The night did not arrive gently.
It came like ink spilled across the edges of a page, devouring color, swallowing sound, leaving only silence and the faint heartbeat of something far beyond my understanding. I had fallen asleep beside the dim embers of Elyndra's hearth, her quiet breathing and the boy's soft murmurs the only proof that the world still existed. But when my eyes opened again — it wasn't the same world.
There was no hut.
No floor beneath me.
No light.
Only darkness — a darkness so absolute it felt older than creation itself.
It wasn't the void I'd seen before. This place was deeper, stranger — not the unwritten edge of the world, but a realm beyond even the ink that made the story real. A silence so perfect it made my thoughts echo. My breath seemed too loud, my heartbeat too human.
And then I saw her.
She didn't emerge from the shadows — she was simply there, as though the darkness itself had decided to take shape and remember her.
The little girl.
The same one who had spoken to me the day I first awoke in this written world.
Her black eyes shimmered faintly, reflecting no light, because there was none.
Her presence bent the silence around her — as though even the void was listening.
"Why have you slowed down, Carten?" she asked softly. Her voice didn't echo, yet I heard it everywhere — around me, inside me, behind me.
"You've lost your rhythm. You've begun to wander instead of seek. I thought you would've found it by now."
I stared at her. My voice felt small against the vastness. "Found what?"
Her lips curved — not quite a smile, not quite mockery. "The Eternal Truth. That's what you're searching for, isn't it?"
Her words struck something inside me, something hollow but resonant.
Yes — the Eternal Truth.
The answer buried beyond the ink.
The reason this world was written — and why I could see its seams.
"You may ask three questions," she said, clasping her hands behind her back, her tone playful yet heavy with meaning. "Three only. Ask wisely, because I cannot speak beyond what is written."
"But this place isn't written," I said.
Her smile deepened slightly. "Precisely."
A shiver went down my spine. I didn't understand her fully — I never did — but I knew she spoke from a plane far beyond mine.
I swallowed hard. "Then… my first question."
She nodded.
"How can I find the Eternal Truth? And…"
The second part of the question slipped out before I could stop it —
"…and how do I return to where I belong?"
The girl tilted her head. "Where you belong?" she repeated, as if tasting the phrase. "Do you even know what that means?"
I hesitated.
My mind spun.
Where did I belong?
I remembered the forest, the fortress, the mirrors of memory — fragments of a past that never fully felt like mine. And then this world, this strange, half-written realm where I alone could see what others could not.
Was I part of it?
Or an error the author never meant to write?
The girl's expression softened. "If I knew how to find the Eternal Truth," she said quietly, "why do you think I would have chosen you to find it for me?"
"For you?" I repeated.
Her voice grew colder, deeper — layered. "The Truth is not written, nor spoken. It is that which transcends the written and devours the speaker. It's not something to be found, Carten. It's something that finds you when you cease to exist as a character."
Her eyes glowed faintly as she whispered the last words, and for a heartbeat, I saw faint script moving beneath her skin — words, symbols, flickering like dying embers beneath translucent flesh. Then they vanished.
I stood in silence.
The weight of her words sank deep.
I wanted to ask what she meant by "chosen."
But I had only two questions left.
So I asked the next one.
"Where are the others?" I said slowly. "The others searching for the same thing. For the Eternal Truth."
The girl blinked once. Her expression shifted — faint confusion, then calm.
"There are no others," she said.
"Only you."
I frowned. "That can't be right. When I woke the first time… you said I took longer than usual. More time than the others before me. You implied there were others."
A pause.
A stillness so deep I could hear nothing but the faint hum of my own fear.
Her gaze sharpened — like a blade slipping from its sheath.
"I said no such thing," she whispered.
My blood ran cold. "You did," I insisted. "You said it the morning I first woke. Those exact words."
Her face was expressionless now, her eyes distant. "If I said that, it was not me who spoke."
"Then who was it?"
She looked past me, into the endless dark — as if something stood there beyond even her sight. "Perhaps the one who wrote the first version of you."
The air grew heavier.
The darkness thickened until it pressed against my skin.
I took a step back, heart pounding. "What are you saying?"
But she did not answer. Her outline flickered, like a candle drowning in its own wax. "You have one question left," she said quietly. "Ask carefully. It may be the last answer you ever receive."
I tried to breathe. My mind burned with a thousand questions — who she was, who wrote me, who watched from above — but something in her tone stopped me.
It wasn't a warning.
It was pity.
So I asked the only question that truly clawed at my soul.
"What happens," I whispered, "when the author forgets to finish a story?"
The girl's expression changed — not fear, not anger, but something close to sorrow. The darkness trembled. The air warped.
"When an author forgets," she said, "the story keeps writing itself."
Her voice became layered again, echoing in every direction. "But it loses its rhythm. Its soul. Characters begin to wander without purpose. Worlds unravel. Time folds in on itself until meaning dies. Until even the ink forgets what it was meant to form."
Her figure began to dissolve into threads of light — words spilling from her body, fragments of sentences twisting through the air.
"And when the ink forgets its author…" she whispered, "it begins to look for a new one."
Something cold brushed my cheek — a faint stroke, like the touch of an invisible quill. I froze. The darkness rippled.
"Wait—!" I tried to speak, but the world around me began to collapse, folding inward, swallowing itself in silence.
The girl's final words echoed in my head, sharp as a curse:
"You've begun to write back, Carten.
Be careful whose story you finish."
And then I woke.
The fire in Elyndra's hut had gone out. The boy was asleep. The world was silent again.
But on the wall beside me — faint, glowing lines were scratched into the wood.
Three Questions. Three Answers. One Forgotten.
And beneath them, in handwriting not my own:
"You were never meant to stop at three."