In the age of technologically augmented lifestyle, the way we experience stories is being transformed. Mobile reading apps, audiobooks, digital fiction and augmented reality books are formats that are gaining popularity, meeting the needs of 21st century audiences. Virtual Reality (VR) offers the possibility to create new ways of transmitting our literary heritage. I will present the concept and the process of designing a VR environment for reading and listening to stories, the results of some experiments showing the impact VR has on the audience, and the future steps of storytelling augmented thanks to text-to-3D AI algorithms. In the metaverse, we are pushing the experience of reading a book to one of its limits: literature is not constrained by a physical object anymore, it becomes an environment. At the same time, the experience of literature is being redefined as a multimodal flow in which physical immersion is enhanced. The challenge of storytelling in the metaverse is how to use VR technology while preserving the specificities that made oral and written literature a powerful means of communication for many centuries. The solutions presented take advantage of the sensorial richness of the metaverse while stimulating the audience’s imagination, introspection and reflection.