The golden glow wasn't sunlight.
It pulsed too slowly, too heavy—like the heartbeat of something ancient and embarrassed to still exist.The kind of light that didn't brighten the world; it reminded it of what it used to be.
I walked toward it anyway.
✦
[ System Notice : Stability Field Degrading — 44 % ][ Warning : Divine Signature Detected ]
"Of course," I muttered. "I save a world and immediately step into god territory."
Arjun's ember stirred uneasily. You don't have to go closer.
"I never have to. I just do."
One day that philosophy will kill you.
"It's already tried."
✦
The ground changed as I walked.Grass turned to parchment.The trees around me bled ink instead of sap.Every leaf that fell carried words I didn't remember writing.
One landed on my shoulder.It read: You were warned once.
I brushed it off. "That narrows it down to everyone."
✦
The path ended at a plain wooden door standing alone in the field.It was old, paint peeling, handle tarnished.
No temples, no lightning, no choirs.Just a door.
[ Location : ??? ]
Arjun's ember flickered. You feel that? The pressure… it's divine.
"Feels more like regret."
✦
When I touched the handle, the door opened without resistance.The air beyond smelled of old paper and thunderstorms.
Inside, the world looked like an abandoned study.Shelves full of unwritten books lined the walls.A desk sat in the center, covered in blank parchment and dried quills.
At first glance, it looked empty.Then I saw him.
✦
He sat slumped behind the desk, head bowed, hands ink-stained.A man—not quite human, not quite anything else.His skin glimmered faintly with the same golden hue that bled from the feather mark on my arm.
A god.Or what was left of one.
✦
Arjun whispered, The signature matches… this is the creator who sent that message.
The god stirred. "Don't call me that."His voice was quiet, like a page turning.
I stepped closer. "Then what should I call you?"
"Lost."
✦
He raised his head.His eyes were bright and hollow at the same time, twin suns burning behind fog.
"You shouldn't be here, Ishaan Reed."
"That's a recurring theme."
He smiled faintly. "You've walked through endings that weren't yours. You've stolen ink that wasn't meant for mortal hands."
"I prefer the term 'borrowed.'"
"Then return it."
✦
The air tightened.The quill mark on my arm flared with pain.
[ System Notice : Divine Recall Attempt Detected ]
The Inkblade hummed, resisting on instinct.I gritted my teeth. "That's not an option."
The god sighed, weariness leaking into every syllable."I wrote this world once. Every rule, every line. But the pen that made it—"
He held up his empty hand."—is gone."
✦
I blinked. "You lost your pen."
"I lost everything it meant."
He gestured toward the shelves. "These are the drafts I never finished. The worlds I started but couldn't control. Yours was the last one that survived long enough to hate me."
"I don't hate you," I said. "I just keep fixing your typos."
That earned a quiet laugh.It sounded like paper cracking.
✦
"You think I don't know what you're doing?" he asked."Rewriting without my permission. Stitching stories that should have ended. Even the gods fear to interfere with narrative law—and yet you, a mortal, keep walking between the lines."
"I don't do it for them."
"Then for who?"
My answer came before I could think."For the ones who don't get to choose their endings."
✦
Something in his expression shifted—sadness, pride, maybe both."You sound like me before I started believing in perfection."
"Look how well that turned out."
✦
He stood slowly, each movement heavy enough to make the air ripple."Do you know what happens when a god loses his pen, Ishaan Reed?"
"I'm guessing not a publishing delay."
He smiled again, tiredly."The world starts writing itself."
✦
He raised his hand, and the study walls vanished.Suddenly I was standing in an endless expanse of parchment.Words wrote themselves across the sky, burning into existence and fading seconds later.
Each sentence felt like a heartbeat.Each heartbeat sounded like thunder.
"This is what happens," the god said. "When the story forgets its author."
✦
[ System Alert : Unstable Narrative Source Detected ][ Advisory : Avoid Direct Contact with Autonomous Script ]
Ink began to rise from the ground, forming shapes—creatures, people, shadows—all moving without purpose, rewriting themselves mid-step.
