{
  "1": [
    {
      "id": "ch1",
      "novelId": "1",
      "number": 1,
      "title": "The Staircase",
      "content": "The apartment had been perfect when Alex first moved in. Three rooms, affordable rent, and a location that didn't require an hour-long commute. The only quirk was the closet.\n\nNot the closet itself—the regular walk-in closet in the bedroom with its white wire shelving and dim lighting was perfectly normal. It was what lay behind it that was strange.\n\nIt started as a sound. A soft scratching, like something moving through the walls. Alex had ignored it at first, chalking it up to the typical urban soundscape: pipes groaning, neighbors' footsteps, the city's constant hum. But after three months, the sound had become less random. It occurred every evening, around 8 PM, always for exactly seven minutes.\n\nOn a Tuesday in March, curiosity got the better of them. Alex pushed aside the storage boxes they'd never bothered to unpack, running their hands along the back wall. It felt solid enough. They knocked, listening for any hollow echo that might indicate a cavity.\n\nNothing.\n\nBut the scratching continued, and this time, it was louder. Desperate, almost. Like something was trying to get out.\n\nAlex's rational mind supplied a list of explanations: mice, rats, some kind of pest. The city was old; these things happened. They should call an exterminator. They should solve this like a reasonable adult.\n\nInstead, they grabbed a flashlight and began moving boxes with newfound determination.\n\nIt took an hour, but eventually Alex had cleared enough space to see what lay beneath the dust and debris. At first, they thought it was just the wall—regular drywall painted the same off-white as every other surface in the apartment.\n\nBut then the scratching came again, and the wall seemed to ripple.\n\nAlex blinked, certain they'd imagined it. They leaned forward, flashlight raised, and that's when they saw it: not a ripple, but a seam. A perfectly straight line running vertically down the wall, too precise to be accidental.\n\nWith a trembling hand, Alex pressed against the wall at the seam. It gave way with surprising ease, swinging inward with a whisper of ancient hinges.\n\nBeyond it lay darkness—thick, complete, and utterly impenetrable. The flashlight beam barely penetrated three feet before dissolving into shadow.\n\nAnd from that darkness came the scratching again, followed by something that made Alex's breath catch in their throat: a voice.\n\nIt was thin, reedy, and wrapped in layers of static, like a radio tuned between stations. It said one word—just one—before fading into the sound of wind rushing through an impossible space:\n\n\"Help.\"\n\nAlex should have closed the door. Every survival instinct screamed at them to push it shut, shove the boxes back into place, and pretend they'd never seen anything. They should have called someone. The police, a priest, a psychiatrist.\n\nInstead, they took a breath, steadied their hands, and stepped through the opening.",
      "views": 254000,
      "likes": 18000,
      "createdAt": "2023-01-15T12:00:00Z",
      "updatedAt": "2023-01-15T12:00:00Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "ch2",
      "novelId": "1",
      "number": 2,
      "title": "First Dimension",
      "content": "The darkness didn't last. As Alex stepped through the doorway, their eyes adjusted, and a landscape began to resolve itself from the gloom.\n\nThey were standing at the top of an endless staircase.\n\nThe stairs spiraled downward in a configuration that hurt to look at—they seemed to curve in directions that shouldn't exist, sides impossible, angles defying geometry. The walls were made of something like stone, but darker, almost black, and they gleamed with a wetness that suggested either water or something far less wholesome.\n\nThe light came from nowhere and everywhere at once, a dim phosphorescent glow that cast no shadows. It was the kind of illumination that made Alex's head ache after more than a few seconds of direct thought.\n\nBeyond the staircase, at what might have been the bottom of this impossible descent, lay another landscape entirely. Alex caught glimpses of it between the spiraling steps: green fields, a purple sky, towers that seemed to grow from the earth like trees. It was beautiful and utterly alien.\n\nThe voice came again, clearer now. \"Down. Come down.