Chapter 13 – The Page That Writes Back
The forest slept uneasily after the Redacted Hour passed.
Silence had a weight now — as if something listened through the quiet.
They moved cautiously, shadows shifting as if rearranging punctuation around them. Trees sighed with unwritten stories. Leaves fell in verses.
Kael led them.
The UNEDITED tome pulsed under his arm like a second heartbeat.
But something else had begun to stir.
The book… had started writing on its own.
At first, it was harmless.
A line appearing beneath Kael's fingertips:
"He stepped where no protagonist dared."
Kael frowned. "I didn't think that."
Liora glanced at the text. "Then who did?"
Bran muttered, "That book's not just remembering you anymore. It's anticipating."
Kael snapped the book shut.
Too late.
His name was no longer alone on the title page.
Another name had appeared, scrawled in blood-inked calligraphy:
Authryn.
They reached the Fountain of Between.
A place that wasn't quite here, nor there.
Time pooled like mercury, and reflections wavered — showing futures that could only happen if someone believed in them hard enough.
Nyra knelt by the edge. "This is where the Realms deposit unstable destinies."
Kael peered in.
He didn't see himself.
He saw Authryn.
A figure cloaked in contradictions — wearing Kael's face and yet… not.
Eyes glowing with edit-marks. Hands inked with finality. A crown of broken quills.
The book trembled.
So did the world.
Suddenly, Bran staggered backward, clutching his head.
"My shadow—it's not mine anymore!"
His silhouette detached.
It grinned.
And whispered, "He's rewriting us."
Kael drew the book close. "Who is?"
The shadow pointed toward the sky, where the stars began blinking — not like lights…
But like cursor lines, deleting and redrawing constellations.
In the distance, a figure stood at the edge of the fountain's mirrored surface.
Authryn.
Real now.
Solid.
But… incomplete.
One hand missing. A hole where a heart should beat. Strings of dialogue trailing from his robes like torn thoughts.
"You gave me existence," Authryn said, voice made of echo and graphite. "But not meaning."
Kael stared. "You're a glitch. A bleed-through."
Authryn took a step forward. "I am the story that finished itself when you were afraid to."
He held out a hand.
"Let me in. Together, we become a novel too powerful to be edited."
Liora unsheathed her blade. "Touch him, and I'll erase you."
Authryn smirked. "I'm already a revision."
Suddenly, the sky cracked.
From it fell pages — not from Kael's book.
But from every book ever written.
Fables, forgotten heroes, undone epics — all cascading down in a storm of unanchored lore.
The Realms were bleeding fiction.
Kael whispered, "We crossed the line…"
Bran's voice was ragged. "No. We tore it in half."
The UNEDITED book opened on its own.
A sentence wrote itself across the next blank page:
"Only one version of Kael can survive this chapter."
Kael turned to Authryn.
"You want meaning?"
He slammed the book shut.
"Then earn it."
And the fight between Writer and Reflection began.
Ink against ink.
Word for word.