The fall felt like drowning without water.
Elias didn't hit the ground. He arrived—jerked into place like a marionette snapping to attention. Light vanished the instant his feet touched solid stone. The air clung to his skin like smoke.
Ash drifted through the air in slow spirals. The sky overhead wasn't a sky at all—it was a dome of cracked obsidian, veined with red light like blood vessels pulsing through rock. He stood in a corridor of burnt stone and broken stained glass. Familiar—and wrong.
He knew this place.
The Cathedral of Hollow Saints.
It had burned in Chapter 12.
Auren had brought it down with the Blade of Varrin to slay the first Apostle.
Now it stood—damaged, yes—but standing.
"Okay," Elias whispered, voice shaking. "This isn't how the story goes."
Somewhere deeper in the cathedral, a bell tolled. It sounded like bone snapping in slow motion.
Behind him, something clicked.
He turned.
Auren Stride stood just feet away, sword drawn, ember runes flickering red-orange across the blade's surface. His hood was down, hair tousled, golden eyes like forged iron narrowed in suspicion.
"Who sent you?" Auren's voice was sharp but calm. Practiced.
Elias froze. "No one."
"You're not supposed to be here."
"I—I know." Elias swallowed. "But I didn't ask to come. I think the book—your book—brought me in."
That earned a twitch of the eyebrow.
"The Hollow Realm," Elias said quickly, "is from a novel. Whispers of the Hollow Realm. I read it. You're the Hollowblood. You fought the Shadow King. You—"
"Stop."
The blade pressed against Elias's throat. Not enough to cut. Just enough to threaten.
"That story's broken," Auren muttered. "Rewritten. The endings are wrong now. People who should be dead walk the roads. Cities flicker in and out of time. The Apostles serve someone else."
He leaned in closer.
"You say you're a reader. But the last time someone said that, an entire province bled ink for three days."
Elias tried not to panic. "I'm not a threat."
"Then why are you marked?"
He pointed to Elias's chest. The symbol still glowed faintly beneath his shirt—twisting lines of text that weren't in any language Elias recognized.
Auren stepped back, slowly lowering the sword. "If he marked you, then you're either a messenger... or a weapon."
"He...?"
"The Author."
Elias's breath hitched. "He's real?"
"Real enough to burn a library mid-thought," Auren said coldly. "He sees everything. He edits our lives. He speaks in margins and rewrites souls."
Elias didn't know what to say.
Auren sheathed the sword with a smooth motion, though his posture remained tense. "Come with me. You won't survive here long on your own."
A scream rang out—high-pitched, unnatural, echoing through the cathedral like a jagged note on broken glass.
Auren's eyes narrowed. "They're already tracking you."
Elias staggered after him as they moved through the shadowed corridors. The deeper they went, the more wrong the world became. Walls bled ink in slow rivulets. Statues watched with eyes that glowed briefly when passed. Words hung in the air like smoke—unfinished sentences floating midair, vanishing when looked at directly.
"This place isn't just a setting anymore," Elias said, voice barely a whisper.
"No," Auren agreed. "It's a draft."
They passed through a torn tapestry that depicted a battle Elias remembered clearly—except in this version, Auren was the villain. Fire consumed everything behind him. The Hollowblood symbol on his chest had been twisted into the mark now glowing on Elias.
"Why does this place feel like a memory someone regrets?" Elias asked.
Auren looked back, expression unreadable. "Because that's exactly what it is."
They emerged from the cathedral into what should have been a courtyard—but the sky above was a patchwork of static, pieces of the world flickering in and out like shuffled pages. One second, the courtyard was stone. The next, a battlefield. Then, a marketplace frozen in mid-collapse.
Auren didn't pause. "Don't stare too long. You'll lose your place."
Elias kept his eyes forward, heart racing. The rules of reality felt loose, like everything was one paragraph away from falling apart.
"What does he want from me?" Elias asked. "The Author?"
Auren didn't answer at first.
Then: "He wants an ending."
They passed under an archway where words were etched into stone—but the letters changed every second, forming lines Elias knew were meant for him.
You don't belong here.
You were never supposed to see the edits.
Close the book, Elias.
He stopped walking.
The words shifted again.
...Or I'll write you out.
Suddenly, the sky split.
Not thunder—paper tearing.
A gash opened above the courtyard, black and vast and bleeding red light. From within, something began to descend—long-limbed, faceless, its body made of quills and dripping punctuation marks that dissolved the ground where they landed.
Auren drew his sword. "Run."