The Hollow World
Nathaniel’s breath came in short, shallow gasps.
The city around him—if it could even be called that—was unraveling at the edges. The smooth, perfect buildings seemed less solid now, their surfaces warping and shifting like reflections in disturbed water.
The sky—or lack of one—loomed overhead, an empty, gray nothingness that stretched into infinity.
And the man in the gray suit stood motionless, watching.
Nathaniel clenched his fists.
“You said this world is running out of things to copy,” he said, voice steady despite the rising panic beneath his skin. “Then what happens when there’s nothing left?”
The man tilted his head. The motion was unnatural, almost mechanical.
“Then the story ends,” he said simply. “No more pages. No more rewrites.”
Nathaniel’s grip tightened around the notebook.
The words inside it had been right—this world wasn’t complete. It was a copy of a copy of a copy, breaking down with each iteration.
But there had to be a way to stop the cycle.
He flipped through the pages, his eyes scanning the words frantically, searching for something—anything—that could explain how it had all started.
Then, near the very end, more ink bled onto the page, writing itself in real time.
“The cycle began with the First Word.” “Find it.”
Nathaniel swallowed.
He had been chasing the Final Word—the one that supposedly reset everything. But what if that was the wrong approach?
What if the answer wasn’t in how it ended—
But how it began?
The Glitch in Reality
Nathaniel snapped the notebook shut.
He had to go back.
Back to where this all started.
Back to the origin of the First Word.
But where was that?
His thoughts raced. If this was a corrupted version of reality, then the original world—the real world—had to exist somewhere beneath it, like a palimpsest, an old text buried under rewritten words.
But how did he reach it?
His pulse stuttered.
The man in the gray suit had stepped closer.
Too close.
Nathaniel hadn’t seen him move.
He swallowed hard. “You know what the First Word is, don’t you?”
The man smiled—but his face twitched.
For a fraction of a second, Nathaniel saw the glitch again.
A flicker of his own face.
Not a mirror. Not a reflection.
For a split second, he had been looking at himself.
Nathaniel took an instinctive step back.
“What are you?” he whispered.
The man’s smile froze.
And then—
The city around them shattered.
The Fractured Time Loop
Nathaniel tumbled backward.
Buildings melted into light. The streets dissolved. The sky cracked like shattered glass, splitting apart to reveal a gaping void.
And then—
He was falling.
No air, no gravity, just an infinite spiral downward into nothingness.
His mind spun.
Had he triggered the reset? Had he spoken something without realizing it?
The notebook was still clutched in his hand.
He forced his fingers to open it.
The pages were flipping wildly on their own, words writing and erasing themselves simultaneously.
Then—one sentence burned itself into existence.
“If you’re falling, it means you’re close.”
Nathaniel choked on his breath.
Close to what?
To the First Word? To the original world?
To the truth?
The wind howled around him. His body twisted in the weightless descent, tumbling through the remnants of a world that had already collapsed.
And then—
The fall stopped.
The Place Outside of Time
Nathaniel hit the ground hard, pain ripping through his body.
He gasped, rolling onto his back.
The air here was… thick. Heavy.
His surroundings were vast, endless white. A space with no walls, no sky.
No sound.
But there was something ahead of him.
Something waiting.
A pedestal.
And resting on it—
A single page.
Yellowed with age, edges curled, but pristine in the center.
Nathaniel’s heart pounded.
This was it.
The First Word.
He pushed himself up, limbs aching, and staggered toward it.
As he neared the pedestal, the words on the page became clear.
And Nathaniel froze.
Because the First Word wasn’t a word at all.
It was a name.
His name.
Not Nathaniel Graves.
Not Ethan Vaughn.
A name he didn’t recognize.
And yet—
It was his.
A cold dread wrapped around his chest.
The words on the page burned into his vision, rewriting themselves as he stared.
“You were the first.” “You spoke the First Word.” “You started the cycle.”
Nathaniel staggered back.
No.
No, that couldn’t be right.
But deep inside him, something cracked.
A memory buried beneath lifetimes of rewrites.
A voice that had once belonged to him.
A voice that had created all of this.
Nathaniel’s breath shook.
This wasn’t just about resetting the world.
This was about him.
He hadn’t been caught in the loop.
