Darkness.

  Then..

  Light.

  A flicker. A breath. A sudden shift as something broke through the void.

  Emma’s eyes fluttered open.

  Her silver-white irises reflected the towering, colossal throne before her, the very same throne she had just seen before everything had vanished.

  She was… still here.

  Still standing in the same spot.

  Her limbs felt weightless, yet she couldn’t move. Not an inch. Not a twitch of a finger. Not even a slight turn of her head. Locked. Frozen in place, as if the world itself refused to acknowledge her existence.

  And yet...

  She was aware.

  She knew.

  She knew something had happened.

  Her breath was steady, but her mind was not. Thoughts pieced themselves together, unraveling in slow, measured strands as she processed the impossible.

  She remembered…

  The being with the book for a head.

  Its deep, reverberating voice.. its absolute decree.

  She had been erased.

  She had been deleted from the story.

  But then.. she was here again.

  A loop.

  It wasn’t death. It wasn’t resurrection. It was something else. Something wrong.

  The air around her hummed with a quiet stillness, the fabric of this place feeling… off. Thin. Like parchment that had been erased and rewritten one too many times.

  Her lips parted slightly, voice soft but unyielding.

  "Sir, may I ask what you just did?"

  It was not a demand. Not a plea. Just a question. A calm request in the face of something far beyond her understanding.

  The towering being did not answer.

  Instead, he merely stared at her.

  No movement. No shift in posture. Not even a flicker of disturbance in the presence that surrounded him.

  Yet...

  A single thought bubbled calmly into his mind.

  I erased her name as a character from my story.

  She was not supposed to exist anymore.

  And yet..

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  She stood before him once again.

  There was no trace of hesitation in his massive form, no indication of frustration. Only observation.

  A power is protecting her, the being realized. A force that prevents her from being removed.

  He had no need for characters outside his narrative.

  So, if she could not be erased...

  She would be rewritten.

  A mere stone.

  That was all she would become.

  A fragment of the world. Inconsequential. Forgotten.

  His massive hand shifted, and from the formless void, a pen materialized.

  Not just any pen..

  A construct of absolute nothingness.

  The very essence of creation and erasure, woven into a single instrument.

  The book in his other hand rippled, its pages reshaping, words bleeding into new existence as he began to write.

  Emma Walts shall be rewritten..

  VROOM!

  The air shattered.

  The pen vanished.

  The book in his hand looped back, dematerializing as if it had never been there at all.

  The throne rumbled.

  For the first time...

  The being’s massive hands clenched.

  The weight of something beyond his comprehension pressed against him.

  And then, for the first time, his voice, deep, deeper than time itself spoke not as an omnipotent entity, but as something faced with an impossibility.

  "What type of mortal cannot be touched in any way?"

  His voice rolled through the empty space, reverberating through the very fabric of this world.

  Emma, still locked in place, still unable to move, stared.

  She did not know what he had tried to do.

  She did not know he had attempted to rewrite her very existence.

  Yet she could feel it.

  Something in his tone, something different.

  Something had changed.

  And for the first time since stepping into this place..

  Emma felt truly unsettled.

  Her lips curled into a faint forced smile, trying to hide her unease..

  "Sir…" she said, her tone polite, though in her mind, she scoffed. Book Head.

  The colossal entity remained unmoving, seated upon his towering throne, a silent, unreadable force looming over her. His presence distorted the very air, as though reality itself struggled to contain him.

  Emma’s silver-white eyes flickered with an odd calmness. She tilted her head slightly, her dark ash skirt shifting with the subtle motion. Her fingers, still unable to move freely, twitched ever so slightly as she continued.

  "If it isn’t too much effort, you could just show me the way out."

  Her voice was smooth, almost casual, but there was an undercurrent beneath it.. an unshaken composure, a defiance that did not scream but merely existed.

  The Book-Headed One finally moved.

  The throne beneath him rumbled as he shifted, the very fabric of this strange world bending with the weight of his presence. Slowly, he began to rise, his colossal frame unfolding like a shadow blotting out the heavens.

  The moment he spoke, his voice was not merely sound.. it was weight, a tremor in the very essence of existence.

  "Vile mortal…"

  The ground quaked.

  "You have defied all my authorities…"

  The sky shuddered like a trembling parchment.

  "In my own story…"

  A distant, low hum, like the turning of an ancient page.

  "My own cosmology…"

  The air thickened, pressing down like an unseen force.

  "And now you ask for a way out?"

  A deep, resounding silence followed.. one that stretched, one that waited.

  Then...

  The world trembled.

  The Book-Headed One did not raise his voice. He did not need to. The very act of his words being spoken was enough.

  "I shall show your ignorance… your lack of fear… what it means to stand before…

  A pause. A breath. A shift in the air.

  "A Higher Authority."

  Emma’s mind blanked.

  No thoughts. No emotions.

  Only...

  Nothingness... Pure And Absolute Nothingness...

  Then.... Slowly..

  Light.

  A gentle warmth.

  A whisper of wind brushing against her skin.

  Emma’s eyes fluttered open.

  She was sitting.. no, resting on soft, sun-kissed grass. The blades tickled her fingertips, cool and damp from the morning dew.

  A soft breeze rustled through the leaves above, stirring the branches in a quiet, rhythmic dance. The sky above was a gentle blue, a vast, unbroken canvas stretching endlessly into the horizon.

  Emma inhaled slowly.

  The air was fresh, carrying the scent of lavender and earth, a fragrance so familiar, so deeply ingrained in her that it sent an ache through her chest.

  And then, it hit her.

  She knew this place.

  Her eyes widened slightly as she lifted her head, her silver-white hair catching the magical sunlight in strands of pure, shimmering light.

  Her lips parted, a quiet breath escaping.

  "This is… Mom’s garden."