The night was quiet.
Not an ordinary quiet, but a quiet that felt like the world was holding its breath.
Harith sat leaning against the wall of the house, the light of a small candle dancing in front of his face. Each shadow on the wall moved like letters trying to form words.
His hands were shaking. In his grasp, there was a piece of paper that had just been found under the rotting wooden floor as if it had been waiting for him for thousands of years.
"Chapter 47 — The Death of Lyria."
He stared at the title for a long time, his chest starting to tremble slightly.
Impossible. This world had only "been" in Chapter 9, but in his hands was a sheet of the future that should not have existed yet.
He opened it slowly. The letters were not ink, but like scars on paper.
Each line felt like a memory he was trying to push out of his head.
"She smiled, even as the world burned around her."
"He called her name for the last time."
And at the end of the last page was his own name written in dried blood.
"Written by Harith Hadami."
Harith's breath stopped.
He took two steps back.
The candle in front of him went out without a breath. The world around him was completely silent, as if time refused to move on.
"What... what is this?" his voice cracked softly. "I haven't written this... I haven't written anything yet…"
But the world didn't answer.
Only the sound of his own heartbeat could be heard, getting louder, more punishing.
---
He left the house, the paper still clutched. Outside, the sky was dark red like spilled ink.
Lyria stood in the middle of the field, her hair blowing in the wind, her gaze far away towards the stars.
"Harith," he said softly, "why do you look scared?"
Harith could barely answer. He looked at the living girl, smiling, breathing but her name was already in the death chapter.
He tried to smile but his lips were stiff. "It's nothing. I'm just... a nightmare."
Lyria smiled slightly. "If you are afraid, write something happy."
The words stabbed her.
If you are afraid, write something happy.
That was a sentence she herself had written years ago in the first draft of The Song of Two Stars.
She suddenly understood something.
The entire world was not just trapped in her writing but was rereading what she had once created and making it a reality, chapter by chapter.
---
The night was getting late.
Harith sat under a tree, the sheet in his lap. He read it again and each time he read it, the last sentence changed slightly.
"He will watch her die."
"He will let her die."
"He wrote her death with his own hands."
His hands began to bleed not from the wound, but the ink on his fingers began to absorb into the skin.
It was as if the world was rewriting him, making him a guilty character.
Tears flowed slowly. "If I rewrite him, can I change his fate?"
There was no answer.
Only the wind carried a faint voice, a voice he had heard from the sky long ago.
"Every writer… is the first guilty reader."
---
He looked towards Lyria who was sleeping under the tree across the street.
For the first time, he felt afraid to look at the person he loved.
Afraid that every word that came out of his mind could kill the girl.
The paper was now blank. All the writing was gone except for one last sentence, which slowly emerged like blood seeping from beneath the surface:
"To save her, he must stop reading."
---
Harith looked at the sky.
The stars faded one by one, as if the world was erasing itself from the manuscript.
And he realized that every time he read, the world moved.
Every time he stopped, the world froze.
He gripped the page tightly, his voice whispering, hoarse
"Then… I will stop reading even if the world stops with me."
Then the world was silent.
The rain fell slowly, washing the bloody pages.
And for the first time since he arrived in this world, nothing moved except his heart which continued to beat, holding back the guilt that could not be erased.