The Shattering
Back in Hiroshi's world, everything seemed normal.
The dull hum of fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Chalk scratched rhythmically against the blackboard. The faint ticking of the clock clawed its way through the silence. A perfectly ordinary afternoon—the kind where time drags like a corpse across the floor.
Hiroshi sat at his desk, one hand supporting his chin, the other idly tapping a pencil against his notebook. The teacher's voice floated through the air, blurred and meaningless, just background noise in a life lived on autopilot.
His eyes kept drifting, however, to something that didn't belong.
A book.
It lay on his backpack, thick and ancient, bound in worn leather the color of dried blood. He didn't remember placing it there. In fact… he didn't remember packing it at all.
A strange déjà vu gnawed at the edge of his thoughts. A creeping sensation that he'd lived this moment before. That this ordinary day would soon twist into something horribly wrong.
This has happened before, he thought, or something like it. And it didn't end well.
Instinct urged him to check the bag.
He unzipped it—empty. No book inside.
Frowning, he looked up—and froze.
The book was now sitting on his desk.
Right in front of him.
But he hadn't put it there.
His heart thumped. Cold fingers of dread gripped his spine.
How did it get there?
He looked around, expecting someone—anyone—to comment. But the classroom remained undisturbed. His classmates stared at the board or scribbled notes, oblivious to the arcane tome now practically glowing on his desk.
No one seemed to notice. No one even glanced his way.
That unsettled him more than anything else.
The book looked impossibly old. Its cracked leather cover flaked at the edges, and its spine had been stitched together by something that looked too much like sinew. A single symbol was burned into its cover—a jagged, inhuman eye surrounded by swirling lines. As Hiroshi stared, those lines seemed to move, pulse, even breathe—as if the book itself were alive and aware of being watched.
Is that… normal?
Of course not. But some part of his brain, dulled by fear, almost accepted it.
Then he heard it.
A voice—no, a whisper—that wasn't human.
It coiled into his mind like smoke through a keyhole.
Soft at first, a barely audible murmur brushing against his thoughts.
Then louder.
Then louder.
A chorus of whispers, not in his ears, but inside his skull. Like insects crawling beneath his skin, speaking in a language that made his teeth ache.
And then—a single word broke through:
"Open it."
Hiroshi clutched his head, gasping. The sound was unbearable, like nails scraping against his soul. He glanced around for help—but something was wrong.
Everyone was frozen.
Not just still—but motionless. Like statues.
Time itself had stopped.
Even more horrifying—when he leaned toward the girl sitting beside him, her face was gone. Smooth, blank flesh stretched over where eyes, nose, and mouth should have been. A hollow, human-shaped void.
He stumbled back, horrified, heart pounding in his chest like a war drum.
More faceless classmates surrounded him, all in perfect stillness. The sound of chalk on the board continued, echoing from the front of the room.
The teacher.
Still speaking.
Still writing.
The only one moving—or so Hiroshi thought.
But when he looked up, he wished he hadn't.
The teacher's hand was twitching erratically. His shoulders jerked with unnatural spasms, like a puppet on tangled strings. His voice droned on, monotone and emotionless.
Then—he stopped.
And turned.
His eyes met Hiroshi's.
Bloodshot.
Unblinking.
His lips curled into a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
And then—
His skin split open.
Not like an injury, but like a shell cracking from the inside. Flesh peeled back in layers. His clothes tore apart as something underneath pushed its way out. Hiroshi watched, frozen in horror, as black wings erupted from the teacher's back, slick and glistening like tar.
Bones snapped. His jaw dislocated with a sickening crack, and blood spilled freely from his eyes, ears, and mouth.
Still, the teacher smiled.
Still, he stared.
And then—he spoke.
But not with his mouth.
The voice came from the book.
It wasn't a sound, but a feeling. A presence. A thought drilled into Hiroshi's soul like a spike of ice.
"The Game of the Bookkeeper has begun.""What will be your next move?"
The book trembled beneath his fingertips.
He hadn't realized he was touching it.
The instant his skin met the surface, the world fractured.
Not metaphorically—literally.
The air cracked like glass under pressure.
Lines spiderwebbed across the space around him. Color bled from the walls. The fluorescent lights exploded in a storm of sparks. Reality peeled away in jagged shards. Desks dissolved into fog. Chairs bent and screamed as they were swallowed by shadows.
A black tidal wave surged toward him from every direction, pulling everything into itself.
The chalkboard split open, revealing a swirling abyss, filled with reaching tendrils made of smoke and teeth and hands and unmade things.
