Three days had passed since Lyris led Tennen out of the chapel.
Three days, and the boy still hadn't spoken.
The village believed he was frightened by wolves. They said it quietly, behind closed doors, while their eyes flicked toward the woods and their hands tightened around half-rusted tools. But Lyris had seen what they refused to imagine. He knew silence was not a sign of peace.
It was a symptom.
Lyris spent his nights awake, drawing the Specter in charcoal—sketch after sketch, none ever feeling quite right. Its limbs were too long, too still. The way it tilted its head, like a thing remembering how to mimic curiosity. It hadn't attacked. But that didn't make it safe. That made it worse.
"System," he whispered, as moonlight filtered through his window. "Is the chapel a boundary?"
[Affirmative. Spiritual anchor. Binding threshold confirmed.]
"What kind of entity needs a chapel to be kept in check?"
[Unknown.]
Lyris leaned back against the cold wooden wall. His breath left him in a quiet exhale. The village slept. He didn't have that luxury.
He didn't trust this world yet. Not the way he used to trust fiction.
In books, a Specter had rules. Weaknesses. Lores. Here? He wasn't even sure if reality followed logic.
That morning, while chopping wood, something shifted beneath his foot. A hollow sound. Not the normal thump of packed dirt, but the soft echo of empty space.
He paused. Shifted the woodpile aside. Beneath, part of the ground had slumped, revealing a splintered crack in the soil. Too straight to be natural.
He crouched.
Scraped at it with a branch.
Wood gave way to stone. A lid? No—more like a slab. Square-cut. Buried shallow.
[Unknown structure detected. Interference present. Deeper analysis disabled.]
"What kind of interference?"
[Residual mental field. Likely sealed by intent, not material.]
Intent.
"Then we break it with reason," he muttered.
He returned that night with a crowbar and candle wax melted into a lantern shell. Aela had gone to sleep early—she didn't ask where he went anymore. Some part of her suspected he was touched by something. She hadn't been wrong.
The slab came loose with enough leverage. Beneath it, stairs spiraled down.
Another hidden space.
This one, not bound by wood or time.
The air smelled of burnt parchment and rusted ink.
Lyris descended carefully. Each step groaned beneath his weight, but the structure held. The walls were carved with symbols—some he recognized from system entries. Others... even the system stayed silent.
He reached the bottom.
A single room.
Stone walls. Iron shelves embedded in them. Not a library—no books. Not quite a tomb either.
At the center stood a podium. On it, a cube. Smooth. Black. Polished like obsidian. Not carved. Grown.
[Cognitive Relic Detected. Classification: Thoughtstone.]
"Thoughtstone?"
[A storage unit for abstract consciousness. Reads memory. Projects fragments. Rare. Unstable.]
He reached toward it.
The moment his fingers brushed its surface—
—the room vanished.
He stood in a hallway of mirrors.
No reflection showed him. Only flickers. Memories. Scenes from Earth.
His old apartment.
The coffee mug with ink-stained lips.
The bookstore where his first novel flopped.
A funeral. His. News flashing on cracked phone screens. "Dozens dead in Shibuya mall collapse. Roof cave-in blamed on seismic aftershock."
He reached toward one of the mirrors.
It shattered before his fingers touched it.
[Mental Resistance +1]
He dropped to one knee. The weight of memory dragged him like iron shackles.
Then came the voice.
Not the system.
Something older.
"You write stories. But you never finish them."
It wasn't accusation. It was a statement. Like truth. Like death.
Lyris stood slowly.
"I died writing one."
The voice didn't respond.
Instead, the mirrors began to crack. One by one. Until only one remained.
He stepped toward it.
It showed a field. The village. Then the chapel.
Then the Specter.
Standing not inside, but outside. Watching the fields. Watching him.
It hadn't vanished that night.
It had moved.
He gritted his teeth. "System. Show location of Specter entity."
[Tracking Unavailable. Proximity: Moderate.]
"Define moderate."
[Within walking distance.]
He left the vision chamber in a rush, climbing out of the buried stairwell. Night had deepened. Fog hugged the fields.
He stood outside, staring toward the chapel's direction.
And there—
At the edge of the trees—
A flicker of movement.
Too still to be wind.
Too real to be dream.
The Specter stood.
Watching.
Lyris didn't flinch.
He whispered under his breath:
"I'm not your story."
The Specter tilted its head—again, that same movement.
Then, it lifted a hand.
A gesture.
Not an attack.
An offer.
Then it stepped back—and vanished into the trees.
Not vanished like smoke.
Vanished like a curtain pulled across stage.
The system pinged.
[Entity Marked: Specter Class. Intent Shift: Observation → Engagement]
Lyris exhaled.
He wasn't just being watched anymore.
He was being invited.
The wind shifted.
