Okay, so from what I gathered, Beryl is the og ugly duckling, and his grandpa was the hunter. I'm assuming the grandpa brought him (a character, probably originally the swan) to life and was setting him up to take over his ability to travel through books?? And then Ori became the next ugly duckling (figuratively) and was taken out of the book with Beryl's book?
Or maybe they're all real people but Beryl teleported to another dimension under the guise of a story but then she used the link between his book and the one she gave him to teleport to him?? Which means the whole duckling thing is just a figure of speech that emulates both of their situations? Idk I'm confused I get they wanted to leave it open-ended but it was a little too open-ended for my brain