The second word lingered in Liora's mind like a splinter under the skin — small, invisible, but impossible to ignore.
For days, she didn't speak it. She barely slept. She didn't dare open the prayer book again, afraid more words would appear.
But words have a way of growing in silence.
By the fourth night, she dreamed of a quill writing across a sky of ink. It wasn't held by a hand, but by something without shape — a darkness that noticed her noticing it. The quill paused, then wrote her name.
The voice that followed was not sound, but pressure in her skull:
The story waits for you.
---
The Door That Wasn't
She woke to knocking. At first, she thought it was her door. But the sound came from the wall opposite her bed — a wall that had no door at all.
The knocking stopped. Then, slowly, a seam appeared in the wood.
> Voice from beyond the wall: "We can speak directly, if you let me in."
Liora stumbled back, heart pounding.
> Liora: "You're the author."
Voice: "I am the one who remembers how things were… and how they could be."
The seam widened, revealing a sliver of blackness deeper than night. Inside it, letters drifted like dust motes, glowing faintly — fragments of language waiting to be spoken.
> Voice: "Finish my Sentence, and I will give you a world without limits. No death. No loss. Only what you will."
---
The Refusal
For a moment, she felt the pull. The thought of undoing every sorrow, every mistake, every moment of helplessness was intoxicating.
But she remembered the stranger's warning: There will be no difference between you and it.
She closed her eyes.
> Liora: "If I finish your Sentence… I stop being me."
The blackness shivered.
Voice: "You stop being small."
The seam in the wall snapped shut. The room was silent again — but she knew the offer hadn't gone away. The second word still pulsed in her mind, waiting for the third.
And in the wind outside, she could swear she heard the scratching of a quill.