The landscape of the Paper Planet was quiet. Not the peaceful quiet of a library, but the heavy, suffocating quiet of a room where someone knows they should be working but is instead staring at a wall.
Elara Vance trudged through a dune of shredded sticky notes. Ahead of her, the Author's Fortress loomed. It was a massive citadel constructed entirely of giant, hardcover books stacked like bricks. The mortar was dried coffee. The drawbridge was a giant, dusty laptop screen that was currently closed.
"I feel... heavy," Li Wusheng muttered. The monk was lagging behind, dragging his feet through the paper-dust. "My Qi is stagnant. It feels less like a river and more like a swamp."
"It's the atmosphere," Elara said, checking her wrist-mounted scanner (which was just a compass Jen had taped to her arm). "We're entering the Writer's Block Zone. The psychic pressure here drains motivation."
