Ethan reached for the door, but the moment his foot crossed the threshold, the sun was snuffed out like a candle. The world didn't just darken; it transformed. The crisp morning air turned into a thick, oppressive night, drenched in a relentless downpour that Ethan couldn't wrap his mind around.

He stood paralyzed, his mind reeling from the impossibility of it, when a face materialized inches from his own.

"You are no Nathan," a deep, echoing voice vibrated through his bones before the figure vanished into the dark.

Panic flared, sharp and primal. Ethan bolted, his boots slamming against the wet pavement with a frantic, rhythmic desperation that echoed through the unnatural night. Clawing at his chest, he tried to find someone—anyone—who could help him make sense of the collapsing reality. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs felt like lead, pushing himself faster through the downpour. Exhausted and gasping for air, he searched the shadowed streets for a familiar face, any sign of life to ask for help, but as he ran forward, the world began to move backward at a sickening speed. He was a man running on a treadmill made of reality itself, stuck in place while the city blurred into a backwards smear. The momentum shifted violently, and Ethan was hurled backward, his body slamming against the brick wall of the building with a bone-jarring thud. He spat blood, a loud, painful moan escaping his throat as the world finally stopped its frantic retreat.

"How did you get the Source Script?" the voice hissed from his left, only to vanish before Ethan could turn his head.

Ethan murmured to himself, "Source Script? Draft?".

"How did you use its power?" it demanded from above Ethan, invisible and mocking.

Then, from his right, the voice returned, cold and biting: "You are not the right person for this. Give the book back to Nathan". The figure flickered into view; his face twisted in a psychotic mixture of rage and terror. "Oh no, no... you can't die yet. No, no, how will i face Nathan".

A sharp snap echoed with a heavy bass, and Ethan’s eyes snapped open.

He was in his room, the morning light pale and quiet, but the phantom pain in his chest was all too real. The realization hit him like a surge of cold electricity; he was repeating everything exactly the same. He had already felt the weight of the phone in his pocket. It hit him with the force of a tidal wave: he had to get out of the building. Quickly.

His survival instincts, forged in a childhood of violence and poverty, overrode his shock. Fear wasn't a choice; it was a reflex.

He moved toward the door, his breaths shallow and ragged, his hand hovering over the lock. He twisted it slowly, terrified that even a click would draw the nightmare back. The door creaked faintly, and he slipped into the hallway, locking it behind him with a metallic click that sent a shiver racing down his spine.

The hallway was eerily quiet, the faint hum of fluorescent lights buzzing like a warning in the distance. With a burst of adrenaline, Ethan bolted. He skipped steps, his feet barely touching the stairs, his heart pounding against his ribs like a drumbeat of pure desperation. The stairwell blurred, the emergency lights casting strange, elongated shadows that seemed to reach for his ankles. He didn't stop. He didn't look back.

He reached the ground floor and threw himself at the heavy street door, his hand outstretched for a freedom he now suspected was just another fractured mirror. But as the door swung open into the rain, he realized he wasn't alone.

"Stop running. You’re a pathetic sight to behold".

The voice was like a silver blade, cutting through the drumming rain. Ethan froze. He suddenly realized it was raining, the cold droplets stinging his skin as he recognized the voice from before. "Maybe it was not a déjà vu," he murmured to himself, the reality of the loop sinking in as the same tall, angular man stepped from the shadows of the alley. Draped in a coat far too heavy for the damp evening, the figure seemed to swallow the very light around him.

This was Edith Lysander.

He was not a man of flesh, but of ink and fury, a creature Ethan had sketched at nine years old to commit the violence he was too small to handle. Edith was the one who had "killed his father" a thousand times on the pages of his notebook, and now he was standing in the physical world, demanding his spotlight.

Ethan moved his eyes past Edith and recoiled in horror. Standing behind the tall man was a sea of faces he recognized—every misfit, every malevolent villain, and every forgotten character he had ever cast into "The Draft". Edith was leading them all. The world had become a chaotic landscape populated entirely by his own creations.

With a cry of agony, Ethan fell back, realizing he was even standing on the bodies of those he had imagined. The land itself was becoming a mass of his discarded fantasies, consuming him as they all clamoured for the spotlight he had unwittingly given them. Because he was not Nathan, he possessed no power to control the nightmare he had unleashed.

Ethan’s lungs felt as though they were filling with water, the shock leaving him unable to digest the incomprehensibility of his own creations standing before him. The line between his insanity and reality had shattered.

"I should have crushed you the moment I stepped off the page," Edith hissed, his obsidian eyes glinting with a cruelty that made Ethan’s heart thrum with dread. "You are but a fractured mirror of a man. A struggling writer who cowered because he was too afraid to face the very insanity he birthed".

Ethan tried to speak, but his legs were lead. He had given this monster purpose, and now it had come to claim him.

"Don’t mistake my presence for loyalty," Edith continued, gliding closer until the scent of old blood and rain filled Ethan's senses. "You are not the master of source script. You are not even Nathan. You are just the "shadow"—the weak, trembling hand that happened to hold the pen".

Edith leaned in, his face inches from Ethan’s, his obsidian eyes widening with a terrifying, clinical curiosity. He tilted his head at an unnatural angle, as if trying to catch the scent of a soul.

"You have the skin," Edith whispered, his voice vibrating with a deep, melodic cruelty. "You have the blood. You even have the rhythm of his heart".

His long, pale fingers reached out, hovering just a hair’s breadth from Ethan’s temple. A faint, golden spark jumped between them, and Edith recoiled as if burned, his expression twisting into a mask of disgusted realization.

"But you are hollow," Edith hissed, his voice echoing from several directions at once as he began to pace around Ethan in a blur of movement. "There is no mana in your body. No flow in your bones. You are but a shallow shadow of controller".

He stopped suddenly, his shadow stretching out across the wet pavement and beginning to move independently of his body, clawing at the stone.

"You are no Nathan," he declared, the words carrying the weight of a physical blow. "You are the trembling hand that held the pen while the true Master was left in shadows. A cosmic mistake. An accidental vessel".

Edith shoved the notebook into Ethan’s chest, the force knocking the wind from his lungs.

"I despise you," Edith whispered with a low, chilling chuckle. "But you are the brother of the girl. I have spent a decade guarding the girl you call sister, watching her wake to a truth you’re too small to see. She is the flow. She is true Nathan. And because you are her blood bound brother, I am bound to keep your heart beating—even if I’d much rather rip it out".

Before Ethan could understand this all, claw his way out of the stupor, a car screeched to a halt at the curb.

"Ethan! Get in!" Naomi screamed, her face a mask of frantic concern.