How to Read This

Where to start

Start with the background page for whoever you’re reading. It sets the premise, the important characters as they are when the story begins, and where the arcs are headed — not what happens, just enough to follow along once the actual events start.

Then the timeline

The timeline is the story itself, one entry at a time, in the order it happened — not the order it was written. Entries get backfilled over time, so an earlier moment can appear after you’ve already read what comes later. That’s intentional. Nothing is out of order in-story, only in publish date.

Each entry opens with three things: a long ID string (safe to ignore — it’s just a stable anchor, not something to read), a story-date, and a short scope tag naming the arc or event it belongs to.

Under that, one line tells you what kind of moment you’re about to read:

• witness — they were there. Firsthand.
• tale — you’re getting this through someone telling it, not living it.
• choice — a real decision gets made: a cost or risk accepted, a path chosen.
• fallout — a cost or risk from an earlier choice comes due.
• bond — a relationship changes: trust, betrayal, distance opening or closing.
• log — doesn’t cleanly fit the rest, but matters anyway.

The name next to the type, in parentheses, repeats the scope tag from the heading — the line is meant to be read as one unit, a quick signal before the prose underneath it.

If a tale line opens with via <name>, that’s telling you how far the account is from its source — via Sabo, via Dragon means the story reached this narrator through Sabo, who had it from Dragon. More hops, more room for it to have changed shape along the way. Worth noticing, especially if the same event turns up elsewhere as a witness entry — the two versions won’t always agree, and that’s not a mistake.

What you don’t need

Two more files exist behind each character — one is a checklist of what they can actually do, the other is the design reasoning behind it. Neither is required. The story holds up without them; they’re there for anyone who wants to go further, not for anyone just following along.

What to expect

Entries and ability lists are compressed on purpose — cues, not full scenes. You’re meant to fill in the rest yourself. If something reads like it trailed off, it probably didn’t — look again before assuming it’s unfinished.

The blank space isn’t where the writing stopped. It’s where you’re expected to take over. “She stays,” or “the machine is the monster” — those aren’t scenes. They’re the first half of a scene, and you’re the second. Fill in freely: how it looked, what was said, what it cost to say nothing. That’s all yours. If you can reach it from the cue without breaking the cue, it’s fair game.

The limits aren’t printed here, but they’re not hidden. They’re built into the checklist of what a character can do and what each thing costs. The whole rule fits in one breath:

Anything you imagine has to fit inside the ability list, and still pay the listed cost. If your version needs a new power — or makes a cost go away — you’ve left the story.

Behind every character there’s a “why” file that sets those edges. You can read it if you want to go further, but you don’t need to — you’ll feel it every time a character refuses to do something the scene wants them to do. That refusal is the file working. It’s what keeps the character from becoming able to do anything, or nothing, no matter how far you stretch them. When your fill-in won’t fit, that’s not you getting it wrong. That’s the character holding their shape.

Two things worth knowing when you’re filling:

• If the checklist doesn’t list it, they can’t do it — however natural it’d be in the scene you’re picturing.
• If the checklist lists it with a cost, the cost is part of the power. You can’t keep the win and skip the price. The price is the part that makes it a story.

And one thing you don’t have to worry about: if two entries seem to disagree, they might just be. A tale and a witness of the same event don’t have to match — that’s distance, not error. What never bends is the edge of an ability. An entry that shows a power working past its own listed limit is always wrong — and if you write that into a fill-in, it’s the only kind of wrong there is.

You don’t need the rule to enjoy any of it. You only need it the moment your imagination starts pulling a character somewhere they can’t actually go. That resistance is the design doing its job.

One more thing

This is fan work: openly fictional, not affiliated with or endorsed by the original creators, and not monetized. Credit to the source material and its creators is noted on each page it draws from.