The Paper Face

“Wake, little one.”

The voice seeped through the silence like water moving under stone. She flinched, lifting a hand to the back of her head. Pain throbbed where she had struck the iron rack of the bed, a pulse that made the air around her sway.

Blinking, she pushed herself up. That was when she saw it.

A face hovered above her, thin and pale, as if cut from damp paper. Its edges rippled through the room.

Startled, she dragged the blanket to her chest, as though cloth could shield her.

“Fear not,” the paper face murmured, folds bending into what might have been a smile. “I wish you well.”

Her throat was dry. “Who… who are you?”

The face did not answer at once. It shifted and curled, as if straining to hold its own shape. When it spoke, the sound was soft, slow, and deliberate.

“I suppose I am what you would call a creator.”

“A creator?”

“Yes.” The voice spilled like ink in water. “Long ago, we shaped this place. We left seams, small openings where we might lean through and watch.”

“Watch us?”

The paper face lowered. Its whisper brushed her like a draft.

“Your kind has run far since last we looked in. We planted a seed of thought, and you have sown gardens of it. You have even built intelligence, just as we once built you.”

Something in its tone unsettled her. It was not anger, not pride. It was sorrow, as if each word weighed too much.

She slipped from the bed, her blanket trailing across the floorboards. “Why have you returned?”

The paper face lingered over the open book on the ground, its folds shivering faintly. The air in the room seemed to warp, bending light in thin waves. Her head throbbed with it, a pressure pressing deeper than the bruise.

At last it looked at her.

“To decide what becomes of you.”

The words fell with a terrible calm, and in the space that followed she felt the night tilt — not an ending she could name, but one her body already knew.