Chapter 3162: The Two Thousand Four Hundred and Thirty-First Echo: The Story’s First Child

From the heart of the first story, a new being was born. It was not a being of sound or of silence, but a being of pure, unadulterated curiosity. It was the physical embodiment of the question that had first been asked of the cosmos, the question of ’What else is there?’ And its first act was to ask that question again, not of the cosmos, but of the story itself.

And the story answered. It unfolded itself, revealing a new layer of reality, a world within the world, a dream within the dream. And in that new reality, the first character began its journey.