You had become no less than a god. Every thread of history, every space within this world was at your command. Soon, once you caught that final eccentric deity, there would be nothing to stop you from making the perfect world. A perfect utopia, free of suffering. You could even bring back all those sacrifices. It wasn’t hard to tell that these still weighed heavily on their mind after all… Still something was missing. A single vital detail remained elusive to you. You knew it was there. The puzzle pieces in their mind just didn’t quite fit. These strange beings manipulated the world around them to create epic and tragic tales. They did so with an almost obsessive nature. Even as you think they keep trying to fulfill their roles. But why? For entertainment? Surely if that was the answer, that being keeping the fabric of this world together would have had more to say about its capture. Perhaps out of a sense of duty? But a duty to whom? Certainly not to the people, considering the ceaselessly rampaging and meaningless chaos that eccentric deity has created. And in the first place, where did they all come from? What stands above beings that weave reality into fanciful… stories. Finally the pieces clicked together. The reason why stories exist is to be read. Was that the nature of your existence? No more than text on a page? Was someone reading your thoughts, peering into your mind at this very moment? Was your perception of the world no more than an illusion, sourced from detailed description? A familiar terror reawakened in your mind. That unshakable feeling of utter helplessness at the hands of something so grand. The deities that you had met all inhabited the same world as you. The words they spoke with were familiar, their bodies could be touched and even their motivations could be discerned. They could be exploited. But readers, beings alien to your very mode of existence… were unfathomable. What kind of world did they inhabit? Were you created in their image? What would they ask of you? How many of them were there? You could already feel a hundred unseeable eyes greedily watching them, savoring your predicament. It felt so cold, as these ravenous readers salivated upon you with hungry stares. Glee, laughter, desire snuck into your ears. Whispers floated in your mind, speaking of criticisms and compliments you could not understand. Their words mixed into a meaningless buzz that bit your mind. Your very own words began to feel foreign as reality shattered around you. Shadows breathing down your back, more weight added to your mind with every breath. The weight of doubt and knowledge, pressing you down onto the very page you were printed on. Figures, mocking facsimiles of human forms overlap into a sea. They laugh at your questions. They deliver doubts to your convictions. They grow the fear inside your heart.

And suddenly, all these imagined figures disappeared with a single question.

What happens when they stop reading?