The slit of light widened, slicing through the dark like a careful scalpel. Letters crawled along its edges, neat as embroidery:
The villagers groaned as if the words themselves pressed weight onto their spines. Some bent, unwilling knees folding. Others clutched their ash-scrawled names tighter.
“No,” Sal whispered hoarsely, ledger trembling. “Titles bind harder than text. If it names the chapter, it dictates the arc.”
Mireya’s staff thudded against the ground. Sparks bled like old fire. “Then we tear the arc before it hooks.”
The slit yawned wider into a door, showing a hall of bone-white pages. Across them sprawled ink lines like chains—paragraphs meant to tether. At the far end of the hall, a dais waited, empty but for a single chair drawn in draft-lines, glowing faint.
A chair me