\"\n\nAlex gripped the railing—smooth and warm to the touch—and started down. The stairs didn't feel dangerous, exactly, but they felt wrong. Each step had the wrong angle, the wrong depth. It was like walking down a staircase built by someone who understood the concept intellectually but had never actually seen one.\n\nIt took what felt like hours, though Alex knew from the pulsing of their own heartbeat that it was probably only minutes. Time felt negotiable in this place.\n\nWhen they finally reached the bottom, the figure waiting for them was not at all what they'd expected.\n\nIt was humanoid, sort of. It had two arms, two legs, a head. But it was assembled wrong—limbs that bent in too many places, joints where there shouldn't be any, skin that seemed to exist in multiple colors simultaneously. The eyes were worst of all: too many of them, arranged at odd angles across its face.\n\n\"You came,\" the creature said, and its voice was the same reedy static from before. \"I wasn't sure you'd come.\"\n\n\"Where am I?\" Alex asked. Their voice sounded strange here, hollow, like they were speaking in a vast empty room. \"What are you?\"\n\n\"I am Kess,\" the creature said. \"And you are in the Gap. The space between. The place where realities touch.\" It moved closer, and Alex forced themselves not to flinch. \"I've been trying to reach someone for so long. The last few attempts... they didn't understand. They ran back through the door after a few moments. But you're still here. You're brave.\"\n\n\"I'm terrified,\" Alex corrected.\n\n\"Yes,\" Kess agreed. \"That too. But still here.\" The creature's many eyes blinked in a cascading pattern. \"There's so much I need to tell you. So much I need to show you. But first, you have to understand—everything you thought you knew about the world is only the beginning of the truth.\"",
      "views": 189000,
      "likes": 13200,
      "createdAt": "2023-01-22T12:00:00Z",
      "updatedAt": "2023-01-22T12:00:00Z"
    },
    {
      "id": "ch3",
      "novelId": "1",
      "number": 3,
      "title": "The Truth About Everything",
      "content": "Kess led Alex away from the staircase, across a landscape that seemed to shift with each step. The purple sky had become a deep orange, and the green fields were now a sprawling city of impossible architecture.\n\nBuildings folded into themselves, creating structures that seemed to exist in four dimensions with only three visible to the human eye. The inhabitants—other creatures like Kess, but each one unique in disturbing ways—moved through the streets with purpose that suggested this was routine for them.\n\nBut there was another quality to their movements: fear. They moved like people who expected danger.\n\n\"This is Hub,\" Kess explained. \"One of the oldest dimensional waypoints. Most dimensions connect through Hub one way or another. But lately...\" The creature trailed off, and several of its eyes dimmed.\n\n\"Lately what?\" Alex prompted.\n\n\"Lately, the connections are destabilizing. Realities are touching where they shouldn't. Collapsing in on each other. Three dimensions have already ceased to exist completely. Billions of beings, just... gone. And no one knows why.\"\n\nThey walked in silence for a while, and Alex tried to process the sheer magnitude of what Kess was telling them. Dimensions. Multiverses. Apocalypses happening in realities they never knew existed.\n\n\"Why are you telling me this?\" Alex finally asked. \"I'm just an accountant from New York. I balance spreadsheets. I eat sad desk salads. I don't know anything about... any of this.\"\n\n\"No,\" Kess agreed. \"But your dimension is next. We think your reality will collapse within the month. And I believe you might be able to help us stop it.\"\n\n\"Why would you believe that?\"\n\n\"Because,\" Kess said, leading Alex around a corner where gravity seemed to work at odd angles, \"I was in your dimension once. Thirty years ago. I was investigating similar destabilization events. And I met someone there who gave me this.\" Kess reached into what might have been a pocket and withdrew an object.\n\nIt was a sphere, perfectly smooth, about the size of a ping-pong ball. But it seemed to contain entire universes within it—galaxies and nebulae swirling in geometric patterns that made Alex's eyes water to follow.\n\n\"With this, you could stabilize your dimension. Maybe save billions of lives. But I need you to do something for me first.\"\n\n\"What?\" Alex asked, though they already knew they'd probably say yes. They were too curious not to.