Hiroshi tried to run. But the ground was gone.
There was no ground.
There was only the book, still glowing with that unholy, breathing symbol.
He screamed.
And the void screamed back.
The Rules Are Absolute
Hiroshi's pulse thundered in his ears.
The scream had died in his throat. The world around him no longer resembled anything close to reality.
The classroom was gone.
The sky was gone.
Everything was gone.
In its place stood an impossible realm—a void so vast it seemed to stretch in every direction, a horizonless space painted in muted blacks and deep indigos. No sun. No stars. Just coldness. Silence.
And books.
Thousands—millions—lined spiraling towers that clawed their way upward into a sky that did not exist. The shelves twisted like grotesque trees, gnarled and wrong, their tomes bound in leather, flesh, metal, and things that breathed when he looked too closely.
The floor beneath his feet pulsed with life, or something that pretended to be. A cracked marble surface spread out like the skin of a dying god, veins of dull crimson glowing faintly beneath its surface. With each pulse, Hiroshi felt it whisper into his bones.
You don't belong here.
The atmosphere was wet and heavy. Not with moisture, but presence. The sense of being watched—not by a single thing, but by everything.
Then—
There it was.
Floating just ahead of him.
The book.
The same cursed thing that had shattered his world.
It hovered in the air, gently spinning. Its pages flapped violently, tossed by a wind that didn't exist. They turned faster and faster until they abruptly stopped, landing on a single blank page.
And then, ink began to bleed through the parchment like a wound opening.
First one line.
Then another.
Each word twisted onto the paper in sharp, deliberate strokes, as if carved instead of written.
Welcome, Player.The Game has begun.The Rules are Absolute.
Hiroshi took a step back.
Something was deeply, violently wrong here.
His breaths came in sharp gasps, each inhale biting at his lungs like frost.
He glanced around, looking for an exit, a door, anything—but the shelves continued in every direction, infinitely tall and maddeningly twisted. There was no ceiling. No floor. Just… this.
His gaze was dragged back to the book, now glowing faintly, a pale green light oozing from its spine.
He couldn't help himself.
He reached out.
And the moment his fingers brushed its surface—
PAIN.
A searing, mind-ripping agony pierced his skull. His vision exploded into white.
And then came the visions.
A city drowning in shadows, its towers crumbling into black oceans of teeth.A sky with no stars—only watching eyes, blinking in and out of existence.A cloaked figure standing in a throne made of bones—The Harbinger, faceless, surrounded by a swirling storm of broken time.A child screaming in reverse.A mirror reflecting nothing.
The world below—it wasn't just darkness. It was alive. And it was hungry.
Reaching. Clawing. Waiting to pull reality down with it.
Hiroshi fell to his knees, choking on the sheer pressure of the knowledge forced into him.
He tried to scream, but the air had been ripped from his lungs.
Then—
An icy breath slid past his ear.
Close.
Too close.
"Your move, player."
The whisper didn't come from behind him, but inside him. Curling through the hollow spaces of his mind, wrapping around his spine like a serpent.
Hiroshi spun around—nothing.
But then, one of the shelves cracked open. Not opened—cracked. Like ribs splintering apart.
From the rupture, a figure emerged.
Not walking. Not floating.
Dripping.
A silhouette made of ink and twitching limbs, its body filled with symbols that constantly rearranged themselves—arcane letters, forgotten numbers, warnings in languages never meant to be spoken aloud.
Its face was a spinning mass of pages, flipping violently, stopping only long enough for a single, shifting eye to blink through them.
It stared at him.
It knew him.
"The Bookkeeper watches. The rules must be followed."
The voice was layered—male, female, child, ancient—echoing all at once like a broken choir.
A new page flipped in the floating book.
More words bled through:
You have entered the First Layer.The Archive of Lost Fates.Do not lie.Do not run.Do not look behind you unless invited.
Hiroshi's eyes locked on the last rule.
Do not look behind you unless invited.
Suddenly, every nerve in his body screamed.
There was something behind him.
Breathing. Smiling.
Close enough to touch.
But he wasn't invited.
He clenched his jaw, forcing himself not to move.
Then the Bookkeeper's many mouths whispered again.
"You may ask one question… and take one action."
Time had frozen again.
Hiroshi's fingers trembled as he reached toward the book, unsure of what he'd even ask—what move he could possibly make in a game he didn't know the rules for.
His heartbeat echoed louder than thunder.
Behind him—something laughed.
Not out of humor.
But hunger.
