The quiet didn't last.
It never did—not in this world.
By the time we got back to Duskridge, the fog had thickened into a dull, sour mist. Players wandered in and out of the zone like ghosts, voices clipped by lag or poor rendering. An event was running in the adjacent region, and most of the town had emptied for it.
Which meant fewer witnesses.
Good.
I wasn't ready for more eyes. Especially not after what the Lexicon had shown me.
Lyra leaned against the fountain in the square, boots muddy, hood half-drawn.
"You okay?" she asked.
"I don't know," I said.
I sat next to her, the Lexicon humming at my side, unusually silent for once—like it, too, was thinking.
For a long while, we didn't speak.
Just listened.
To distant swords clashing. The wind whistling through broken shingles. A lute playing off-key in the inn.
And then the scream came.
Not loud.
Not from nearby.
But real.
We were on our feet in seconds.
The sound came from just outside the herbalist's cottage.
An NPC girl—one of the ambient child characters that usually just ran fetch quests—was crouched on the ground, crying. Her face was glitched. Not gory. Not scary. Just... wrong. Her texture looped every three seconds. Her hands flickered into place and then vanished again.
A player stood over her, looking nervous.
"I didn't mean to," he said. "I was trying to use a charm. It wasn't supposed to overwrite her—"
"What did you use?" I asked.
The player showed me. A minor cosmetic mod item—a skin modifier meant for pets. Somehow, it had applied to the NPC.
It shouldn't have worked.
But the Lexicon warmed at my side again.
[Thread Signature Detected: Interruption / Echo Imprint]Possible Correction: Yes
Lyra looked at me. "You can fix her?"
I opened the book.
It didn't open to a spell.
It opened to a blank page.
And I understood.
It wanted me to write something that had never existed before.
[Spellwriting Initiated: Thread Patch (Unstable Prototype)]Target: Static NPC – Class: Ambient Child Primary Intent: Restore default animation state and visual syncCost: Ink x3 | Memory Burn (Light)
I wrote carefully. Slowly.
Not copying. Not casting.
Creating.
The glyphs formed like tiny loops of sound—echoes repeating until they resonated just right.
When I pressed my palm to the page, they leapt from the parchment like smoke and coiled around the girl.
Her form flickered once.
Then stabilized.
Eyes clear. Skin smooth. Texture loop reset.
She blinked at me. Smiled.
[Thread Repaired – Error Signature Removed]NPC Memory Field: Unstable (Residual)Note: This action has been logged.
Lyra whistled low. "That's... new."
"It's not a combat spell," I said.
"No," she agreed. "It's something worse."
I looked at her.
"You didn't just fix her. You changed her. That patch? That wasn't in the game. You created it."
And I felt it then.
A sharp tug behind my eyes.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: Memory Cost Applied – Personal Recall Suppressed]1% total memory saturation reached.
I had written something real.
And the world had taken something in return.