\n\n\"I need you to survive long enough to understand what's happening. Because whoever—or whatever—is causing the collapse... they're going to come for you. And they're very, very good at what they do.\"\n\nAs if in response to Kess's words, the sky above Hub began to crack.\n\nIt started as a single fracture, like a spider web spreading across glass. But the fractures multiplied rapidly, and through them poured something that made Alex's mind recoil from understanding it. It was wrong in every conceivable way—a color that didn't exist, a shape that inverted itself, an absence of something fundamental that reality couldn't function without.\n\nThe beings in the streets began to run, their many limbs propelling them in panicked directions. Kess grabbed Alex's arm, their grip burning hot on the human's skin.\n\n\"We have to go,\" Kess said. \"Now. That's a Reality Breach, and it spreads fast. I'll explain everything—but first, we need to survive.\"\n\nWith that, they ran.",
      "views": 156000,
      "likes": 11300,
      "createdAt": "2023-02-05T12:00:00Z",
      "updatedAt": "2023-02-05T12:00:00Z"
    }
  ],
  "2": [
    {
      "id": "ch1",
      "novelId": "2",
      "number": 1,
      "title": "Illegal Time",
      "content": "The temporal labs were supposed to be destroyed.\n\nMaya knew this because she'd helped design the destruction protocols before the ban went into effect. Seven years ago, when the Global Temporal Authority declared all time-travel research illegal, Maya had been one of thousands of scientists forced to choose: destroy their life's work or face imprisonment.\n\nShe'd chosen the lab coat with a pension and a quiet job at the National Archive, categorizing historical documents that no one would ever read. It was safe. Predictable. Exactly what she needed to forget about what she'd lost.\n\nBut the lab beneath the old university wasn't destroyed. Someone had hidden it.\n\nAnd someone had left her a message.\n\nMaya stared at the holographic projection flickering in the dusty darkness of Lab 7, her heart hammering against her ribs. The message was on an old projector, the kind they'd used fifteen years ago before the tech got updated. Before the bans.\n\nIt was from her.\n\n\"If you're seeing this,\" older-Maya said, her face drawn with exhaustion and fear, \"then I'm already dead. The Authority knows what I'm about to do. But I don't see another option. The timeline is collapsing, Maya. The one we're in, right now. In seven hours, reality as we know it will begin to unravel. And it's my fault.\"\n\nYounger-Maya—current-Maya—tried to speak, but her voice came out as barely a whisper. \"That's not... that can't be...\"\n\n\"I made a jump,\" the projection continued. \"Back to 2045. I intended to prevent the war that would eventually lead to the creation of the Authority. I succeeded. I stopped the war. But in stopping the war, I created a paradox so fundamental that it's eating reality from the inside out. By the time the effects reach the present, there won't be anything left to save.\"\n\nOlder-Maya's eyes were wet. \"You have to undo it. You have to go back to 2045 and make sure the war happens. I know how impossible that sounds. I know how many people will die. But it's the lesser evil, when the alternative is the extinction of the entire timeline.\"\n\nThe projection flickered and died.\n\nFor a long moment, Maya stood alone in the dark, the only sound her own breathing.\n\nThen the alarms started.\n\nRed lights flooded the lab, and the wail of emergency sirens echoed through the corridors. At the same time, Maya's personal communicator buzzed. It was a message from an unknown number:\n\nTHEY KNOW YOU'RE HERE. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES. TAKE THE TEMPORAL DEVICE AND GET TO CHECKPOINT ALPHA.\n\nMaya's hands shook as she moved toward the machine in the center of the lab. The Temporal Displacement Engine. She'd designed it herself, had watched the Authority destroy supposedly all the prototypes.\n\nWell, all the ones they'd found anyway.\n\nA sound on the stairs—footsteps, heavy and methodical. The Authority's temporal enforcement division.\n\nMaya grabbed the portable temporal device from the lead scientist's desk—a device she'd thought was destroyed years ago—and stuffed it into her jacket. She ran for the emergency exit just as the doors to the lab burst open behind her.\n\n\"Halt!\" a voice commanded.\n\nMaya ran.",
      "views": 198000,
      "likes": 14500,
      "createdAt": "2023-03-20T12:00:00Z",
      "updatedAt": "2023-03-20T12:00:00Z"
    }
  ],
  "3": [
    {