The Opponent
Hiroshi staggered backward, pain lancing through his skull like a hot needle behind the eyes. His vision rippled—no longer just blurred, but broken, as if he were peering through a cracked mirror at a world that didn't want to be seen.
He fell to his knees.
Clutching his head. Trembling. Drowning in pressure.
And yet… a thought. Clear. Singular. Still breathing.
"I still need to ask one question."
His own voice felt distant in his head, like it was echoing from inside a cave submerged in ink.
"And I have to make one choice."
Words that came from nowhere. No context. No speaker.
But they pulsed in his mind with authority.
A rule. A law. A truth.
He wasn't alone.
Something was behind him.
He could feel it.
It wasn't a presence—it was a weight. A cold, vast gravity pressing down on the back of his skull like a hand made of ice and needles.
It was watching.
But he couldn't turn around. He knew—deep in his marrow—that to look would be to invite it in.
A memory that didn't belong to him surfaced:
"Do not look behind you unless invited."
The sentence wasn't on the page. It wasn't spoken aloud.
It was simply... part of the world now.
Sweat rolled down Hiroshi's temple.
The thing behind him whispered—not with words, but with silence too loud to ignore. The kind that made your ears bleed from the pressure of what wasn't being said.
His mouth trembled open.
"What… is this game?" he whispered."And how… how do I end it?"
The air changed.
Like reality inhaled.
A sound broke the silence.
Clap.Clap.Clap.
Deliberate. Mocking.
Slow.
Each clap sent a wave of nausea through the void, as if the very concept of rhythm had been defiled.
Hiroshi looked up.
From the spaces between towering shelves—where no paths had been before—a figure emerged.
Tall. Thin. Wrong.
Its proportions were almost correct, but every part of it was off by one horrific degree.
Its arms reached too low, its knees bent outward and inward, like it was designed from memory by someone who had only seen a human once, through a shattered mirror.
Its suit was tailored—elegant even—but blacker than the shadows it stepped from. It didn't reflect light. It swallowed it.
And its head…
Tilted. Crooked. Watching.
From no visible eyes.
Its face was a mask of pitch. Except for one thing.
The grin.
That hideous, jagged, endless grin.
A rictus tear through shadowed flesh, full of too many teeth, too many shapes, some of which didn't belong in mouths at all.
It clapped one final time.
Then stilled.
Hiroshi's breath froze in his chest.
His instincts screamed. Run. Scream. Tear out your own eyes if you have to.
But his body disobeyed. Every nerve in his legs was iced. His spine stiffened like iron.
You are not allowed to flee on your first encounter.
Another rule. Where were they coming from?
The figure leaned slightly forward. Its joints creaked.
"Well, well, well…"
Its voice was the sound of a razor dragged across porcelain. Smooth, sharp, and wrong.
"A fresh player."
A chuckle. Dry and dusty, like something hadn't laughed in centuries and was trying to remember how.
"How very… entertaining."
Hiroshi said nothing.
Could say nothing.
The thing took a step closer. The ground cracked beneath its foot, even though it was barely touching the marble-like floor.
The shadows behind it writhed. They followed it like hounds.
It tilted its head further—now upside-down entirely, neck still unbroken, skin stretching tight across its throat.
"I wonder…""Will you survive long enough… to turn the page?"
Its grin widened.
The shadows screamed—quietly.
Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the figure retreated.
Its body twisted in on itself like film melting in reverse. Its limbs folded backward. Its silhouette shrank into the shelves.
It laughed as it vanished.
That laugh.
A child's giggle through static.A mother's sob twisted backward.A funeral dirge played at a carnival.
It clung to Hiroshi's ears like mold.
The void went still again.
But the feeling—that something was still behind him—never left.
He remained frozen.
Afraid to move.
Afraid to speak.
Afraid to turn the page.
Then, without warning, the book floated back into view.
Its cover had changed.
Now, it bore two names etched in burning red:
PLAYER: HiroshiOPPONENT: [REDACTED]
A line of text began to write itself in real time across the first blank page.
The game has begun.You asked the question.Now, choose your action.
One Action. One Rule. One Chance.
From behind him, the whisper returned.
Soft.
Silk-wrapped venom.
"Choose wisely, player…"
No Escape
Hiroshi clenched the book tighter, his knuckles white, trembling with adrenaline and dread. His fingers ached, but he refused to let go. Somewhere deep inside him, an animal instinct screamed that this cursed object—the source of his torment—was also the only reason he was still alive.
At least… that's what he hoped.
His breath came in short, broken gasps. Sweat matted his hair to his forehead, his body trembling under the weight of fear. His mind spun in circles.
