

  To it, the words "Cosmology" and "Author" were absolute.

  Not things to be explained.

  Things to be known.

  Yet...

  And In that moment...

  It moved.

  A shift of its towering form, slow yet precise, as a book materialized in its massive hand.

  Emma’s breath caught.

  Not at the book itself, but at what came next.

  "Emma Walts."

  It spoke her name.

  A ripple crawled down her spine.

  She didn’t flinch. She didn’t let herself.

  "The moment you entered my Cosmology, my Story… that was the moment you became a character in it."

  Emma's breath was steady. Controlled. But her heartbeat was not.

  "And as long as you are a character in it…"

  The being turned the book slightly, fingers resting upon its open pages. The ink within them shifted, bled, as though the words themselves were rewriting before her eyes.

  "I am the Author of your story. Your narrative.

  A pause.

  Then, final.

  "And I have no need for an extra character."

  The air shuddered.

  "So, in this moment.."

  The pages of the book fluttered.

  "Your name shall be erased from my story."

  The being exhaled.

  A slow, deliberate breath.

  And with it...

  The book in its hands trembled.

  The ink on its pages fractured.

  And then..

  It blew.

  A single breath. A whisper upon the book's pages.

  And in that instant..

  Emma ceased to exist.

  No sound. No struggle. No resistance.

  As if...

  She had never been there at all.

  Her name.

  Her presence.

  Her existence—

  Gone.

  She no longer existed.

  But that still didn't stop the....

  LOOP!