The Book is already open when he becomes aware of himself.
Not waking—that implies sleep, and he does not remember sleeping. Awareness arrives the way ink does when it first touches paper: spreading slowly, decisively, without asking permission.
His fingers are curled around the lower corner of a page.
The leather beneath his palm is warm. Not body-warm. Not living. Warm the way something gets when it has been held for a very long time and refuses to cool.
He does not look at the words yet.
He knows better.
The room is small. Pale walls. No windows. The air tastes faintly metallic, like rain remembered too late. There is a table, a chair, and the Book. That is all. No door he can see. No light source he can identify. The light simply exists, evenly, like it was written that way.
His chest tightens.
I've been here before.
The thought arrives without punctuation, without context. It doesn't feel like memory. It feels like a conclusion reached too quickly.
He swallows. His throat is dry.
The Book exhales.
Not sound. Pressure. A subtle flex along the spine, the way an old house settles at night. He stiffens anyway, fingers tightening reflexively on the page, and for a moment he is absurdly afraid that if he lets go, it will close itself and something terrible will happen.
He does not know what that something is.
That frightens him more.
Slowly, carefully, he looks down.
The page is filled.
Not densely. Not dramatically. Just a few lines, written in a hand that is unmistakably his and yet feels like it belongs to someone who knows him better than he does.
I exist in a room of pale walls.
The ink is still wet.
It smells wrong.
Not chemical. Not sharp. It smells like old paper and copper and something softer underneath—something like regret left out in the rain.
His stomach turns.
"I didn't…" His voice catches on the sound, thin and unused. He clears his throat, tries again, quieter. "I didn't write that."
The room does not respond.
The Book does.
The ink at the end of the sentence shivers, just slightly, as if acknowledging the lie without bothering to correct it.
He closes his eyes.
Think, he tells himself. Start small.
He opens them again and scans the room more deliberately. The table is bare except for the Book. The chair creaks when he shifts his weight, the sound too loud in the stillness. There are faint cracks in the walls now—hairline fractures he is sure were not there a moment ago.
One of them runs vertically, floor to ceiling, like a scar.
He follows it with his eyes and feels a strange pressure behind his forehead, as if the crack is pulling on something inside him.
"No," he murmurs. "No, don't—"
The crack widens.
Not much. Just enough to reveal something darker beneath the pale surface. Not shadow. Not depth. Ink.
It bleeds outward, slow and deliberate, staining the wall in soft, spreading veins.
His breath stutters.
He looks back at the Book.
Retroaction is merciless.
The sentence is not there.
Not yet.
His hands are shaking. He hadn't noticed until now. He presses his thumb into the side of the page, grounding himself in the texture of the paper. It is thicker than it should be. Heavier. The fibers resist him slightly, like skin that does not want to be cut.
"I need to write," he whispers.
The words feel true in the way instincts do—unquestioned, unavoidable.
He reaches for the pen resting in the gutter.
He does not remember picking it up before.
The pen is heavier than it looks. Dark metal. No markings. When his fingers close around it, a faint ache blooms behind his eyes, sharp enough to make him wince.
He hesitates.
Then, carefully, he lowers the nib to the page.
The ink flows immediately.
No pressure required.
The room is quiet.
As soon as the sentence completes, the air changes.
Not sound. Absence of sound. A deeper silence settles, thick and deliberate, as if the room has decided to take him at his word. The faint hum he hadn't realized was there cuts out abruptly.
His ears ring.
He lifts the pen, heart pounding.
The crack in the wall stops bleeding.
The ink freezes mid-creep, glossy and black.
His breath comes fast now. He stares at the words, then at the room, then back at the words again.
"I did that," he mutters.
The idea should terrify him.
Instead, it feels like relief.
Control—even this small, even this fragile—wraps around his ribs and loosens something inside him that had been clenched for too long.
He swallows and lowers the pen again.
I am alone.
The chair across from him vanishes.
Not dramatically. No flash, no sound. It simply ceases to have ever been there, leaving behind a faint impression in the air, like warmth where a body had been.
His chest tightens.
"That's not…" He trails off. He doesn't know what he was going to say. Not what? Not what he meant? Not what he wanted?
The ink bleeds slightly at the end of the sentence, feathering outward as if uncertain.
He feels it then—the pull. Not from the room. From somewhere deeper. A hollow behind his sternum, aching with a familiarity that makes his vision blur.
A name rises unbidden.
Elara.
His hand jerks.
The pen scratches a thin, jagged line across the page.
Pain flares behind his eyes, sudden and intense. He gasps, free hand flying to his temple as if he can physically hold the sensation in place.
"No," he whispers. "No, no—"
The ache sharpens.
He knows this pain.
He doesn't know why he knows it, but the certainty is absolute.
Elara.
His throat closes.
Slowly—too slowly—he lowers the pen again.