He knew the rules.He didn't know how to play.And he didn't know the cost of losing.
But he was certain of one thing:That thing—the figure with the jagged grin and impossible limbs—hadn't vanished.
It had retreated.
It was still watching him.Waiting.Hungry.
There was no escape.
"What do you want from me?" Hiroshi rasped, clutching the book to his chest like a shield. His voice was barely audible—like the last breath of a dying man.
The book gave no response. No page flipped. No glowing sigil or cryptic whisper.
Just silence.
Until—
From the shadows, the voice returned. Smooth. Mocking. Cold.
"Oh, dear player," it crooned, almost tenderly. "You already know."
Its words slithered around his ears like smoke through a cracked window.
"You are already dead. You just haven't caught up to it yet."
Then, the air turned electric.
The book in Hiroshi's grip began to tremble.
Pages flapped furiously like wings caught in a storm, their edges slicing the air with paper-thin screams.
Ink bled across the open page, dripping like fresh blood.
And then—a sentence formed, jagged and alive:
Turn the page, or be erased.
Hiroshi's pulse roared in his ears. His hands were shaking so badly he almost dropped the book.
He didn't understand the rules.He didn't understand the enemy.But he understood the ultimatum.
He had no choice.
He reached forward—and with a single, shivering breath—turned the page.
The world convulsed.
There was no warning.
Just a sound like bone snapping in a god's mouth.
CRACK.
The air split apart, screaming as if it were alive.
The infinite bookshelves twisted, groaning in agony. They bent into impossible shapes, spiraling upward, then downward, then sideways—folding in on themselves like paper caught in a black hole.
Dust erupted from the cracks in the ground. The cracked marble floor beneath Hiroshi's feet splintered, releasing a foul stench—like burning ink and rotting meat.
The figure's laugh echoed through the void.
Shrill. Guttural. Triumphant.
"Ahhh… so you choose to play. Wonderful."
From the far walls, shadows spilled forward like a living flood. They rushed toward Hiroshi—spiraling, writhing, eager.
He stumbled backward, the book pressed to his chest like a cross before a demon.
And then—it appeared.
The Grinning One.
No longer just watching. No longer lurking.
It stepped out of the shadows right in front of him, its body a marionette of nightmares.
And now…
It had changed.
Its arms were no longer arms.
They had become weapons.
Sleek, curved blades extended from its wrists—bone-forged scythes, jagged and serrated, glinting in the sickly light.
They shimmered with a color Hiroshi couldn't describe—the color of bleeding thoughts.
The figure crouched, like a predator ready to pounce.
It tilted its head again—snapping its neck so violently Hiroshi heard the crack.
Its grin widened.
It leaped.
A blur of black. A shriek of air.
The world slowed.
This is it, Hiroshi thought. I'm going to die here.
He fell backward, heart stopping, throat clenched in a scream that never came.
The blades were inches from his face.
And then—the book moved.
It floated from his grip of its own will.
A shriek of pages.
Light erupted.
The book burst into a storm of symbols and letters, surrounding Hiroshi in a cocoon of flickering text and glowing ink. The figure's claws scraped against the barrier of words—and hissed.
It howled in frustration, voice twisted into an impossible screech, the sound of a child crying inside a static-filled television.
And then—Hiroshi vanished.
He didn't move.He didn't run.He was taken.
Ripped from the void like a sentence torn out of a page.
The world blurred around him. The darkness swirled like paint in water.
He fell.
Endlessly.
Through corridors of light and memory, of screams and forgotten names.
Through broken laws and whispered truths.
He saw glimpses—a thousand eyes, a thousand clocks, all ticking down to something he couldn't see.
He was being dragged.
Through dimensions that didn't fit together. Through time that had no start or end.
And then—he stopped.
The momentum ceased like a snapped string. His body slammed against nothing, gasping for air.
He floated. Alone.
The last thing he heard before darkness took him—
A voice, silk and venom, trailing like a kiss on the back of his neck.
"Let the Bookkeeper's Game begin…"
A pause.
"And remember, little player… you can't win."
Black. Silent. Cold.
Then, a new page opened.
Hiroshi's eyes fluttered open in a new space. A room, circular and windowless, carved entirely from ivory stone and ink-stained walls. Symbols pulsed across the floor in a circle. Dozens of books hovered midair, each watching him like eyes.
The book hovered in front of him once more, and a new line was scrawled across its page:
Chapter One: Trial of the False Player.
Survive the first night.
Do not sleep.Do not speak.Do not forget who you are.
And far, far away, somewhere in the shadows, the grin widened once more.