The morning came quietly — or perhaps, it was written that way.
The light that touched the earth seemed hesitant, as if it had only just remembered how to shine. Mist drifted through the village like unspoken thoughts, soft and formless. The world, for a moment, felt fragile — too still, too deliberate. Like something pretending to be alive.
I sat outside Elyndra's hut, the air cold against my skin.
The words etched on me the night before — He begins to awaken — had faded from sight, but not from feeling. I could still sense them beneath my skin, humming faintly, as though they were written in a language my flesh had not yet learned to forget.
Elyndra's voice called from within.
"Carten, are you not eating?"
I turned. Her face, bright with morning warmth, looked untouched by what I had witnessed. The shadow, the quill, the trembling of the sky — none of it existed for her. To her, the night had been quiet, peaceful, ordinary.
Ordinary.
A word that no longer belonged to me.
"I'm not hungry," I murmured.
She frowned, just a little, then smiled again — the way one smiles when reality refuses to bend for another's madness. "You'll fall sick if you keep wandering without food. Lioran's already gone to the river. You should join him."
"I will," I lied.
When she disappeared back into the hut, I looked at the ground beneath my feet — and froze.
The shadow I cast was wrong.
It lagged, just a second behind my movement. When I raised my hand, it hesitated, then followed — a beat too late. My breath caught. I stepped forward; it delayed again. The morning sun was clear, the air unmoving. There was no trick of light.
It was me that was wrong.
I blinked once — and it corrected itself, as if the world realized its mistake and hastily erased the evidence.
A tremor of dread rippled through me.
---
The river was alive with light when I found it.
Lioran knelt at the edge, skipping stones. Each stone kissed the surface and vanished — no ripple, no sound. The water was still, like polished glass. He laughed, though the sound seemed distant, hollow.
When he saw me, he waved. "Carten! Look! The river's sleeping today."
I forced a smile. "Sleeping?"
"Elyndra says the river sleeps when it dreams of other places," he said, tossing another stone. It sank without a trace. "Maybe it dreams of the ocean."
Other places. Oceans. Dreams.
Strange — I couldn't remember anyone mentioning oceans before. In all my wandering, I had never seen one. No stories of them, no maps. But now, as the boy said it, something shifted. A faint roar filled the distance — like waves striking unseen shores. The horizon flickered. For a heartbeat, I saw it: endless water beneath a bleeding dawn.
Then it was gone.
The river returned to silence, and so did I.
---
When I went back to the village, things had… changed.
Not in the way of seasons or weather, but in the subtle wrongness of details. The path from the river — I could swear it curved left yesterday, toward the stone well. Now it bent right, leading straight to the market.
The guard who had welcomed me on my first day — black hair, green eyes — stood at the gate again.
"Welcome, traveler," he said with the same warmth, the same tone, word for word.
He did not remember me.
And the strangest part — Elyndra's hut was not where it had been.
It stood three houses farther than before, as if the village itself had quietly rearranged while I was gone.
Reality had… edited itself.
I felt the world around me pulse again, like paper stretching under wet ink. The air smelled faintly of iron and rain. Something unseen was rewriting the day.
I rushed to Elyndra's hut. She stood by the doorway, calm as morning.
"Carten, where were you? You promised you'd help me fetch wood."
"I—" I stopped. "Didn't I just come from the river? You said Lioran—"
"Who?" she asked softly.
I stared at her.
"The boy. Lioran. The one who stayed here last night."
Her face tilted in confusion, her eyes gentle but empty.
"There's no one by that name here."
The words struck like a blade. "Elyndra… you cooked for him. He sat beside you."
"I think you're tired," she said with a kind smile. "Rest, Carten. The forest must be playing tricks on you."
I looked inside the hut — only two blankets now.
The third had vanished. No sign of small footprints, no bowl for a child. No trace that he had ever existed.
The story had been rewritten.
And only I remembered the old version.
---
That night, the village fell into sleep again.
I remained awake, staring at the roof, listening for the quill.
It came sooner than I expected.
The sound — slow, deliberate, cruel.
Each stroke heavy with meaning, as if the writer were pressing too hard against the world.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
I stepped outside, my heart pounding. The sky trembled faintly, like fabric stretched too thin. The stars above flickered in new constellations — shapes that spelled words in a tongue older than gods.
I felt them burning in my mind:
> The story must be corrected.
And then — I heard another sound.
A quill — but quicker, sharper, desperate.
Two pens were writing.
The night split in two tones — one steady and divine, the other chaotic, human, erratic. The heavens glowed with crossing lines of ink, streaking like comets, clashing above the world.
The grass bent backward. The huts flickered in and out of shape — old, new, old again.
Reality was being contested.
I fell to my knees, clutching my head as the air screamed.
Voices — thousands — spilled through the wind.
Fragments of words, unfinished sentences, names I'd never heard.
> "Erase the error—"
"Reclaim the line—"
"The unwritten must not remember—"
Through the chaos, I looked up — and saw them.
Two shadows above the sky, each holding a quill.
The first — vast and calm — wrote in gold, every stroke shaping mountains, rivers, life.
The second — smaller, broken — wrote in silver, rewriting, defying, clawing its own words into the world.
Ink dripped from their quills like rain. Each drop burned the earth, leaving faint letters that dissolved into mist.
And then — both shadows turned toward me.
The air froze.
I could not move, could not breathe. The divine quill paused mid-stroke, and for the first time, I felt its full gaze upon me.
> You were not meant to see this.
The voice wasn't sound — it was law. It carved itself into my skull, each word reshaping thought into obedience.
But before I could answer, the smaller shadow — the rebel scribe — spoke too, its tone trembling but human:
> Run, Carten. They will rewrite you next.
The two voices collided — divine decree against mortal defiance. The world convulsed, the sky tearing open like wet paper. From the wound in the heavens, streams of ink poured downward, searing through trees and soil.
And then, just as suddenly — silence.
The ink withdrew.
The sky stitched itself closed.
The village stood still, perfectly untouched.
As if nothing had ever happened.
But I remembered.
Every sound. Every word. Every impossible truth.
I stood there beneath the hollow stars, trembling, and whispered into the wind:
"Two Authors…"
The words felt foreign on my tongue, too heavy, too dangerous.
One who creates.
One who rewrites.
And between them — me.
A fragment of thought not belonging to either.
The unwritten breath of something that should never have existed.
The world exhaled.
The quills fell silent.
And somewhere deep within the ink of creation, I felt both Authors turn their pages — waiting to see what I would do next.