Silas wandered through Luthenfall like a phantom in daylight.
The cobbled streets gleamed. The shopkeepers smiled too wide. Children's laughter echoed like birdsong off candy-colored walls. There were magic fountains, dancing lights, talking cats, and floating books that sold themselves. He should've been amazed.
He wasn't.
He felt invisible.
No one looked twice at the quiet boy in plain clothes with hollow eyes.
His hands still trembled when they stopped moving.
Kaela, Arin, and Bram had gone ahead to register a new bounty. They'd offered to bring him, but he'd said he needed air. What he really needed was silence.
And a place to try.
So he found an alleyway. Narrow. Empty. The sky overhead was fractured into golden beams by the gaps in the rooftops.
He pulled the pen from his coat.
It looked ordinary.
A child's pen.
Plastic casing.
Click-top.
Nothing like the weight of the grief it had once borne.
He stared at the wall across from him. A blank stone canvas.
Silas took a breath and clicked the pen.
He wrote.
At first, nothing.
Then—
Ink shimmered.
Faint. Translucent.
He squinted. There it was.
A word.
A sentence.
Then a response.
He had written:
Why am I here?
The wall answered, slowly.
To ask.
He blinked.
Silas scrawled another:
Am I dead?
No.
Then… what is this place?
A world. One of many.
He hesitated.
How big?
The ink hesitated, then replied.
Big enough to break you, small enough to hold.
That answer chilled him more than comforted him.
Are you… alive?
No response.
Are you Him?
Nothing.
He pressed the pen harder.
Can I survive here?
The ink curled like smoke, then faded into a single word:
Write.
Silas's eyes widened.
"Write… what?"
He pointed the pen toward the stone again.
This time, he focused—not on questions, but wants.
He imagined a few silver coins. The currency Kaela had shown him. Small. Unremarkable. He drew the outline.
Then waited.
Nothing happened.
He frowned.
"Come on…"
He exhaled and closed his eyes. Instead of imagining coins, he imagined need. Hunger. Warmth. The sensation of a stomach growling in the night. The memory of being turned away at the door of the bakery, pockets empty.
He pressed the pen again.
This time, he didn't write coins.
He wrote:
I have enough.
And in his palm—warm metal.
Four silver coins.
He stared at them, dumbfounded.
The ink didn't make things. It wrote the story. And the story—somewhere, somehow—obeyed.
The power didn't serve his whims. It listened to his intent.
⸻
Later that evening, Silas sat in a tavern with Kaela and the others. He ate slowly, savoring the soup. The city was bright, yes—but there was something under the glow. A pressure. A false note in the music.
He listened more than he spoke.
And he learned.
This world—Lytheria—was ruled by a Circle of Archmages, who upheld peace with magic laws older than memory. The continents were separated by oceans with beasts the size of towers. Guilds managed both trade and war. Adventurers were paid to maintain balance where kings could not.
Kaela described the city-states that floated in the sky. Arin mentioned the Underworld—a place beneath Lytheria where the rules changed. Bram, quiet as always, mentioned something called the Everpath—"a road that leads through every land, even ones not drawn on maps."
Silas took it in slowly.
But something inside him already knew—
This was just a story.
And he wasn't from its first chapter.
⸻
That night, as they walked the cobbled roads toward the inn, Kaela nudged his shoulder.
"You're quiet."
"I'm… taking it in."
"You're not from here, are you?"
He looked at her.
"No," he said honestly. "I think I fell through a question."
Kaela smiled faintly. "Then you're luckier than most."
They reached the inn, but Silas lingered outside.
Alone again.
He walked to the alley where he'd first written.
He held the pen to the wall again.
This time, he didn't ask why.
He asked:
Am I allowed to change this world?
The answer came slower than before.
Fainter.
Not yet.
Then, below it:
But you will.
Silas nodded.
He looked up at the stars—too many, too close.
And whispered, "Then I'll wait."
⸻
And so the boy walked streets of silver with ink in his veins, the language of stories folded behind his tongue. He was not a hero. Not yet. Just a quiet child asking questions. The city smiled its brightest smile, never knowing what had just passed between cobblestones and starlight: the whisper of authorship—an echo from a place far beyond page or pen.
I am the Narrator.
I do not walk among the characters, yet I see them all. I do not weep, yet I carry every tear they shed. I do not speak unless the silence is too heavy to bear. And in the silence, I watched the boy named Silas, standing beneath a sky too vast for wonder, holding a pen too quiet for war.
He is not a warrior.
He is not a king.
He is not a god.
But one day, every warrior, every king, and every god will ask:
"Who wrote this?"
And the answer will be a boy whose sorrow turned to ink.