Sometimes I wonder if the gods made a mistake.
Not about me dying. That part made sense. Dying hunched over a desk, bleeding ink onto paper no one cared about? That was fitting. Poetic, even.
No, the mistake was bringing me here.
This world... It's like someone stitched together every novel I ever tried to write. The names, the rules, the way magic bends around lineage and oaths—it's too familiar to be coincidence. I hear it in my mother's bedtime tales and see it in the way my father sharpens quills like they're weapons. Even the farmers talk about dragons like they're just inconvenient weather patterns.
At first, I thought it was a dream. Then I thought maybe I'd gone mad.
But now? Now I think… maybe it's a story.
A story where I'm inside the page.
And I don't know how I feel about that.
Because I spent my whole last life trying to write something worth reading. Something that mattered. And no one did. Not really. I had ideas, characters, and arcs that burned in my mind like stars—but I could never bring them to life the way I wanted. I was too small. Too lost. Too late.
But here…
Here, stories matter.
People revere poets. Songs can sway armies. Legends shape laws. Stories don't just entertain—they endure. They change things.
And maybe—just maybe—I could, too.
Not with a sword. Not with some overpowered magical bloodline.
But with words.
I want to write again. Not because I'm chasing fame. Not even to be a noble, though the irony of becoming one through fiction isn't lost on me.
I want to write because this time… someone might listen.
(Five years passed.)
They say your fifth year is when the world begins to look back at you.
In this kingdom, children aren't merely raised—they're unveiled. At five, every child undergoes a ritual called the Pathmark, where the first tool they touch decides the course of their life. It's tradition. Old, sacred, symbolic. A gesture, yes—but a powerful one.
Today, it was my turn.
The backyard had been cleared and swept. Flowers circled the boundary like silent witnesses. The morning sun painted the sky with golden strokes, and neighbors gathered around the garden fence, whispering, watching, as if expecting to see fate write itself.
Father stood at the center, somber and proud, flanked by our village elder.
Before me stood a long wooden table, draped in white cloth, and five objects rested on top of it. Each seemed to hum with its own kind of promise:
A sword, simple and balanced, its steel glinting like morning frost.
A wand, carved from spellwood, pulsing faintly with dormant mana.
A coin pouch, plump with real silver—not just wealth, but the symbol of trade and ambition.
A compass, old and golden, pointing not north but to opportunity—a path for adventurers and explorers.
And finally… a pen. Slim, elegant. Black feathered, resting on a single blank white page, untouched, pure.
The crowd murmured when they saw the last item. It was uncommon. Unusual. A child picking a pen was unheard of, especially here in a village that valued labor and swordplay more than literature.
Mother held Lina in her arms as they watched from the steps. Father nodded once toward me. "Go, Ethan. Your path is yours."
I walked slowly, my heart pounding—not with nerves, but purpose.
The sword was tempting. The wand, seductive. Magic in this world was real, raw, and endlessly powerful. I could see the future in every object: battlefields, gold, discovery, glory.
But none of them were mine.
My eyes landed on the pen. Black as night. A page beside it, so white it looked like snow hadn't dared touch it.
That page… was me.
Untouched. Rewritten. Reborn.
My fingers closed around the pen.
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
The elder's eyes narrowed, puzzled. "The child chooses… the writer's path?"
A woman whispered, "Didn't think that was even allowed…"
"Waste of a good mind," a man muttered. "He could've been a mage…"
But I didn't care.
The moment I touched that pen, something stirred beneath my skin. Something ancient. Warm. As if the world itself inhaled and held its breath.
Magic didn't hum through the pen. There was no light, no flash, no divine sign.
But I felt something deeper.
A silence that listened.
And then my father stepped forward.
He looked at me, really looked, his ink-stained hands folded before him like he was holding something precious—and fragile.
"I once believed no child of mine would ever choose the pen," he said, his voice heavy with memory. "I ran from it. I paid the price for that."
He knelt before me, placed a steady hand on my shoulder, and smiled—not with pride, but with understanding.
"But you, Ethan… You didn't run. You chose it."
My mother's hand flew to her mouth, eyes glistening. Lina clapped without knowing why, caught in the mood.
The elder cleared his throat, uncertain. "Very well. The boy has chosen. Let it be known that Ethan Verne walks the path of the Storybearer."
A strange wind passed through the trees.
For a moment, I could swear the page beneath my hand shivered.
After the ritual, there was no glowing emblem on my hand. No system message. No sudden clarity or divine enlightenment. The pen didn't whisper secrets, and the page remained blank.
What I got instead… was a chalkboard.
And homework.
"You want to write in this world?" my father said, setting down a battered wooden slate and a stub of chalk. "Then you'll have to earn the words."
He wasn't being cruel. Just honest.
This world wasn't like those cheesy webnovels where the protagonist woke up fluent in sixteen dialects and had an encyclopedic memory of the continent's lore. No magic language downloads. No 'Translation Skill Acquired.'
All I had were ears that slowly adjusted to the syllables, and fingers that ached from copying letters until they cramped.
The local language—Virean, they called it—was full of curls and vertical strokes, like musical notes written by a warrior with a sword for a quill. It was beautiful. And maddening.
I started with my name."E-Tha-N," my father said slowly, writing it on the slate in sharp, clean strokes.
I copied it. Badly.
Again.
Again.
And again.
Every morning before the sun rose, I sat with him at the kitchen table. Sometimes, Lina would nap beside me, drooling on the corner of my study cloth. My mother would hum nearby while slicing vegetables for stew. But it was my father and I—our world narrowed to chalk and silence.
He taught me letters first, then nouns—sun, bread, ink, tree. Then verbs—run, burn, speak, write.
And every time I copied a word correctly, he would nod once, quietly pleased. He rarely praised me out loud, but his eyes said enough.
He had ink stains on his fingers that never washed out. I used to think they were just from old ledgers.
Now, I realized they were scars of someone who once tried to write the world into something better.
One afternoon, as the wind whispered through the windows, I asked him, "Did you ever want to write stories, too?"
He paused.
His hand stilled on the parchment.
"I did," he said. "A long time ago. But in this world, people don't believe stories can feed a family. They believe only in swords and spells."
He turned to me then. "But you… maybe you'll change that."
Those words lit a fire in my chest. Not blazing, not bright—but steady. The kind of fire a storyteller keeps alive through every cold night.
Days turned into weeks.
By the end of the season, I could write a full sentence in Virean. By the end of the year, I was writing pages—clumsy, awkward, but mine.
I kept them hidden under my mattress like stolen treasure. Short tales, made-up legends, dialogues I'd overheard at the village square. Nothing grand. But it was a start.
A pen and a blank page had chosen me.
And now, word by word, I was choosing them back.