He had created it.
The Author of Destruction
The white expanse around him pulsed, as if responding to his realization. The air grew thicker, harder to breathe. The page on the pedestal trembled, its edges curling further inward.
“No,” Nathaniel whispered, but the denial felt hollow even to his own ears.
The name on the page—his true name—seemed to burn brighter, more insistent. A name that predated both Ethan Vaughn and Nathaniel Graves. A name from the original world, before the first reset, before the endless cycle of destruction and recreation.
“Show me,” he demanded, his voice echoing strangely in the dimensionless space. “Show me what happened.”
As if responding to his command, the whiteness rippled. The space around him warped, folded, transformed. Color bled into the emptiness—muted at first, then more vibrant, solidifying into shapes, structures, people.
A memory.
No—not a memory.
History.
The original history.
Nathaniel found himself standing in what appeared to be a laboratory. Advanced equipment lined the walls—sleek, sophisticated technology that felt both familiar and alien. Computer screens displayed complex equations, waveforms, dimensional models that hurt his eyes to look at directly.
And at the center of it all, a man.
Himself.
But not as Ethan Vaughn. Not as Nathaniel Graves.
As someone else. Someone original.
The First Author.
The man—tall, thin, with intense eyes that burned with purpose—moved with feverish energy, checking readings, adjusting parameters, his fingers flying across holographic interfaces.
Other scientists moved around him, their expressions anxious, concerned. Their words reached Nathaniel as if from a great distance, distorted and fragmented:
“—destabilizing the quantum field—” “—reconsider the implications of—” “—cannot predict the outcomes of—”
But the First Author ignored them, focused solely on his work. On the device taking shape at the center of the laboratory—a complex arrangement of technology Nathaniel couldn’t begin to comprehend.
“What is this?” Nathaniel whispered, though he knew the figures from the past couldn’t hear him. “What was I trying to do?”
As if in answer, the scene shifted. The laboratory remained, but the perspective changed. Now Nathaniel could see what was displayed on the main screen: a model of reality itself. Not just one universe, but multiple universes, arranged in a complex dimensional lattice.
And between them—gaps. Voids. Spaces that shouldn’t exist.
The First Author pointed to these spaces, his voice suddenly clear and present:
“The gaps are widening. The multiverse is fragmenting. In fifty years, the degradation will be irreversible. In a hundred, the collapse begins.”
One of his colleagues—a woman with a stern face and graying hair—shook her head. “Your solution is theoretical at best, catastrophic at worst. Creating a linguistic reset mechanism could cause more damage than it prevents.”
“It’s not just linguistic,” the First Author insisted. “It’s conceptual. Fundamental. A language that can rewrite reality at its most basic level. A way to reset damaged timelines, to prevent the collapse.”
“And what gives you the right to decide which timelines live and which die?” the woman demanded.
The First Author’s expression hardened. “Not me. The algorithm. It will determine the optimal configuration to prevent total collapse.”
“An algorithm you designed,” the woman countered. “Based on parameters you set.”
The First Author turned away. “The prototype is ready. The First Tongue has been encoded. All we need now is to speak the activation sequence.”
“Wait!” the woman said, alarm clear in her voice. “The simulations aren’t complete. We don’t know the full consequences.”
But the First Author had already turned to the central device. A small, book-sized object had materialized within it—a leather-bound manuscript, its cover embossed with symbols that shifted and moved as if alive.
The manuscript.
The origin point.
Nathaniel watched, helpless, as the First Author reached for it.
“Don’t,” he whispered, though he knew the past couldn’t be changed. “Don’t do it.”
But the First Author—his original self—opened the manuscript. And with clear, precise diction, he spoke the First Word:
“Azrael.”
A name. His name. The original name he had forgotten through countless iterations of reality.
The laboratory exploded into light. The scientists screamed. The fabric of reality itself seemed to tear apart, revealing the void beyond.
And then—
Reset.
The scene shifted again. A new world. A new reality. But something was wrong. Something was missing. Pieces of the original had failed to translate, to transfer.
And at the center of this new reality stood the First Author—but changed. Confused. His memories fragmented, his identity altered.
The first reset had transformed him. Made him forget what he had done.
Made him forget who he was.