      "id": "ch1",
      "novelId": "3",
      "number": 1,
      "title": "The Haunted Mansion",
      "content": "Mansion Bramblewick had been standing for 237 years, and according to the locals, it had been haunted for at least 236 of them.\n\nRiley had taken the job—paranormal investigator for the prestigious Ethereal Society—knowing that most hauntings could be explained by settling foundations and overactive imaginations. But when the current owners, the Ashworth family, had called with descriptions of inexplicable events, Riley's instincts had tingled.\n\nNow, standing in the grand foyer of the mansion, with its vaulted ceilings and dust-covered portraits, Riley felt something different than Rational Explanation Number 4 (electromagnetic fields affecting brain chemistry). They felt something that the human brain was wired to recognize and react to: the presence of something vast and sad and terribly, terribly alone.\n\nThe air itself seemed to mourn.\n\nRiley set down their equipment bags and pulled out the electromagnetic field detector. The needle swung wildly, far beyond normal parameters. But there was a pattern to it—almost rhythmic, like breathing.\n\n\"You'll want to stay away from the library,\" a voice said.\n\nRiley spun around. A young woman stood in the doorway, early twenties, with red-rimmed eyes and a haunted expression that Riley recognized immediately. A believer in the supernatural. Or someone who'd experienced it firsthand.\n\n\"The library?\" Riley asked.\n\n\"That's where Ellis died,\" the woman said. \"In 1827. She was the one who's... well, they say she's the reason the mansion is haunted. She never left. She couldn't leave.\" The woman extended her hand. \"I'm Sophie. I live here now with my family. We're trying to figure out how to sell the place, but until the haunting stops, no one will buy it.\"\n\nRiley shook Sophie's hand, noting the strong grip, the calluses on her palms. Not someone afraid of work. \"Tell me about Ellis.\"\n\nSophie led Riley deeper into the mansion, through hallways lined with portraits of the dead. \"The story varies depending on who tells it. Some say she was murdered. Others say she took her own life. All anyone knows for certain is that she died in the library, and she's been here ever since.\"\n\nThey stopped before a heavy wooden door bound with iron. It was noticeably colder here, and even Riley's scientific mind couldn't explain the sudden chill.\n\n\"Go ahead,\" Sophie said, stepping back. \"I'll wait here. Ever since I've been living here, I've learned that Ellis... she doesn't like multiple people in the library at once.\"\n\nRiley opened the door and stepped inside.\n\nThe library was beautiful—rows upon rows of books, leather-bound and ancient, stretching up to ceiling three stories high. Moonlight streamed through tall windows, illuminating dust motes that seemed to dance with purpose.\n\nAnd in the corner, in a chair by the fireplace, Riley saw something that made the electromagnetic field detector scream.\n\nA figure. Translucent. Flickering like a candle flame.\n\nElis—the ghost—was reading.\n\n\"You can see me,\" the ghost said without looking up from her book. It was the first time Riley had ever heard a ghost speak with such clarity, such presence. \"Most people can't. That's rather inconvenient, really. It means we might actually be able to have a conversation.\"\n\nRiley's hand moved to their equipment, but they forced it back down. This woman—this spirit—didn't seem dangerous. Just lonely.\n\n\"I'm Riley,\" they said. \"I investigate hauntings.\"\n\n\"How modern,\" Ellis said. She finally looked up, and Riley's breath caught. The ghost was beautiful—pale and translucent, but somehow more real than anything else in the room. \"I suppose you're here to exorcise me. They always are, eventually.\"\n\n\"I'm here to understand,\" Riley said. \"And possibly to help.\"\n\nElis closed her book and rose to her feet. \"Help me how? I'm dead, darling. I've been dead for nearly two centuries. I'm not sure there's much help available for that particular condition.\"\n\n\"Tell me what happened,\" Riley said. \"Tell me your story.\"\n\nAnd Ellis began to speak, and Riley began to listen. Neither of them knew yet that this conversation would unravel a mystery spanning centuries, or that Ellis's story was far, far more complex than a simple haunting.",
      "views": 223000,
      "likes": 16700,
      "createdAt": "2022-06-10T12:00:00Z",
      "updatedAt": "2022-06-10T12:00:00Z"
    }
  ]
}