EARLY CORE 20

The manuscript has learned to write without its creator.

Early and Christopher follow their disappearing names into a hidden volume containing the story that existed before either of them. Its pages are older than the tavern, the road, and every memory Christopher believed he created.

At the beginning waits page zero.

The page describes the Core before it became a universe. It remembers the first door, the first witness, and the first writer whose name was deliberately removed from the ledger.

Early discovers that his repeated escapes were never accidents. Each journey carried another piece of the original story back toward its center. Christopher realizes that his imagination may have been a doorway through which something forgotten returned.

The manuscript is preparing a future without either of them. To remain inside it, creator and character must uncover why the Core needed them in the first place.

EARLY CORE 20 blends surreal horror, dark fantasy, supernatural mystery, cosmic terror, and metafiction.

The old story is awake.

Page zero is open.

And the first writer wants the manuscript back.