The scene shifted again. Another reset. And another. Each time, the world became less complete. Each time, the First Author—now wearing a new face, a new name—found the manuscript again. Read from it again. Reset reality again.
An endless cycle he had created himself.
To save everything, he had broken everything.
The Truth Behind the Words
The visions faded, the white expanse returning. Nathaniel stood before the pedestal, trembling. The truth crushed down on him with the weight of countless destroyed realities.
He had done this.
All of it.
Not Ethan Vaughn. Not Nathaniel Graves. But the original—Azrael, the First Author.
He had created the manuscript as a reset mechanism to prevent the collapse of the multiverse. But instead of saving reality, he had trapped it in an endless loop of degradation.
Each reset had been meant as a correction, a healing. But the mechanism was flawed. Instead of repairing reality, it was slowly erasing it, piece by piece.
And he had been caught in his own trap, his identity fracturing across iterations, his memories lost and rewritten with each cycle.
“Now you understand,” came a voice from behind him.
Nathaniel turned.
The man in the gray suit stood there—but his form was different now. Less stable. More transparent. And through his fading outline, Nathaniel could see himself.
Not a glitch.
A revelation.
The man wasn’t just an echo of Nathaniel.
He was the residue of the First Author—of Azrael—fragments left behind after each reset, slowly accumulating awareness.
“You’re me,” Nathaniel breathed. “What’s left of the original me.”
The entity nodded, its form flickering. “What couldn’t be erased. What remained after each reset. The guilt. The memory. The responsibility.”
“But why show me now? After so many cycles?”
“Because this is the last iteration,” the entity said simply. “There’s almost nothing left to reset. The next cycle will be empty. The multiverse will collapse completely.”
Nathaniel’s mind raced. “What can I do? How do I stop it?”
“You can’t stop what you’ve already done,” the entity said, its voice fading. “But you can end it.”
“How?”
The entity gestured to the page on the pedestal. “Speak your true name. Reclaim your original identity. Accept responsibility for what you’ve done.”
“And then what happens?”
“Then the mechanism recognizes its creator. The loop closes. The cycle ends.”
Nathaniel stared at the name on the page—his original name. The word that had started it all.
“What happens to reality if I do this?” he asked. “What happens to everything that’s left?”
The entity’s form grew dimmer, more transparent. “I don’t know. Perhaps it stabilizes. Perhaps it ends. Either way, the degradation stops.”
Nathaniel approached the pedestal again, staring down at his true name. “And if I don’t? If I refuse?”
“Then the cycle continues one last time,” the entity said. “And the next reset will be to nothing. Absolute emptiness.”
The choice pressed down on Nathaniel like a physical weight. Accept responsibility for countless destroyed realities? Or allow one final, empty reset?
He reached out, his fingers hovering over the page.
Over his name.
His true identity.
“I created this,” he whispered. “I need to end it.”
And before doubt could take hold, he spoke the word that had begun everything:
“Azrael.”
The Memory That Rebuilds
The moment the name left his lips, Nathaniel felt something fundamental shift within him. Not just a change, but a restoration. Memories—countless memories from countless iterations—flooded back. Not just as Ethan Vaughn. Not just as Nathaniel Graves.
But as Azrael.
The First Author.
The creator of the manuscript.
The originator of the First Tongue.
The cycle didn’t reset this time. Instead, the white expanse around him began to fracture, revealing glimpses of other realities, other iterations—fragments of worlds that had been erased, compressed, forgotten.
And as he watched, these fragments began to recombine, restructuring themselves into something new.
Not a reset.
A reconstruction.
The entity—his echo, his remnant—smiled as it faded completely. “You’ve broken the loop,” it said, its voice barely a whisper. “Now rebuild what you destroyed.”
Nathaniel—no, Azrael—felt power coursing through him. The power of the First Tongue. The power to reshape reality. But this time, with full awareness of the consequences.
With full responsibility.
The white expanse collapsed entirely, revealing the void between realities—and within that void, the fragmented remains of countless iterations, waiting to be restructured.
Azrael understood now. The manuscript had never been meant as a reset button. It had been designed as a correction mechanism. A way to stabilize damaged timelines, to prevent collapse.
But he had used it wrong. Spoken the words without understanding their true purpose.
