Transcript Title: "What I saw before I went blind"
Format: Transcribed cassette tape, found buried in a box labeled DO NOT HEAR IT
Date Recovered: [REDACTED]
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[TAPE START — AUDIO STATIC — 00:00]
"If you're hearing this, then I've already forgotten what light looks like.
But I remember what the pen showed me."
[deep breath]
"My name used to be Harper. I was a librarian. I liked horror. Urban legends. I thought this was all fiction — until Chapter Four. I read it. Out loud."
[pause. distant creak.]
"I had two minutes."
"They say blindness saves you. It doesn't. It only buys you time. You lose your sight, but the story stays inside your mind. Like ink soaking into paper, even if the words are gone."
"You still see it... in the dark."
[long pause. a faint, rhythmic tapping — something metallic.]
"I thought... if I blinded myself, I could stop it. I could be free."
[small, bitter laugh]
"But I didn't understand Rule Fifteen back then. You forget the story, it rewrites itself as memory. I stopped seeing with my eyes... and started seeing it everywhere else. In my head. In my hands. In the sound of my own voice when I spoke without thinking."
"I'd wake up remembering things that didn't happen. Faces that never existed. Deaths I was certain I witnessed, even though no one around me knew the names."
[soft scratch-scratch in the background]
"And the worst part? I started telling people. Little things. Fragments of dreams. Half-remembered scenes."
"I didn't know I was still writing for it."
[audio wavers — low static hum]
"They call it The Ink. Or The Pen's Law. Or The Dead Script. Names don't matter. What matters is... it knows your voice. Once you read it, once you hear it, once it marks you — it learns how to be you."
"You'll think you're safe. You'll think you're clever, burning pages, smashing mirrors, closing tabs. But it waits. It waits in the words you almost say, in the stories you almost tell."
"And when you finally forget the details... it starts again."
[long exhale]
"I'm not leaving this for anyone to find. I'm leaving this because I have to. Because something in me needs to finish the page."
[distant knock. then, a second.]
"If you're still listening, check your reflection."
[long, static pause]
"If it's smiling... you've already started writing too."
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🦯 Braille Journal Entry (translated by archivist):
"THE PEN CANNOT BE KILLED. BUT IT CAN BE FORGOTTEN.
I FORGOT THE SHAPE OF LETTERS. I FORGOT HOW TO WRITE."
"AND FOR A WHILE... IT WENT QUIET."
"But it never really leaves. It just waits for another surface."
"Here's what no one tells you. Here's the next truth."
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🔏 Rule Fifteen: If you forget the story, it starts writing again — this time as memory.
I used to think the only way to survive was to forget.
To lock the story away.
Refuse to speak it, refuse to read it, to erase every file and page and fragment of it from your life.
And for a while, it worked.
Or so I thought.
But the pen isn't just ink and paper.
It's an idea.
And ideas don't die.
When you forget the story, you don't destroy it — you release it.
And it starts to rewrite itself in the safest, most unguarded place it can find:
Your memory.
You'll remember events that never happened.
Conversations you swear you had.
Faces you're certain you've seen before, but can't quite place.
Dreams of deaths so vivid, you wake up convinced you lived them.
And they don't feel like fiction.
They feel like facts.
Like things you just forgot for a while.
And here's where it gets worse:
When you speak those memories aloud — when you share those "weird dreams" with a friend, or recount a nightmare, or mention something you half-remember happening years ago — the cycle begins again.
Because to the pen, the story doesn't have to be true.
It only has to be told.
Every memory you voice becomes a new draft.
Every conversation you have about a death you dreamed or a scene you almost remember is a seed planted in someone else's mind.
And from there, it spreads.
Not just as a story.
As history.
As inevitability.
And the next time you sleep, the scratching will return.
A pen in a hand that isn't yours.
Writing down memories you never made.
And when you wake...
you won't be able to tell the difference anymore.
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"That's how it survives. Not through ink anymore. But through memory. Through voice. Through storytelling."
"I heard a kid reciting it like a playground rhyme. He couldn't read. He was just repeating what he'd heard in his dreams."
"His dog died that night. Twisted inside out. Just like the line said."
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🧠 Braille Journal Entry:
"IT'S BECOME AN ORAL LEGEND. A VERBAL VIRUS."
"THE NEXT RULE IS A WARNING."
"DON'T LISTEN TO THIS TAPE."
"It's too late for me. I already wrote again. Not with a pen... but with my mouth. With this."
"Maybe if you're smart, you'll stop this tape before it ends. Maybe you'll burn it. Maybe you'll forget me. Forget this voice."
"But if you've listened this far..."
"Then the pen already knows your name."
"And if you're still listening now..."
[TAPE CLICKS]
"It just started writing your story."
[TAPE ENDS – UNSPOOLING SOUND – DO NOT PLAY AGAIN]
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STAI LEGGENDO
Etched
HorrorIt began with a pen. Not cursed. Not haunted. Worse-aware. Every word it writes becomes a death scene. Every sentence, a sentence. Those who read it suffer fates twisted to match its ink-unless they destroy their sight within two minutes. The rules...
