The morning was wrong.
It came too quietly — like a thief imitating dawn, afraid it might be caught.
The air still carried the damp scent of night, and the horizon was the color of bruised silver, trembling with a light that did not belong to the sun.
I rose from the floor of Elyndra's hut. The ashes in the hearth were cold, untouched, yet faint wisps of smoke curled from them as if something invisible had been breathing there moments before. The boy, Lioran, still slept, his hand clutching the edge of a torn blanket.
Elyndra was gone.
I whispered her name, softly — as if sound itself had grown fragile. No answer came, but the walls seemed to listen. The silence pressed close, thick and awake.
Then I noticed the writing.
It stretched across the wood above the hearth, faint and luminous — three questions, three answers, one forgotten.
And beneath it, the same line that had haunted me from the dream:
You were never meant to stop at three.
My pulse quickened.
The girl's voice echoed in the hollow of my chest: You've begun to write back, Carten. Be careful whose story you finish.
Outside, the light shifted — too slow, too deliberate.
It was as if the sun had forgotten how to rise.
The village of Raelthorn stood at the edge of a forest that never looked the same twice. Yet as I stepped outside, it felt… rehearsed.
The same wind. The same rustle of leaves.
Even the crows circled in identical arcs above the thatched roofs, their cries overlapping like a broken record.
A woman drew water from the well. I greeted her.
She looked up, smiled — and said, "The morning's calm today."
A harmless phrase, except she said it again — the same tone, same smile. Then again.
Each repetition slower.
Each syllable dragged like a puppet's limb.
"The morning's calm today. The morning's… calm… today."
I stepped back. The bucket fell from her hand, splashing across the stones — but the water froze midair, glinting like glass, unmoving. Then, just as suddenly, everything resumed — but not as it was.
The woman was gone.
The well was dry.
And the crow's cries were backward — echoing in reverse.
My breath caught. The world was editing itself.
It wasn't a dream this time. I was awake, standing inside an unfinished sentence.
"Lost something, traveler?"
The voice came from behind me — smooth, old, threaded with amusement.
I turned.
A man stood by the crooked fence near Elyndra's home. He wore a long coat of black linen, faded by years, and a wide-brimmed hat that cast his face in half-shadow. His eyes, though, were unmistakable — amber like molten glass, too steady, too real.
I didn't know him.
But something in his presence felt written — deliberate, like a sentence meant to be read.
"Who are you?" I asked.
He smiled faintly. "A reader, perhaps. Or a witness. The line blurs, doesn't it?"
I frowned. "You mean… you know?"
"That you're not entirely of this world?" He tilted his head. "Of course. Every story has one character who realizes they shouldn't exist. But most go mad before they finish their own chapter."
His words chilled me.
"Are you saying this world is… just words?"
He laughed quietly — not cruelly, but knowingly. "If it comforts you, so is yours."
Before I could answer, he reached into his coat and pulled out a small notebook bound in gray leather. He opened it — and I saw my own handwriting inside.
Lines I remembered. Lines I hadn't yet written.
And one, scrawled in red ink, that I didn't recognize:
When the rhythm breaks, the truth begins to hum.
"What does this mean?" I demanded.
He closed the book. "It means your world is beginning to remember what it was before it was told. You should leave this place soon. When the loop resets, even memory will be rewritten."
"Loop?"
He looked up at the still, pale sun. "You'll understand when it repeats."
And then he was gone.
Not vanished — unwritten.
The air where he stood bent inward like a page folding shut, and all that remained was a faint smell of ash.
I ran back to Elyndra's hut.
Lioran was awake now, sitting cross-legged on the floor, his red eyes unfocused — staring at something only he could see.
"Where's Elyndra?" I asked.
He didn't answer at first. His lips moved slowly, forming words that didn't reach sound. When he finally spoke, his voice trembled with something old.
"She's in the pause."
I knelt beside him. "What pause?"
"The one between the words." He blinked. "Didn't you hear it?"
Before I could ask again, the sound came.
A faint hum — distant, rhythmic, pulsing through the air like a heartbeat buried beneath the world. It wasn't music. It wasn't natural. It was the sound of something being erased.
The walls began to shake. Dust fell from the ceiling.
Lioran's voice grew distant. "She said you'd come. She said you'd remember the hum."
"Who said that?" I shouted.
But the world was unraveling — the lines of the hut stretching, splitting, folding in on themselves like pages tearing out of a book. Through the cracks, I saw darkness — the same void as before, vast and patient.
Lioran's small hand clutched mine. "You have to go where the ink bleeds, Carten."
"What do you mean?"
His eyes glowed faintly — crimson light swirling within. "The Author doesn't write there anymore. That's where the lost words sleep."
Then the ground split open beneath him, and I was alone.
I stumbled into the street — or what was left of it. The village had folded in half, roofs bending toward the sky like broken paper. Houses turned inside out, revealing empty hollows where people had been moments before. The air was full of faint whispers — sentences without speakers, looping endlessly.
The hum grew louder.
And through the trembling light, I saw something rise from the ruins — a tower of quills and torn pages, reaching into the sky. It wasn't built; it was written into existence.
Every instinct screamed at me to run — but I couldn't.
My feet moved forward on their own, guided by some invisible rhythm, the beat of a story still being told.
And on the wind, I heard her voice again — the girl from the void, faint and melodic.
"The Author sleeps.
The Ink remembers.
But only you can awaken the sentence that was never finished."
I looked down at my hands — and saw faint lines of glowing text crawling up my skin, wrapping around my wrists like chains.
The hum reached a crescendo — and then, silence.
Everything froze.
The world turned still as glass.
And a single word appeared before me in the air, carved in light:
REWRITE.
Then everything shattered.