Marin noticed Wyatt's absence before anyone else did.
His seat was empty—front row, second from the left. Always had been. She stared at it longer than she meant to during first period, waiting for him to slide into class with his usual shrug, a pencil behind his ear, maybe another dumb comment about how "this class is Everlost in itself."
But he didn't come.
No one mentioned it. Not Mr. Hale. Not any of the other students. Not even Logan, who sat right behind him and usually copied off his quizzes.
No one asked where he was.
It wasn't until third period that Marin's stomach began to knot. She pulled out her phone to check for messages.
Nothing.
Not even old ones.
She opened their last thread. The one where he sent her a picture of his marked-up Everlost pages with that dumb caption: "Is it just me or is this thing bleeding?"
It was gone. The thread didn't exist.
Fingers trembling, she checked her camera roll.
Nothing.
No Wyatt.
Not in pictures, not in saved contacts, not even in the stupid class group chat.
He was erased.
At lunch, she asked Logan casually, "Hey, have you seen Wyatt?"
Logan squinted. "Wyatt who?"
"Wyatt Roston. Black hoodie, always humming off-key, talks too much."
He frowned. "Doesn't ring a bell. Is he new?"
"No—he sits in front of you."
Logan looked at her like she was the weird one. "That seat's been empty all year."
She stared at him. "That's not true."
"Are you feeling okay?"
Marin walked away before she said something she couldn't take back.
She ran home after school. Slammed her bedroom door. Locked it.
The book was still on her desk.
Still cold to the touch.
She opened it with shaking hands.
The map had changed.
Now, a faint glow pulsed from the center—like a heartbeat beneath the paper. Thin black lines stretched from it like veins or roots, reaching toward the edges of the page.
And in the lower corner, a new sentence had appeared, written in curling, elegant script:
The Forgotten Are the First to Open the Gate.
Beneath it, a name:
Wyatt Roston
His name burned faintly, then faded, leaving a smudge of ink behind.
Marin recoiled.
Ink was seeping from the book's spine again. Dripping thick and slow like sap. She backed away, but not fast enough.
A drop landed on the back of her hand. Cold. Slick.
Then the lights in her room flickered—and everything went black.
She blinked.
The air was heavy. Wet. Trees loomed around her—thin and endless, like strokes of ink on a blank page.
She was somewhere else.
Somewhere wrong.
The sky above her was a washed-out gray, full of scribbled clouds. The ground pulsed faintly beneath her feet, like it had a heartbeat of its own. And the trees? They whispered. Not in words, but in scratching. Like pens dragging across parchment.
She tried to move, but her feet were buried ankle-deep in dark, sludgy ink.
A voice echoed through the forest.
Not loud, not sharp.
Just… close.
"You opened it."
She turned.
Wyatt stood behind her.
But not quite Wyatt.
His face was thinner, more angular. His eyes were too dark, too wide. He looked like someone had sketched him from memory, and done a bad job of it.
"You shouldn't have."
"Where am I?" Marin asked.
"Everlost."
He didn't sound surprised. Just tired.
"You read it too long. You saw too much."
"I was just reading—"
"Reading is the gateway."
The ground surged beneath her. Ink rose up her legs like vines. She screamed.
Wyatt didn't move.
"You can't leave until someone else reads," he whispered. "That's how it spreads. That's how it breathes."
She struggled. The ink clung tighter.
"You'll forget everything soon," he said. "Like I did."
"I won't," she gasped, trying to tear free.
"Then run."
Her eyes snapped open in her bed, drenched in sweat.
The book was closed on her desk.
The room was silent.
She stumbled to the mirror—and nearly screamed.
Ink spirals coiled around her neck and wrists like chains. Like they'd been drawn onto her.
They pulsed—faintly, like veins.
And in the reflection, just behind her shoulder, Wyatt was still watching.
And so, with trembling hope mingled with dread, Marin stepped forward into the unknown, leaving behind the familiarity of her world to rediscover a legacy written in ink and dreams.