I loved a woman named Elara.
The ink reacts violently.
It surges, bleeding backward through the page, smearing the earlier sentences into dark, abstract shapes. The words blur, dissolve, collapse into something like a Rorschach stain, pulsing faintly as if alive.
The room responds in kind.
The ink in the wall fractures spreads, branching outward in frantic lines. The pale surface softens, sags, as if melting. The table's edges blur. The floor ripples under his feet.
And then—
She is there.
Not fully. Not solid. A suggestion of a figure coalescing near the far wall, light bending gently around her outline. Her hair is wrong—too long, or too short, he can't tell—but the shape of her face hits him like a physical blow.
He cannot breathe.
"Elara," he says aloud.
The sound lands in the room like a gunshot.
She turns.
Her eyes meet his.
Recognition flares across her face, bright and immediate, and for one impossible heartbeat he believes—truly believes—that this is enough. That writing her name has pulled her back intact, that whatever he lost can be undone if he is careful, if he is—
The ink screams.
Not sound. Motion.
It surges forward, tearing through the page, through the air, through her. Her form smears, stretches, dissolves into black streaks that streak across the room and splatter against the wall behind her.
She does not scream.
She reaches for him.
Her hand dissolves inches from his chest.
The room echoes with absence.
He collapses forward, bracing himself on the table, gagging as if he has been punched in the gut. His vision swims. Tears blur the page beneath him, splashing uselessly against the ink.
"No," he gasps. "Please. I—I didn't mean—"
The Book is still.
Too still.
In the margin, beside the ruined sentence, new text appears. Smaller. Fainter. Written at a slight angle, like an afterthought.
She was never yours to reclaim.
His chest convulses.
He shakes his head, hard, as if he can dislodge the words physically. "You're wrong," he whispers. "You're wrong. She was—she was real."
The margin does not argue.
That is worse.
He presses his forehead against the table, eyes squeezed shut, breathing in short, broken pulls. The ink smell is stronger now, clinging to the back of his throat.
"I'm sorry," he murmurs, to the room, to the Book, to the space where she had been. "I'm sorry. I won't— I won't do that again."
A pause.
Then, soft as a memory misremembered, a voice brushes the edge of his awareness.
"You promised," it says.
He freezes.
The voice is gentle. Loving.
Wrong.
He lifts his head slowly.
She is not there.
The room is empty again.
But the voice lingers, faint and echoing, as if bouncing off walls that no longer exist.
"You promised we'd have forever."
His vision blurs anew.
"I tried," he whispers. "I swear, I tried."
The silence stretches.
Then, quieter, uncertain—
"You promised we'd have… what was it again?"
The ache behind his eyes spikes.
The ink on the page ripples.
Her voice fades mid-syllable, pulled apart as the bleeding spreads, dragging the words down into the page until only silence remains.
He stares at the Book, hands trembling, heart hammering so hard it hurts.
Slowly, carefully, he closes his eyes.
When he opens them again, he does not write.
He just sits there, staring at the drying ink, breathing through the pain, letting the weight of what he has lost—and what he cannot stop reaching for—settle into his bones.
In the margin, beneath the earlier whisper, new text appears. Smaller still.
You're still reading.
He does not look at it.
He already knows it's there.
He does not write for a long time.
The ink dries.
He watches it do so, breath shallow, eyes fixed on the page like it might move again if he looks away. The smell fades from sharp regret to something duller, older. Like a book left open in a room no one visits anymore.
The room stays still.
That frightens him more than when it reacts.
His hands ache. Not from strain—something deeper. Like they remember holding something heavier than paper. He flexes his fingers slowly, one at a time, half-expecting to see ink on his skin.
There is none.
"Okay," he whispers.
The word feels useless the moment it leaves his mouth. Too complete. Too confident. He swallows and tries again, softer.
"…okay."
The Book does not respond.
He exhales shakily and lowers his gaze to the ruined page. The first lines are almost gone now, drowned beneath the bleed. Only fragments remain, trapped under black smears like fossils.
…room…
…alone…
His throat tightens.
"I didn't mean to hurt you," he murmurs, though he doesn't know who he's saying it to anymore. The Book? The room? The memory that refuses to settle?
Elara.
He doesn't say her name this time.
He doesn't trust himself.
Instead, he lifts the pen again.
It hesitates above the paper, hovering, as if waiting for permission.
Just something small, he tells himself. Safe.
He writes carefully, deliberately.
I remember her laugh.
The ink flows smoothly.
Nothing breaks.
Relief floods him so suddenly it almost knocks him breathless. His shoulders sag. The room remains intact. The walls do not bleed. The light does not flicker.
He allows himself a shaky smile.
"See?" he whispers, to no one. "I can do this."
The ink darkens slightly, as if settling in.
Then the memory arrives.
Not as an image. As a sensation.
