The Unwritten Legend

"You fear monsters. But what you should fear more… are the stories erased to create them."—Excerpt from System Blackfile A-09: Project Null

The Vault trembled.

The Authorborn Codex, once glowing steadily with the names of the newly awakened, flickered violently. Letters twisted. Lines blurred. One name turned to static.

Cassian's eyes widened. "We've been traced."

Vyre stepped forward. Her face was pale, lips pressed tightly. She recognized the distortion immediately.

"They've sent a Null Chapter."

In the oldest sections of the System Core—beneath even the Redraft engine—there was a vault sealed with black glyphs and contradiction loops. It was never meant to open. Not unless the Canon was at risk of fragmentation beyond recovery.

And now, that vault cracked.

From it, something stepped out.

Not a person. Not a character.A concept rejected before it could be defined.

A Null Entity.

Its presence bent the world around it. Grass lost its color. Dialogue ceased mid-sentence. The narrative paused, unsure how to describe it.

No name. No backstory. No genre.

Only a command: DELETE THE UNWRITTEN.

I. Inkroot – Warning Signs

Kairo slammed his fist on the table. "How did it find us?"

Aria checked the perimeter scripts. "It didn't. It didn't need to. It's tracking possibility bleed. Every awakened Authorborn creates a ripple."

Cassian nodded. "And we've awakened too many. Too fast."

"Then we slow down," Toma said. "Regroup."

"We can't," Vyre said softly. "The Null Chapter isn't bound by story logic. It can appear anywhere contradiction exists. And this entire rebellion is one giant contradiction."

Kairo turned toward Vyre. "Then how do we stop it?"

Vyre didn't answer immediately.

Then:

"You don't. You survive it."

II. Null Entry – Chapterfall Ruins

It arrived in silence.

No flash. No boom. Just... a sudden absence.

Roan, the recently awakened soldier, stood at the edge of the ruined battlefield, sensing something wrong. The air no longer moved. The birds weren't singing. The world had forgotten how to breathe.

Then, it stepped through the air.

Tall. Vague. Limbs of blank space stitched by red editor's lines. Its head was a floating rejection stamp. In its hands: a weapon shaped like a crossed-out quill.

Roan reached for his sword.

The Null Entity raised a finger.

The sword disappeared.

No explosion. No sound. Just—never written.

III. The Vault's Plan

"We need a name," Cassian said, his hand moving quickly across the paper. "Something to anchor it. Without a name, the Null exists outside context. We give it a story, we give it boundaries."

"Names don't work on it," Vyre snapped. "It predates narrative. It's the ghost of a plot that was never supposed to be."

Toma's eyes lit up. "Then we don't name it. We draft it."

Everyone stared.

"We force it into a story," she explained. "Trap it inside a tale with beginning, middle, and end. Lock it in causality."

"You want to write a prison?" Aria asked.

"Exactly," Cassian said. "But we'll need inkroot essence. And someone willing to bind the story."

Kairo stepped forward.

"I'll do it."

Vyre narrowed her eyes. "You understand what that means, right? You won't just write the story. You'll become part of it. A narrator."

"If it means stopping that thing—" Kairo looked around at them, his team, his family. "I'll do it."

IV. The Inktrap

They built it in minutes.

The Vault's core shifted, reshaping into a circle of memory glyphs, each stolen from an unfinished tale. At the center, Kairo stood with a blank scroll hovering before him.

The Null was coming.

They could feel it. Dialogue boxes froze. Music notes from background scores started to unravel. Cassian's glasses cracked—in a memory, not in real time.

Kairo raised his voice.

"Let there be a story—of an entity that could not exist, and the man who refused to let it end his chapter."

The Null arrived.

It stepped into the circle.

The scroll trembled.

Kairo began to write.

"Once, there was a void given purpose—"

The Null hissed. Words around it shattered.

"—but the moment it was seen, it could no longer unsee itself."

The Vault groaned.

The Null lashed out.

Aria held the barrier firm. Cassian poured inkroot into the glyphs. Toma bled onto the page.

Kairo kept writing.

"And so it was given a name—not by choice, but by need: Remnarr."

The Null screamed.

Not sound—deletion. Entire paragraphs evaporated.

"And Remnarr was no longer nothing. Remnarr was a beginning."

And in that moment—

The Null paused.

Bound.

Staring at Kairo, eyes glowing red.

And whispered, for the first time:

"...who wrote me?"