"Self-writing reality," I murmured. "That explains the fractures."
"Fractures?" the god repeated, looking intrigued.
"It's what I call the holes you left behind."
He laughed quietly. "Then perhaps you're the only one still editing."
The god walked through the ocean of words, each step sending ripples of text outward.Sentences bent away from him, unwilling to touch their maker.
"I tried to stop it," he said softly. "But a story that learns to write itself no longer listens to gods. It listens to… readers."
"Then you've got a feedback problem," I said.
He smiled faintly. "Or an audience I can't control."
✦
Arjun's ember pulsed uneasily. Ishaan, he's losing cohesion.
The god's outline flickered, half dissolving into stray punctuation."I kept writing," he whispered, "to prove I still mattered. Every world I made begged to end, and I couldn't let them."
I stared at him, realizing something."You're not just a creator—you're infected by your own ink."
He looked up. "And what does that make you?"
I hesitated. "The symptom."
✦
He laughed, the sound hollow and endless."Perhaps. Or perhaps the cure."
[ System Notice : Divine Field — Unstable ][ Event : Autonomous Text Convergence Imminent ]
The words on the horizon began to swirl, forming a vortex of sentences spinning faster and faster.The god's eyes widened. "It's rewriting me again."
"Then let's fix it."
He shook his head. "You can't rewrite what doesn't want to exist."
"Watch me."
✦
I pressed my palm to the ground.The quill-scar and feather-mark burned white and gold, intertwining.
Light raced outward, cutting through the storm of words.For a moment, the vortex slowed—paragraphs freezing mid-spin, commas hanging in the air like stars.
[ Title Effect Activated : The Anchor of Fractures ]
But the calm didn't last.New text erupted beneath my feet, rewriting the light itself:
Even anchors sink.
✦
The ground shattered.Ink poured upward in a massive wave, dragging me toward the center of the storm.
Arjun's voice cut through the chaos. You can't hold both divine and mortal ink, Ishaan—it's tearing you apart!
"Then I'll bleed narrative consistency until it listens!"
✦
The Inkblade screamed as I drove it into the ground.Silver and gold light fused, surging up the blade and splitting the storm in two.For one blinding instant, everything froze—every letter, every whisper, even the god himself suspended mid-breath.
Then came silence.
✦
When I opened my eyes, the expanse was gone.We stood back in the small study again.The shelves were dust.The god leaned against the desk, breathing heavily.
His eyes had dimmed, their light reduced to a quiet glow."You weren't supposed to win."
"I don't take suggestions from dying narratives."
✦
He smiled, faint and honest."Then take a gift."
He reached into his chest and drew out a shard of glass filled with ink and light.It pulsed like a trapped heartbeat.
"This was my pen's last memory. It remembers every world that ever ended."
He placed it in my hand.The instant I touched it, whispers flooded my head—voices of forgotten worlds, their endings looping endlessly.
[ Divine Relic Acquired : The Pen's Memory ][ Effect : Access fragmentary histories of erased realities. Use with caution. ]
✦
The god straightened weakly."You may need it when the next rewrite begins."
"When?"
He looked at me—calm, resigned."Every story begins again eventually. Even this one."
His body dissolved into golden dust that swirled around me once, then vanished.
✦
I stood alone in the study, holding the fragment that still pulsed faintly in my palm.It was warm. Heavy. Alive.
Arjun's voice was quiet. You just took the last piece of a god.
"I've been collecting bad habits."
What will you do with it?
"Wait for the next rewrite."
✦
Outside, the golden light faded, replaced by the dull gray of an uncertain dawn.The horizon quivered like a page waiting to be turned.
I tucked the relic into my coat and started walking.Behind me, the study door closed on its own, and faint handwriting scrawled across the wood:
The author has left the room.
✦
I didn't look back.There was no need.Every god, every world, every reader would know soon enough—the story hadn't ended.
It had just lost its pen.