A warmth in his chest. A sound caught halfway between breath and joy. Her laugh—soft, unguarded, always a little surprised, like she hadn't expected happiness to find her.
His vision blurs.
"Oh," he breathes. "There you are."
The room shifts.
Not violently. Subtly.
The air warms. The silence softens. He can almost feel her sitting across from him again, chin tilted, eyes crinkling as she laughs at something he's said without thinking.
He closes his eyes.
For a moment—just one—he lets himself pretend.
When he opens them, the sentence is still there.
But something is wrong.
The ink at the end of the line has begun to thin, fading unevenly, as if the page is drinking it.
"No," he whispers. "No, stay."
The warmth recedes.
The laugh fractures—not disappearing, just… misaligning. The sound repeats itself out of sync, like an echo chasing the original and never quite catching it.
His chest tightens.
"I remember," he insists, voice trembling. "I do. You—you laughed like—"
He stops.
He can't finish the sentence.
The detail slips away from him, slick and sudden, leaving behind only the hollow shape of knowing there was something there.
The ink continues to fade.
The room cools.
His hands shake as he writes again, faster this time, chasing the memory before it can escape.
Her fingers traced my wrist once.
The ink flares, dark and heavy.
Pain blooms sharp and immediate along his right wrist, hot enough to make him gasp. He drops the pen, clutching his arm to his chest.
"Oh—"
His breath stutters.
The sensation is vivid. Intimate. The ghost of her touch, light and absent-minded, thumb brushing over his pulse as if she were counting his heartbeats for fun.
His fingers dig into his sleeve.
"I remember that," he whispers desperately. "I remember. You always did that when you were thinking."
The pressure intensifies.
Not painful. Just… there.
Comforting.
He closes his eyes again, leaning into it, letting himself believe—just for a second—that she is close enough to touch.
Then the pressure slips.
His wrist goes cold.
The ache remains.
He opens his eyes.
The sentence is still there, but it has changed.
The ink has pulled inward, tightening, compressing the words until they look smaller, thinner, like they're ashamed of taking up space.
In the margin, faint and uneven, new text appears.
You don't remember how it felt.
His breath catches.
"That's not true," he says aloud.
The sound of his own voice startles him. It feels intrusive, wrong in the quiet. He lowers it immediately, as if afraid of being overheard.
"I do," he insists, softer. "I just— I don't have the words."
The margin does not respond.
He stares at the page, heart pounding, and feels something inside him begin to crack—not sharply, not all at once, but with the slow, sickening certainty of stress fractures spreading under weight.
One more, he thinks. One more thing. Something she said.
His chest aches with the effort of reaching back through the fog. The memory resists him, like it knows what happens when he pulls too hard.
He hesitates.
Then writes anyway.
She told me: "Don't let go of time."
The ink freezes.
For a terrifying moment, nothing happens.
Then—
Her voice.
Clearer than before.
Closer.
"Don't let go of time, love."
He chokes on a sob.
"Elara," he breathes.
The room feels full.
Not visually. Emotionally. Like the space between objects has been occupied by something gentle and familiar. He can almost feel her standing behind him, chin near his shoulder, the way she used to read over him when he worked late.
He doesn't turn.
He's afraid that if he does, she won't be there.
"I didn't let go," he whispers. "I swear I didn't."
Silence.
Then, softer. Uncertain.
"Don't let go of… me?"
The words falter.
The warmth drains from the room all at once, like someone opening a door in winter. The voice thins, stretches, caught in the ink as it begins to bleed again—slow this time, reluctant, as if even the page regrets what it's doing.
"No," he says. "No, please. You said— you said time."
The sentence on the page trembles.
The last word smears.
time becomes me.
His breath leaves him in a broken rush.
The voice fades mid-breath, unraveling into nothing.
He slumps forward, forearms on the table, head bowed. His heart pounds so hard it hurts. Tears drip onto the page, blurring nothing, changing nothing.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, again and again. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
The Book is heavy beneath his arms.
Not physically. Emotionally. Like it is absorbing every word he doesn't know how to take back.
He stays like that for a long time.
Doesn't write.
Doesn't speak.
Just breathes and aches and stares at the page until the ink is completely dry and the room has gone numb around him.
Finally, slowly, he straightens.
His eyes feel raw.
His hands feel older.
He turns the page.
The next one is blank.
Perfectly blank.
Too clean.
He stares at it, chest tight with the knowledge that whatever he writes next will hurt again—maybe worse, maybe different, but inevitably.
In the lower corner of the page, faint and easy to miss, a single line of text waits. Not written. Not quite.
Still reading.
He looks at it.
For the first time, he feels something new slide in beneath the grief.
Not fear.
Shame.
His fingers hover over the blank page.
"I don't know how to stop," he whispers, to the Book, to her, to whoever might be listening.
The silence does not answer.