The tower was built from characters—hundreds of them.
Dead names.
Failed arcs.
Abandoned protagonists.
Forgotten villains.
They stacked into walls of bones made from letters.
And sitting atop the throne of their failure was a child.
Small. Pale.
Eyes black as the Ink Sea.
He wrote.
And every time he finished a name on the glowing page in his lap, the page erased itself.
Not burned.
Not torn.
Erased.
As though it had never been.
DarkSun's steps echoed across the shifting floor, which hissed beneath him with phrases too broken to make sense.
The boy looked up.
He smiled.
> "You don't belong here."
DarkSun's grip tightened. His fingers were already slick with ink.
"You know me?"
The boy laughed, voice brittle as dust.
"I erased you once."
---
The room fell silent.
Only the sound of quills scratching in nonexistent air remained.
DarkSun took a slow step forward.
"And yet I'm still here."
The child nodded.
"Because the Reauthor wanted to see what would happen when an Annotation writes back."
He closed the book on his lap and let it float mid-air, spinning slowly.
"Tell me, what did it feel like? When you first realized you were never meant to be?"
DarkSun's eyes didn't blink.
"It felt like freedom."
---
The boy's smile vanished.
He stood, barefoot on a throne of discarded story arcs. The pages crumpled under him, whispering old lines in forgotten voices.
> "I am the Architect of Endings. I don't write stories. I end them."
> "When a plot weakens, I close it."
"When a character defies order, I end them."
"When a name gains power without permission…"
His black eyes glowed.
> "I unname them."
The floating book beside him opened.
A page turned. A single word began writing in bold, red-stained ink:
> DarkSun
---
The glyph inside DarkSun's chest flared.
Pain shot through his spine. His name—his very identity—felt like it was being pulled out syllable by syllable.
He dropped to one knee.
> "You feel that?" the Architect whispered. "That's the price of rebellion. You burned the Codex. But you forgot what held it together."
> "Me."
DarkSun gritted his teeth. Ink boiled across his arms.
> "You're… not the Reauthor."
"No," the boy agreed. "I'm worse."
He raised a hand—and the throne behind him collapsed, releasing a swarm of black butterflies made of cancelled dialogue.
They flew at DarkSun.
---
DarkSun slammed his fist into the floor.
A wave of ink surged out from him—glyphs flashing silver, then red. He summoned his will, not from memory… but instinct.
From his back unfurled a cloak made of unresolved subplots.
From his hand, the Pen of Reversal regrew, its edge no longer shaped like a quill—but a blade.
He spoke a sentence, and the world shivered.
> "I refuse to be unwritten."
The butterflies slammed into his aura and melted—disintegrating into phrases that DarkSun absorbed.
The Architect tilted his head. "Oh. You're learning."
---
In a heartbeat, he was in front of DarkSun.
A hand touched his forehead.
> "Goodbye—"
DarkSun bit down on a word and twisted it.
> "REPHRASE."
Time bent.
The Architect's voice glitched. His sentence turned backward.
DarkSun rose, kicked him through a wall of dissolving tropes, and launched after him.
The Architect crashed into a column of scrapped hero archetypes.
DarkSun landed hard.
> "You want to unname me?"
> "Then say it properly."
The Architect grinned, spitting out ink.
"I don't need to."
---
The floating book exploded into pages.
They formed a circle above them—like a halo made of broken endings.
And from it fell dozens of figures.
Characters long dead.
DarkSun recognized some.
A resistance leader from Chapter -1.
A dragonborn child erased mid-volume.
The alternate Kael from Draft 3.
Even… a fragment of Aeris. But twisted.
> "They all died unfinished," the Architect whispered.
> "They all blame you."
They moved like shadows—fast, silent, hungry for definition.
DarkSun faced them. Alone.
---
The Ink inside him screamed for control.
But if he let it loose—truly loose—this entire plane would collapse.
He couldn't.
But he could fight.
He summoned twin daggers of redacted lore.
Blocked the first strike. Parried the second. Spun low and impaled a fragment through its eye.
It dissolved into ellipses.
Another came from behind.
He flared his aura—story shields formed from counterarguments.
The dragonborn roared. Flame made of rejection arcs. DarkSun weaved a sentence mid-air:
> "Not in this version."
The flame died.
---
But the Architect was watching. Always.
He whispered a new phrase.
> "Bring him… his true name."
A new page formed.
Blank.
Glowing.
DarkSun turned in time to see it—but couldn't stop it.
It touched his chest.
And his vision fractured.
---
He was a child again.
Not in the Ink World.
Not even in a story.
Just… a boy.
At a desk.
Writing in a notebook.
The name "DarkSun" was something he had chosen. Not given.
It wasn't in the story.
It was in the margins.
Written in his own hand.
> "This will be my hero's name."
And then—*
He heard someone speak behind him.
> "That's not your name."
---
The Architect stood in the vision.
Still a child.
Still smiling.
> "You stole that name from a story you never got to write."
> "You're not DarkSun. You're just a forgotten draft."
> "Give it back."
---
DarkSun screamed.
But the scream didn't come from his mouth—it came from the Ink.
Reality snapped.
The memory shattered.
And he was back—on the floor of the throne room—bleeding Ink.
The Architect stepped forward, calm.
> "You're not who you think you are."
> "You're not even a story."
> "You're a discarded intention."
---
And then—
DarkSun stood.
Blood in his mouth. Glyphs on his skin.
He spoke one sentence.
Not loud.
But the world heard.
> "Maybe I was never real…"
> "But this power sure as hell is."
---
His Ink flared black and gold.
The Architect stepped back for the first time.
Because this time…
DarkSun wasn't drawing from the Codex.
He wasn't even drawing from the Reauthor.
He was writing with something deeper:
> Will.
And the ground exploded.
He appeared behind the Architect in an instant.
A blade made of seven names in hand.
He slashed.
The throne collapsed.
The floating book shattered.
And the Architect?
He smiled.
Even as his chest opened with light.
> "You've changed, Inkbearer."
> "That's exactly what I wanted."
---
DarkSun froze.
"What?"
The Architect's body cracked.
> "You're not walking away from stories."
> "You're walking into one that hasn't been written yet."
> "And I'm not your enemy…"
The Architect's form vanished into shards.
> "…I'm just your prologue."
---
DarkSun stood alone in the ruins.
The sky above twisted.
A new world was forming.
And for the first time—
It had no outline.
No canon.
No ending.
Only choices.
And monsters.
And power.
---
He smiled.
> "Let's write something the Reauthor can't erase."
---
TO BE CONTINUED