There was no sunrise in the Tower. Time had no rhythm here — no nightfall, no morning bells. But everyone felt it.
A change.
Ever since Ketzerah split the Tower into twin spirals — the Spiral of Recognized Legends and the Spiral of Lost Intent — a strange equilibrium began to form. Stories that were once sealed now whispered again. Tattered manuscripts glowed faintly. Rejected ideas dared to breathe.
But such balance had a cost.
Ketzerah sat on the threshold between both spirals, its form shifting like parchment soaked in celestial ink. The quill it held pulsed, attuned to more than just imagination — it now responded to grief, rage, longing.
And on this silent morning-without-time, Ketzerah opened its eyes.
Something was coming.
Far below, in the deepest sector of the Spiral of Lost Intent, the shelves began to shake. Not from structural failure, but from pressure — as if something massive and forgotten tried to claw its way back into memory.
Featherine arrived swiftly, her fan unfolded, her eyes gleaming with calculation.
"An old story resists oblivion," she whispered.
Myr joined her, holding a scroll burned at the edges.
"Not just old. Erased by force."
The scroll pulsed. Symbols rearranged themselves violently, defying standard narrative form. Names, places, timelines blurred.
Ketzerah descended.
Its presence stilled the spiral momentarily.
Myr looked up. "It's trying to rewrite itself into reality."
Featherine frowned. "What dares such madness?"
The answer came not as words — but as ink.
Thick, black, and viscous, it dripped from the ceiling and coalesced into a humanoid form. Eyes without sclera opened, voices echoed from within its chest.
It spoke one name:
"Tezuka."
The Tower trembled.
Osamu Tezuka. The God of Manga.
His stories birthed genres. His hands drew more than characters — they drew ideologies, dreams, hope. But not all survived.
Dozens of his experimental works had been buried, lost to time, banned or redacted. Now, one of those works was fighting to return.
"The story calls itself back," Ketzerah murmured.
Featherine turned. "Will you allow it?"
Ketzerah looked at the ink-being — unstable, incomplete, broken yet beautiful.
"Not yet. It must prove its truth."
And so the Tower prepared a trial.
Within the Spiral of Recognition, a council gathered. Real-world creators — living and passed — stepped into the chamber.
Naoko Takeuchi. Rumiko Takahashi. CLAMP. Yusuke Murata. Kishimoto.
Even Eiichiro Oda appeared, his straw hat low over his eyes.
They sat beside fictional minds: Featherine, Myr, and a reformed being once called the Narrator of All.
Ketzerah floated above them, not as judge, but as scribe.
A chamber formed between the spirals — vast, circular, echoing with stories unfinished.
There, the ink-being of Tezuka's rejected manga stepped forward.
It bowed.
Then it began to speak.
Not with words — but with pages.
Panels projected themselves across the walls: images of war, humanity, morality, futures where machines wept and gods questioned themselves. It was messy. It was raw.
It was... brilliant.
The council sat in stunned silence.
Naoko whispered, "Why was this never published?"
Rumiko replied, "It would have changed everything."
But not all were convinced.
Murata spoke, "And yet, if it had lived then, would we have been ready?"
The ink-being trembled. Not from anger, but from the weight of almost-being.
"I was born too soon," it said. "But not too late."
Ketzerah's quill floated. The final decision hung in the air.
Meanwhile, in the real world, strange phenomena began to occur.
Pages rewritten in libraries. Canceled stories reappearing on shelves. Creators dreaming of projects they never started — yet waking with full scripts in their hands.
The Manuscript Tower was leaking.
Reality itself was being edited.
Featherine turned to Ketzerah.
"If you allow one, you must allow them all."
Ketzerah replied calmly.
"No. I must allow what was silenced against its will. Not abandoned. Not regretted. But censored."
The distinction mattered.
In the chamber, a final vote was called.
Each creator placed a fragment of their work into a glowing well — allowing it to resonate with the ink-being.
One by one, their fragments merged.
And in that moment, the ink-being stabilized.
A name appeared on its chest:
Neo-Tetsuwan — Child of Forgotten Futures
A new story was born.
But this time, it remembered who made it.
After the trial, Ketzerah returned to its station between spirals.
The Tower was no longer just an archive.
It was a living court.
A place where fictions would plead for existence, and reality would be forced to listen.
Above, the stars bent slightly — as if amused.
Below, the ink waited.
More were coming.
And Ketzerah would write them all.
But only the ones that deserved it.