The courtyard vanished in a blink. One second they were among allies, the next, they were falling through columns of words—actual words—spinning vertically like a code spiral. Ravi reached out, but Meera, Raj, and Aarav were out of reach. "Where are we going?" Meera yelled, her voice echoing strangely. The letters surrounding them glowed, forming phrases from their memories. "This is him," Aarav shouted. "The Reauthor is dragging us through our own timelines!" Suddenly, they landed with a hard thud—not in the courtyard, but a replica of their childhood classroom. Except something was wrong. Their younger selves were inside, blinking.
The air was thick with nostalgia and dread. Their younger versions were unaware of their presence. Meera walked toward her past self, who was scribbling something in a worn diary. "This was the day I started writing," she whispered. Ravi pointed. "That's when I found the pen." Raj scanned the classroom. "It's a playback." But Aarav's voice broke the moment. "Why show us this?" Then the lights flickered, and the teacher at the front of the class turned. Except it wasn't her. It was the Reauthor—tall, cloaked in shadows, face replaced with rotating gears. "Your past was always my rough draft."
The Reauthor's voice crackled like an old phonograph. "You believe you began this story. You did not." He raised his hand, and time reversed—the chalk flew back to the board, erasing their names. "Even your identities were placeholders." Meera stepped forward. "You're lying." The Reauthor tilted his head. "Am I? Then explain the echoes." At once, the younger versions of the group stood, their eyes pitch-black, faces expressionless. "These are the discarded drafts," the Reauthor said. "Versions of you I edited out. But they still live. And they hate you for replacing them." The echoes advanced, mouths opening in silent rage.
Raj threw a punch at his echo, but his hand went through it like mist. "They're not physical!" Meera shouted. "They're memory!" The echoes latched onto them with invisible weight, filling their minds with doubt. Ravi collapsed, clutching his head. "I did want to give up once…" Aarav staggered, gritting his teeth. "He's rewriting us—reminding us of everything we regret!" Meera opened her diary and slammed it shut. A shockwave pulsed outward, shattering the illusions. "Get out of our heads!" she screamed. The Reauthor flinched. "Ah. So you still have control over the page. Curious. Let's test that."
Suddenly, they were back in the library—but warped. Books bled ink. The ceiling was endless. The ground was glass, cracking with every step. "This is the Echo Draft," the Reauthor said. "Where every version of you plays out simultaneously." Around them, countless versions of themselves moved in loops—one where Raj never joined, one where Meera vanished, one where Ravi betrayed them. "These are your what-ifs," he whispered. Aarav gasped. "If he breaks us here, none of us survive anywhere." Meera turned to her alternate self. "We're not afraid of our possibilities," she snapped. "We own them now."
The Reauthor extended his hand, forming a monstrous pen from obsidian and bone. "Then let's rewrite this moment." He struck the ground, causing a wave of narrative force to blast outward. The group shielded themselves, but parts of the Echo Draft began to warp. Aarav's arm flickered. Raj's voice echoed in reverse. Meera's hands glowed with fragments of unfinished scenes. "He's corrupting our character arcs," Ravi said, panicking. "We need an anchor!" Meera opened the golden notebook and began writing—one word: Remember. The pages flared with golden light. "We are not echoes," she shouted. "We are the story that survived!"
The light from the notebook tore through the Echo Draft, freezing the infinite versions in place. "Impossible," the Reauthor hissed. "You shouldn't have narrative authority here!" Meera smiled. "Then maybe you're not the author anymore." They surrounded him, their presence solidifying in the unstable world. Aarav tackled him first, the obsidian pen flying from his hand. Raj caught it mid-air and snapped it in half. The Echo Draft began collapsing, sucked into a swirling black void. "He's trying to pull us with it!" Ravi yelled. Meera tossed the notebook into the air. "Rewrite the rewrite," she whispered. "NOW!"
Golden letters exploded from the notebook, forming a protective sphere around them. The Echo Draft disintegrated, taking the Reauthor with it—his screams lost in the flood of collapsing fiction. Then silence. The sphere hovered, then dropped them gently into a darkened room. Only the notebook glowed, faint and warm. "Did we win?" Aarav asked. "I don't think this was the final boss," Raj said. "Just… the mid-credits scene." Meera picked up the notebook. "He called us the story that survived," she said quietly. "Let's make sure we write the ending ourselves." In the silence, a soft sound echoed: a pen scratching.