Now, with his original identity restored, with the full knowledge of what he had done, he could use the First Tongue as it was meant to be used.
Not to destroy and recreate.
But to heal. To restore. To stabilize.
He reached out, drawing the fragments toward him, feeling their structure, their essence. Pieces of realities that had once been whole. People who had once existed. Lives that had once mattered.
Including Adam. Including Helena Kovač. Including all those who had been erased through his actions.
With the power of the First Tongue—now properly channeled, properly controlled—he began to speak. Not the phrases that reset reality, but new words. Words of restoration. Words of healing.
The fragments responded, coalescing, restructuring, finding their proper places in a new configuration of reality.
Not perfect. Not complete. Too much had been lost for that.
But stable. Enduring. A reality that wouldn’t degrade with each iteration, that wouldn’t collapse under its own entropy.
A reality that could continue.
The World Rewritten
Prague, Czech Republic – Present Day
Ethan Vaughn adjusted his glasses, frowning at the ancient manuscript displayed in the museum case. Something about it seemed familiar, though he couldn’t quite place why.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” came a voice beside him.
Ethan turned to find a tall man with intense eyes studying him carefully.
“The Vltava Manuscript,” the man continued. “One of the most mysterious texts ever discovered. Scholars have spent decades trying to decipher it.”
“What’s known about it?” Ethan asked, strangely drawn to the leather-bound book behind the glass.
“Very little,” the man admitted. “It was found in the ruins of the Vltava Monastery in 1897. The language is unlike any known to linguists. Some believe it’s a hoax. Others think it might be the only surviving example of a pre-proto-Indo-European writing system.”
Ethan leaned closer, studying the symbols that seemed to shift slightly when he wasn’t looking directly at them. “Has anyone ever translated it?”
The man smiled—a sad, knowing smile. “No. And perhaps that’s for the best.”
Something in his tone made Ethan look up sharply. “Why do you say that?”
“Some things aren’t meant to be read,” the man said simply. “Some words aren’t meant to be spoken.”
An odd sense of déjà vu washed over Ethan. He had never met this man before, yet something about him seemed deeply familiar.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
The man’s smile deepened. “In another life, perhaps.”
Before Ethan could respond, the man glanced at his watch. “I should go. But remember, Professor Vaughn—not all mysteries need solving.”
He turned and walked away, moving with purpose through the crowded museum hall.
Ethan blinked, a strange disquiet settling over him. He hadn’t told the man he was a professor. Hadn’t introduced himself at all.
Yet the stranger had known his name.
He turned back to the manuscript, studying its ancient symbols once more. For a moment—just the briefest instant—he thought he could understand them. Thought he could hear them whispering to him, calling him by another name.
A name that wasn’t Ethan Vaughn.
But then the moment passed, and they were just symbols again. Unknown. Undeciphered. Silent.
And perhaps, Ethan thought as he turned away, that was for the best.
Outside the museum, Azrael paused, looking back at the building. At the man who had once been him—who was still him, in a way, though with no memory of the cycles, the resets, the destruction.
In this reconstructed reality, Ethan Vaughn was just a linguistics professor with a special interest in ancient writing systems. Helena Kovač was just an archaeologist working on the Vltava excavation. Adam Wells was just Ethan’s colleague and friend.
None of them remembered the manuscript’s true power. None of them remembered the countless iterations of reality that had been erased and rewritten.
And that was the final mercy Azrael had granted them—the gift of ignorance. Of normalcy.
He alone remembered. He alone carried the burden of knowledge, of responsibility.
The manuscript in the museum was a replica—convincing but powerless. The real First Tongue, the true manuscript, had been unmade when Azrael closed the loop, when he reclaimed his original identity.
But its echo remained—in him. In the words he still carried within his mind. In the knowledge of what reality had been, what it could have become.
As he walked away from the museum, from Ethan, from his former self, Azrael felt the weight of that knowledge. The responsibility of being the only one who remembered the truth.
And the determination to ensure that the cycle never began again.
Sometimes, the greatest power lies not in speaking words, but in choosing to remain silent.
Sometimes, the most important stories are the ones we choose not to tell.
Sometimes, the true hero is the one who walks away, carrying the burden of a catastrophe that never happened—and now, never would.