EmpressNyx

“I Reincarnated into a Book I Never Wrote”

"This world was never supposed to exist.
I never wrote it.
And yet… it remembers me."

Arin Kael, a young aspiring novelist, dies before his first manuscript is ever completed. But death is not the end. He wakes up in a strange yet familiar world—a story he never published, never wrote down, but only imagined long ago. The landscapes, the characters, the rules of magic… all are born from the scattered fragments of his abandoned ideas.

There's only one problem:
He’s not the protagonist.
He’s not the author.
And the villain looks exactly like him.

With no memory of finishing this tale, Arin finds himself trapped inside a living book—one that evolves, rewrites itself, and knows his secrets. Joined by Veyra, a heroine who claims she was erased from his forgotten drafts, and Mira, a witch who speaks in quotes from his real-life journals, Arin must navigate a world where characters are self-aware, plots bend like paper, and reality obeys narrative logic.

But somewhere in the shadows, someone—or something—is still writing.

Who is the true author of this world?
Why was Arin brought back to a book he never wrote?
And when the final page turns…
will he still exist?

I Reincarnated into a Book I Never Wrote

The path to the Inkborne City was not drawn on any map, but written in metaphor—etched in verses scattered across grimoires and whispered by cursed winds. After the Reader's confrontation, something in the air around Arin and the others had shifted. A boundary had cracked. The very story they were in began trembling, as if something—someone—had started rewriting the spine of the world.

They traveled under a sky that looped like an unfinished sentence. Colors bled across clouds—crimson, obsidian, ultraviolet. The forest gave way to a desolate plateau where pages littered the ground like fallen leaves. Each one fluttered faintly, whispering with half-formed sentences.

The Inkborne City rose in the distance—its towers shaped like quills, rooftops of unbound books, and alleys that rearranged with every footstep. Lanterns flickered with letters instead of flames. In this city, everything ever written had the potential to come to life—if read aloud in the right voice.

Aika's eyes glinted with both awe and terror. "This place… it's alive."

Ren stepped warily forward. "And it remembers."

At the entrance stood two twin statues—one laughing, the other sobbing—made entirely of layered manuscripts. As the trio approached, a line shimmered across the air, floating in cursive:

"What is not written cannot enter."

Arin blinked. "Does that mean we—"

Before he finished, a man emerged from behind the gate, his coat stitched with quotes, and his right eye glowing with ink.

"You must be Arin, Aika, and Ren," the man said, bowing with theatrical flair. "I'm Silas Drahm, once a rebel scribe in the Domain of Readers. Now… I'm just the janitor of forgotten stories."

Within the heart of the city stood an ancient library sealed with time magic. Its door was a single, blackened tome. As Silas approached it, it unfolded like a lotus—pages blooming open in reverse.

"Only one of you can go in," he warned. "Only the one whose heart bleeds for a mother's truth."

Aika stepped forward, chest tightening. She didn't need to be told twice.

Inside, she found the smell of dried roses, old blood, and burnt pages. The shelves were silent, and every clock inside had frozen at 4:11—the time her mother vanished all those years ago.

There, on a pedestal, was a torn parchment. Not inked, but written in blood.

"To my daughter—Aika. They've rewritten your birth. They've hidden your origin. But remember: even stories can be re-storied… if you steal the pen."

Her breath caught. "She knew," she whispered. "She knew I'd come here."

Suddenly, the parchment curled and burst into flame, revealing beneath it a sigil — a mirror-shaped glyph with a burning quill.

Meanwhile, Ren had wandered into the alley of shifting memoirs, chasing a whisper only he could hear. It led him into the Mirror Maze of Identity, where each pane reflected a version of himself—some twisted, some better, others broken.

One version smiled too wide and whispered, "You think you're protecting her, but what if your love is the very thing that breaks her?"

Ren staggered back as a thousand mirrors rippled in laughter.

Arin stood atop a spiral staircase that seemed to loop into a sentence that never ended.

At the top, he found a locked desk—its drawer sealed with a wax stamp of an eye and pen.

As he reached out, a voice echoed:

"Would you rather be the writer… or the ending?"

But something inside him began to burn. Like a page catching flame—not in destruction, but in revealment.

Back outside the city, high above, hidden in clouds shaped like thought-bubbles, a Reader closed a book titled:

"The Story That Shouldn't Be."

He placed it on a shelf labeled 'UNSANCTIONED' and smiled.

"I suppose… it's time I wrote myself in."

Chapter 27: The Inkborne City