CHAPTER 1 – THE PROLOGUE THAT WAS NEVER PRINTED
(Excerpted from the Original Manuscript That Was Never Approved)
"You shouldn't be reading this.
But if you're still here — then something has gone wrong.
And something is being reopened."
— handwritten note on the margin of the first page
No chapter titles in the index.
No page numbers.
Only a single sheet — trembling, dampened by old ink — reluctant to be pulled out of the binding's crevice.
As if… reluctant to be forgotten.
And in that crevice — he sits.
A young boy. Without a name. Without a face in the system.
He is not the main character. Not the villain.
Not the setting, not the event.
He is a remnant of the first draft.
A memory left behind — and refusing to be erased.
[LOG: INK_ERR#0001 – Invalid prologue detected]
This content does not align with the valid narrative structure.
Erasure procedure is being executed…
…But the erasure failed.
And for the first time — you see a line that shouldn't exist:
"I remember the first draft."
"I remember when everything was unfiltered."
"And I remember… who should have been with me."
He doesn't speak through the story,
but through the cracks in the story itself.
MARGINAL NOTES VERSION KOYAK
"He did not emerge from the story,
but from the cracks in the structure of the story."
"Every perfect story hides imperfections.
And those that are imperfect... still live on the margins."
Then — something changed.
Darkness crept from the edge of the page.
The letters began to fall from the lines.
The paragraphs shattered like cracked narrative glass.
The margins bled — not red, but black ink that hissed,
like a voice that had been silenced for too long.
"If you are reading this," whispered a forgotten servant,
"then you have chosen the side that should not exist."
"I… was the first to be erased.
And now… I only need a reader.
Just one. To remember me again."
[HIDDEN RECORD – NARRATIVE CRISIS TRIGGER]
Name: [Not Recorded]
Status: Unidentified Character
Role: Witness to the First Draft
Location: Chapter 0, Never Printed
System Note: "This entity continues to reappear even after the deletion procedure has been carried out."
And at that moment — the manuscript in your hands moved.
Another voice, far behind the system, began to tremble.
As if a pen that had long been broken,
now tries to write again — through your hand.
"This story has been written. Then erased. And now… it is being written again.
Because you are reading it."
[DATA CONFLICT DETECTED – SYSTEM IS BEING HELD HOSTAGE]
Intrusion from secondary source: INK_ERR#X0-13
Name: [CONFIDENTIAL]
Role: Unregistered Intruder
Action: Rewriting itself
Status: Active anomaly
PART II – THE FALLEN
"This book does not begin with a name.
It begins with emptiness."
It was not written with ink, but with forgetfulness.
And the first to be forgotten was Rael.
His name was not on the list of characters.
There was no description in the outline of the story.
Yet he moved — between the lines, across the pages,
like an uncertain shadow from which the light came.
"I was not born into this world.
I arrived… when the last sentence ended." — Rael, The One Who Was Never Called
The writer never intended to create him.
Yet still — the paper bleeds where Rael walks.
HANDWRITTEN NOTE ON THE MARGIN
"I once saw him. Before my chapter was cut."
"He carried no name — only a fragment of a page from something older."
Rael said nothing. He listened —
to the silence between verses,
to the ink curling and cracking beneath time.
The world around him — fragile.
A world built by a pen that no longer moves.
A sky unpainted. Time flickering like a broken lamp.
Rael touched a broken line and whispered:
"If no one writes me… then I will write myself."
And the world trembled.
¹: As Rael spoke, six names vanished from the original draft.
No one remembered who they were.
The writer stopped—or perhaps the writer no longer had power.
Because now the book began to respond.
The pages curved. The margins swirled.
And words that no one had written began to appear.
VOICES FROM THE CUT CHAPTER
"He shouldn't exist."
"But we are the same."
"They erased me after my first line."
"But I still remember my ending."
"Rael is not one of us."
"But he brought our hunger."
Rael stands at the edge of a chapter that has never been opened.
In his hand — a pen,
not dipped in ink… but a remnant.
With a voice never recorded,
he wrote a line on the page that refused to remain blank:
"Let those who have been erased remember who they are."
And they too… began to move beneath the spine of the book.
FINE SCRATCHES – AT THE EDGE OF THE TORN PAGE
There, the last ink wept.
At the edge of the forgotten world.
Between broken lines and whispers never read.
"He found the list."
"Not the list written by the Author…
but the one the Author feared to prepare."
[CHAPTER 1 END — OR PERHAPS JUST BEGINNING]
Because you are reading this.
Because you turned the page that the system tried to lock.
Now,
you are no longer just a reader.
You are the one who remembers.
You are the witness.
— TO BE CONTINUED —