Elian Vance slammed the heavy hardcover book shut with enough force to disturb the dust motes dancing in the yellow light of his cramped study. He tossed the bestseller onto a pile of equally disappointing fantasy novels, his expression sour as he rubbed his tired eyes. It was the same tired formula again, featuring a farm boy with a hidden destiny, a princess who needed saving, and a villain who waited politely for the hero to power up.
"Garbage," Elian muttered to the empty room, reaching for his cold cup of coffee. "If I had written this, the hero would have died in chapter three for walking into a dungeon without a torch."
He was a critic by trade and a cynic by nature, a man who had consumed so many stories that reality felt dull by comparison. He opened his laptop to type a scathing one star review, his fingers hovering over the keys, but a sudden wave of vertigo washed over him. The room tilted violently. The smell of old paper and stale coffee vanished, replaced by the scent of ozone and ancient leather.
Elian gripped the edge of his desk, but the wood dissolved into mist under his fingertips. His heartbeat hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. The walls of his London apartment peeled away like burnt skin, revealing an endless, consuming void of white.
"Is this a stroke?" he gasped, his voice swallowed by the silence.
He fell forward, expecting to hit his floorboards, but instead, he landed on cold, polished marble. The impact knocked the wind out of him. Elian gasped for air, pushing himself up on trembling arms, and when he finally looked up, his breath hitched in his throat.
He was not in London. He was nowhere.
And yet, he was everywhere.
Elian stood in the center of a hall so vast that the ceiling was lost to darkness. Surrounding him were not walls, but shelves. Massive, towering bookshelves that stretched up into the infinite gloom and down into a bottomless abyss. Millions of books floated in the air, drifting like lazy schools of fish, glowing with soft, ethereal lights of blue, gold, and crimson. Bridges made of floating parchment connected the towering aisles, and the silence here was heavy, like the air inside a tomb.
"Hello?" Elian called out, his voice echoing endlessly.
[Welcome, Candidate 404.]
A blue, translucent box appeared in front of his face, hovering in the air. Elian stumbled back, his eyes widening. It looked exactly like a system interface from the webnovels he despised.
[Location: The Athenaeum.]
[Role Assigned: Editor.]
[Current Status: The Librarian of Nowhere.]
"Editor?" Elian read the text aloud, his fear slowly giving way to a sharp, analytical confusion. "I'm not a librarian. I'm a critic. Take me back."
[Request Denied.]
[The stories of the Multiverse are corrupting. Chaos is consuming the narratives. The Author has abandoned the script. You have been chosen to correct the errors.]
A single, leather bound book floated down from the darkness, hovering just inches from Elian's nose. The cover was blank, but as he looked at it, letters began to bleed onto the surface in red ink: The Chronicles of Aethelgard.
It was the generic fantasy title to end all generic fantasy titles.
[Mission: Enter the Prologue. Ensure the Protagonist survives the Inciting Incident.]
[Failure Consequence: Deletion of Existence.]
Elian stared at the floating book. It was insane. It was impossible. But the cold marble under his feet felt real, and the threat of deletion sent a primal shiver down his spine. He reached out, his hand trembling slightly, and grasped the spine of the book.
Immediately, the book snapped open. A blinding white light erupted from the pages, wrapping around Elian's arm and pulling him forward with the force of a hurricane. He didn't have time to scream as his body was deconstructed into sentences, paragraphs, and ink, dragging him forcefully into the narrative world.
Elian stepped forward into the blinding light, unaware that the story he was about to enter had already started to break.