Lyris didn't move. Still as a statue, he stared at the place where the Specter had stood. There was no trail, no sound of retreating footsteps—just fog thickening like breath on glass.
The System didn't speak again.
It didn't need to. Lyris understood something had changed. The Specter had watched. Then it had beckoned. And now, it waited.
It wanted him to follow.
He didn't.
Not yet.
He turned, walked back to the wooden house his family called home. The thoughtstone's memory still burned in his skull—like phantom fingers tapping against glass.
[System Log Updated: Entity Class: Specter. Intent: Engagement. Thought Relic Recorded.]
"System," he said softly, shutting the door behind him. "What's the risk of accepting an invitation from something we don't understand?"
[Unknown. Probability branches exceed calculable parameters. Risk classified as incalculable.]
"That's just your polite way of saying I'd be an idiot."
[Clarification: Not idiocy. Merely... premature.]
He let out a breath. Then smiled faintly.
"I'll take that as progress."
His room was small. Bare. Wooden walls, a bed of straw and linen, and the faint smell of pine. But tonight, it felt smaller. The silence pressed harder. Because now he knew the village was not a refuge.
It was a boundary.
And boundaries—every author knows—exist to be crossed.
The next morning, the village was different.
Not in the way it looked. But in the way it breathed.
Tennen still didn't speak, but he clung closer than usual. Aela watched Lyris from the kitchen, eyes too sharp to pretend everything was fine.
He ate quietly. Listened to the wind against the roof. Outside, the farmers spoke in hushed tones. A few had begun stacking wards made of ash-branches on their doors. Some whispered about cursed children. Others about night spirits.
They didn't have his system.
They only had fear.
And sometimes, Lyris thought, fear knew things logic never could.
That afternoon, Lyris returned to the place the Specter had beckoned from. He waited until the village noise had faded behind the trees. His footsteps were careful. No sword. No torch. Only a satchel with parchment, ink, and a piece of charcoal.
He didn't come to fight.
He came to understand.
The path split after ten minutes. One direction led toward the ruined chapel. The other—into thicker woods. Where trees leaned like old bones and sunlight fractured between branches.
He chose the unknown path.
Deeper.
Quieter.
He walked until the light began to fade. Then he saw it.
A circle of stones. Carved. Burned. Each marked with a single line of text, in a language not meant for mortal tongues. But the system whispered to him—
[Oldscript. Ritual Binding Markers. Purpose: Memory Containment.]
Inside the circle, nothing lived. Not even insects.
Lyris stepped toward the edge.
He didn't cross.
Instead, he sat.
Pulled out a sheet of parchment.
And waited.
Minutes passed. Then an hour. Stillness settled like frost.
Until—
The shadows within the stone circle twisted.
Not forward.
Upward.
The Specter didn't emerge—it revealed itself, like a painting fading into view. Its form was the same. Long-limbed. Masked. But something about it now seemed… less alien.
More human.
And more terrible because of it.
It stared at him.
Lyris didn't flinch.
"I know what you are," he said. His voice was low, even. "You're memory given form. A fragment of something older. Maybe broken. Maybe left behind."
The Specter tilted its head.
Not in confusion.
In acknowledgment.
Lyris held up his charcoal. "Tell me a story."
For the first time, the Specter moved.
Not toward him. Not to attack.
It knelt.
And carved something into the dirt with one finger.
A shape. An emblem. A single, haunting image.
A book.
Split in two.
And beneath it—a name he hadn't heard in years.
"Eldris."
His breath hitched.
That was the name of the novel he'd been writing.
The one he never finished.
The one he died with.
"System," he whispered, eyes wide. "Is this connected to my previous life?"
[Confirmed. Anomaly Detected. Narrative Echo Present.]
A narrative echo.
A remnant from the world he came from.
"Then this isn't just a world," Lyris muttered. "It's a story. My story."
[Correction: A co-authored narrative. Your influence detected. But not exclusive.]
Not exclusive.
Someone else had written part of this.
Someone who had access to his unfinished manuscript.
Or worse—someone who was finishing it without him.
His eyes locked on the Specter. "You're a character."
The Specter didn't respond.
But Lyris saw it now.
The Specter had never been a monster.
It was a message.
A walking question.
Something—or someone—wanted him to remember. To return. To write.
But he wouldn't be their pawn.
If this world was half his, then he'd reclaim the other half with ink and intent.
With thought.
With purpose.
The Specter reached out again—open palm.
An invitation.
Lyris stood.
Stared at that palm.
Then extended his hand.
Not to accept.
To place his charcoal in the Specter's grip.
"Tell me your story," he said. "And I'll write the ending myself."
The Specter curled its fingers around the charcoal.
Then vanished.
No smoke.
No light.
Just absence.
Lyris turned away.
And for the first time since waking in this world, he smiled without fear.
Not because the danger was gone.
But because the rules were finally starting to make sense.