The quill stabbed downward, Jace didn’t think, he reacted. The ink leapt from the pen’s tip, forming a jagged streak across the disk.For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the entire engraving ripped in half, the stone shrieking as it gave way. Ink swallowed them all.It wasn’t water. It was thicker, alive. The moment it closed over his head, it filled his mouth, nose, ears, yet he didn’t drown. Instead, it pressed words into his mind, thousands at once, as if every sentence ever written was trying to brand itself into him.Through the blackness, shapes moved. Faceless figures swam effortlessly, darting around him like predators. Some had quills for fingers; others bled ink from the seams of their bodies.One swam close. Its face stretched open, not a mouth, but a page, covered in lines of text written in a language Jace had never seen. The words slid off the page and wrapped around his throat like chains.He slashed the quill through the water. The ink obeyed instantly, tearing the

Not the damp, clinging heat of the jungle he remembered from one of his past “system tests,” but a clean, dry warmth, like sunlight spilling across silk sheets. His eyes opened to see a ceiling he didn’t recognize, gold-leaf trim curling into intricate spirals, each one inlaid with tiny emerald chips that caught the light.He sat up too fast, The bed beneath him was massive, its canopy stitched with threads of platinum. Around the room, walls of white marble glistened faintly, carved with a mural of his own face. Jace froze. His own face.Not the rough sketch you’d find in some corporate brochure, either, this was a detailed, almost reverent portrayal. He looked… older, but sharper. “Good morning, Mr. Halden,” a voice said smoothly.Jace whipped his head toward the sound. A man in a tailored crimson suit stood at the foot of the bed, bowing slightly. His hair was silver, his posture military-perfect. “Where am I?” Jace demanded.The man smiled politely. “In your capital residence, sir

There was no floor. There was no sky, Only an endless ocean of ink, stretching out in all directions, roiling and folding as though it were alive.Glyphs the size of buildings floated on its surface, some whole, others fractured into drifting shards of light.Jace’s boots didn’t sink, they didn’t even make ripples. He was standing on nothing, and yet the nothing held him. The Chancellor and the aide materialized beside him, pale and silent.The aide knelt, brushing his fingers through the air as though feeling for an invisible seam. “We’re inside it. The missing page.”The Chancellor’s gaze swept the horizon. “You shouldn’t have brought us here.”“I didn’t bring us” Jace started, but his voice was swallowed, muffled by the strange, heavy silence that lay over the place.Something broke the surface of the ink. At first, he thought it was a hand. Then he realized it was a quill, longer than a man’s arm, black as a starless night, its tip dripping liquid light. It wrote in mid-air, the g

The crowd moved like water closing over a drowning man. Jace’s heartbeat thundered in his ears, every step they took tightening an invisible noose around him. Neon signs flickered overhead, the glow reflecting in their blank, lifeless eyes.He stepped back, palms open. “I don’t want trouble.”No one spoke. No one blinked, The first one lunged. Jace sidestepped, his body moving on reflex from countless fights before, but this was different, there was no sound of breath, no grunt of effort. Just that eerie, mechanical speed.A second figure grabbed at his coat. Jace twisted, wrenching free, but more came. Too many, He scanned the street for an opening, none. They’d formed a perfect semicircle, herding him toward the cracked, shadowed alley behind him.They wanted him to run. He could feel it, Which is exactly why he didn’t, Jace dropped low, swept the legs out from under the nearest attacker, and surged forward through the gap.The crowd erupted, sprinting after him in unnatural unison,

Jace staggered to his feet, throat raw, chest burning with every breath. He gripped the cracked dresser for balance, sweat dripping onto the warped wood. His reflection stared back at him from the fractured glass, head tilted, lips curled into a grin that wasn’t his.His own face… but alive in a way it shouldn’t be, Jace lifted a trembling hand. His reflection lifted too, but not in sync. A heartbeat slower. A fraction off. Deliberate. Mocking.Then, without warning, the reflection waved, Jace stumbled back, his spine colliding with the wall. “No… no, this isn’t real.”But it was. Every detail burned too vividly. The mirror’s spiderweb crack split across his chest in the reflection, yet the smile stretched wider, impossibly wide. His mirrored self leaned closer, pressing against the glass as though the thin barrier was no longer enough.A voice seeped into the room, not spoken aloud, but crawling straight into his mind. “Let me out.”Jace’s pulse thundered. He shook his head violently