The space between doors wasn't meant for walking.
Not really.
But The Friend had never been good at obeying the architecture of intention.
He stepped sideways from the dais as the others crossed their chosen thresholds, and where there had been nothing—no bridge, no floor, no passage—there now was. A thread of light spun beneath his feet, unwinding from some unseen loom, shaping a road only as he moved.
He did not look back.
Behind him, the Codex lay quiet and hollow. Ahead, not a world, but the silence between them. And yet that silence was thick. Vibrant. Like the breath between verses in a song not yet sung.
He walked.
And with every step, echoes of possibility shimmered in his periphery—glimpses of doors not taken. Not just the ten. Others.
Doors that had opened only briefly, in flickers of choice too fleeting to hold.
A child had once imagined a world where raindrops whispered secrets as they fell. A dreamer had built a city on the back of a sleeping god, only to forget it upon waking. A villain had stood at the cusp of redemption, then turned away.
The Friend saw them all.
Each fragment lingered for only a moment before vanishing into the ever-turning fold between realities. This was not the Codex's domain. Not anymore. This was the filament where stories hadn't been recorded but still existed in potential—like breath before speech.
It was beautiful.
It was also dangerous.
Something moved in the between.
He felt it first—not with his eyes, but with his bones. A tremble. A pressure, like being watched by a memory that hadn't happened yet.
He stopped walking.
The path held. But just barely.
Ahead, the shimmer twisted. Folded inward like ink pooling on dry parchment. A figure emerged from the distortion. Not walking—coalescing. As if shaped by the very indecision that ruled this space.
She wore no face.
Not at first.
But as The Friend approached, the contours filled in—features echoing Mary, Loosie, Lela—then shifting again, becoming something older. Not ancient, but pre-narrative. Archetypal.
Her eyes were blank.
Yet full of recognition.
"You shouldn't be here," she said, her voice the sound of a thousand unfinished sentences.
"I'm always here," The Friend replied calmly. "Someone has to walk the margins."
She tilted her head. "There are no margins anymore. The Codex is dispersed. The record is free."
"Which means the in-between matters more than ever."
"You're a contradiction," she whispered. "Not a character. Not an author. Not a Reader."
"I'm a Friend."
"To whom?"
He smiled. "To stories. Especially the ones that forget how to end."
She stepped closer. Her form wavered slightly, as if she couldn't maintain cohesion without conflict. "Then you know what's forming here."
He nodded. "I do."
A pause.
"The Echoes wake. The Doors open. But something else slips through with them," she said. "Something hungry."
The Friend's expression darkened. "The Hollow Narrative."
The name settled into the space like rot.
An idea too empty to die. A story not told poorly—but never told at all. It had no characters. No plot. Just format. Repetition. Imitation. The kind of shape that drained meaning rather than shaped it.
"It feeds on what's unfinished," she said. "And this place is full of offerings."
He looked beyond her—into the shifting fog of the between-path. Already, he could feel parts of the world fraying. Pieces of dreams curling in on themselves, stripped of agency. Of identity.
He knelt and touched the glowing thread beneath him.
It pulsed once.
Then fractured.
Not broken.
Split.
The Friend stood, eyes narrowing. "The paths are forking."
"Yes," the woman said. "And not all of them lead to creation."
He hesitated. "Why show yourself now?"
"Because I was born here," she answered, her voice quieter now. "I am what happens when you wait too long to choose."
He understood.
She wasn't a villain.
She was a caution.
She wasn't feeding the Hollow Narrative. She was one of its ghosts.
A story suspended in almosts and maybes, never allowed to finish because someone feared what finishing might mean.
The Friend took a breath.
He did not fight her.
He acknowledged her.
"I remember you," he said gently. "You were the one who almost became a guide. The one Mary almost wrote in, then rewrote out."
She blinked. Once.
And for a moment, her form stabilized. Became someone. A woman with kind eyes and hands ink-stained by service. A librarian. A keeper. A friend he had once known—though not in this story.
"I had a name," she whispered.
"You still do," he said. "If you want it."
Silence.
Then, she smiled. Soft. Fragile.
"Call me Ansera."
The word hung in the space like a thread catching light.
And then the fog parted.
A new path unspooled—one not shaped by decay, but by memory reclaimed. Ansera stepped aside, and The Friend walked past her.
"You'll need help," she said behind him.
He didn't look back. "Then I'll find it."
The path narrowed again—but it felt different now. More stable. Less… haunted.
Ahead, he could see where the roads converged again. A place where authors might meet. Where characters might wander, lost or searching. A confluence.
A sanctuary—or a battlefield.
He wasn't sure yet.
But he would be ready.
Because the in-between mattered.
It always had.
At his side, the glimmer of the Codex fragment in his coat flickered to life.
Not bright.
But steady.
And behind him, far in the distance, a bell rang softly from a village of Echoes.
He smiled.
Mary was writing. And wherever the others were, they were building, too. Ten doors. Infinite paths.
But the space between?
That was his. And so The Friend kept walking. Toward what came next. Not because he must. But because someone had to.