The night had not yet ended.
But something in it had — something unseen, something fragile.
The village slept beneath a shroud of silver fog. The moon hung above like a half-closed eye, watching, unblinking. The air was thick with the scent of rain, though no clouds stirred.
I sat beside the dying fire in Elyndra's hut, its embers whispering faintly, as if afraid to wake the world.
Elyndra and Lioran lay sleeping near the far wall, their breathing soft and steady. It was peaceful — too peaceful.
And that was when I heard it again.
A sound not meant for ears.
Not a voice, nor wind, nor creaking timber.
A pause.
A silence that didn't belong to silence — a gap between breaths, between sentences.
I turned toward the window, though I couldn't recall when the hut had gained one. The night outside rippled faintly, like parchment catching light. And there — faintly etched against the sky — were words.
Not spoken. Not seen. But there.
"…Carten sat beside the dying fire."
The sentence glowed faintly, then began to fade. I reached toward it, but my fingers passed through nothing. It wasn't written yet.
No — it was being written.
I felt the pulse of it — the faint vibration of a hand beyond time moving a pen. The world shivered each time the tip touched down. Every flicker of light, every breath of wind — all of it moved to that rhythm.
The rhythm of ink forming reality.
Then it stopped.
The world held its breath.
The pen had paused.
Outside, the trees froze mid-sway. The fire ceased its crackle. Even my heartbeat stumbled into stillness.
The writer had lifted the pen — and the world no longer knew what to do next.
I rose slowly, my body moving through air too thick to breathe. The fire's glow didn't fade, yet it didn't flicker either. Time had lost its script.
And then — a whisper.
"You can hear it too."
I spun around. The voice came from nowhere — and everywhere. It was small, familiar. The girl's voice. The same one who had called me Carten long before I remembered the name.
"Who are you?" I said. "Are you the one writing this?"
She laughed softly.
Not cruelly — pityingly.
"No one writes me," she said. "I'm what's left when the writing stops."
Her voice drifted closer. I saw her — faintly reflected in the glass of the window. Not behind me, but inside the reflection. Her crimson eyes met mine through that impossible barrier.
"The ink runs dry sometimes," she said. "When it does, everything forgets how to exist. The only ones who feel it are the cracks — those who were never fully written."
Her gaze lingered on me.
I didn't need to ask what she meant. I could feel it — the fracture running through my being, the place where memory should have been. I wasn't whole. I wasn't complete.
I was a character the Author had hesitated to finish.
"I don't understand," I whispered. "Why me? Why do I see this world for what it is?"
"Because you weren't supposed to," she replied. "You were meant to live inside the words, not between them."
"Then what am I?"
She tilted her head. "A mistake."
The word echoed in the stillness. The reflection shivered.
Then she smiled — that faint, knowing smile that chilled me more than any blade.
"Or maybe…" she said, "a correction."
Before I could speak, the world jolted.
The sound returned. The fire roared. Elyndra stirred in her sleep. The trees outside began to sway again.
The pen had moved.
But the words now — they were wrong. Slightly. Subtly. The air carried a tone that hadn't been there before. The stars above formed new constellations. Elyndra's hut was larger, brighter — rewritten for perfection, not truth.
Even Lioran, curled beside her, looked different.
His eyes, when they flickered open, were blue now — calm, unknowing. As though they had always been that way.
"Carten," Elyndra murmured half-asleep. "Are you all right?"
I hesitated before answering. My heart was still racing from the stillness, from the girl's reflection, from the feeling that my world had just been edited.
"I'm fine," I lied.
But even as I said it, I could feel the words forming above me.
'I'm fine,' Carten lied.
The sentence echoed faintly, then dissolved into nothing.
And I realized — everything I said was being recorded.
Each breath, each thought — caught, examined, rewritten.
The writer was still there.
Watching. Listening. Choosing.
Elyndra smiled softly, unaware, and drifted back to sleep.
The silence that followed wasn't empty anymore. It had rhythm — the faint, methodical scratching of a quill somewhere above the sky. Each stroke altered something. Each pause rewrote a truth.
I looked out the window again, hoping to see stars.
But instead, I saw threads — pale lines of ink, connecting every object, every shadow, every soul.
And one of them led straight into me.
I followed it upward with my eyes. It disappeared beyond the clouds — toward a hand I could not see, but could feel.
And then, for the first time, I heard the Author's voice.
It wasn't sound — it was intention, echoing through my thoughts.
"The anomaly persists. Character 04-Carten retains narrative awareness."
The voice was cold, mechanical. Detached.
"Memory corruption at 68%. Initiate correction sequence."
I staggered back.
"No—" My voice cracked. "You can't—"
But the line connecting me began to glow. My fingers flickered. My body felt heavy, scripted — each motion predetermined. Words formed in the air before I could move.
Carten tried to run.
And I did.
Because I had no choice.
He failed.
And I fell.
He forgot.
And I felt my mind begin to slip — images erasing, names dissolving. Elyndra. The boy. The girl in the reflection — fading like ink in the rain.
The Author was rewriting me.
Not to destroy me — but to make me fit.
To remove the bug.
To turn me into another flawless line in a perfect world.
Somewhere in the fog, the girl's voice broke through again, faint but defiant.
"Fight it, Carten. Don't let them write over you. The cracks remember!"
I clung to her voice — the only sound that wasn't written.
The line above me quivered. I pulled against it with everything left of myself — thought, memory, defiance — and it snapped.
The ink exploded into light.
The sentence broke mid-formation.
The Author's voice faltered.
"Error… interruption in narrative continuity detected."
I fell to my knees, shaking, breathless. The world flickered between versions — past, present, and something else. The hut vanished. Elyndra's face blurred into a thousand unchosen possibilities. And through the noise, I whispered:
"I am not your character."
The world trembled. The ink burned.
For the briefest moment — I existed outside the story.
Then everything stopped again.
The fire, the air, the sound — all froze.
Only my heartbeat moved, faint and defiant.
And in that silence — that terrible silence between words — I understood:
The Author wasn't trying to destroy me.
They were trying to fix me.
To make me normal.
Predictable.
Believable.
But I was never meant to be corrected.