I woke to rain that wasn't falling.
Droplets hung in the air like punctuation marks waiting for permission to drop.Each one reflected a memory—some mine, some not.
✦
[ System Notice : Chronological Drift 2.8 % → 4.3 % ][ Warning : Memory bleed detected. ]
I groaned and sat up. The ruins around me had rearranged again.The cathedral wall that once leaned east now faced west.Someone had rewritten geography while I slept.
Arjun's ember flickered awake. You're bleeding time again.
"Morning to you too."
Ishaan, your pulse is skipping seconds. That's not a metaphor.
"I'll catch up."
✦
I stood and brushed off the dirt.My shadow lagged a heartbeat behind me, a half-step out of sync.The golden mark from the feather still glowed faintly beside the quill scar.
It felt like carrying two signatures at once—one trying to erase the other.
Arjun's tone was soft. You keep collecting things that want you dead.
"Occupational hazard."
You don't get hazard pay for reality repair.
"Yet."
✦
I started down the mountain trail.Mist coiled between the rocks, thick enough to taste.Every few steps, I caught glimpses of… other things.Myself walking beside me, a few seconds out of phase.One version humming, another staring ahead in silence.
[ Warning : Temporal Overlap Detected ]
The system didn't even sound surprised anymore.
✦
Halfway down, I found a corpse.
Or rather, my corpse.
It lay crumpled against a boulder, the Inkblade buried in its chest.The wound was still fresh, ink still pooling instead of blood.
Arjun hissed. That's not possible.
"Neither is most of my life."
I crouched beside it.The dead me wore the same coat, same scars—except the marks on his arm were reversed: gold where mine were silver.
✦
When I touched his hand, it was cold as stone.A faint spark jumped between us, and suddenly the world tilted.
I wasn't standing anymore.I was watching.
✦
The scene replayed itself—this version of me standing at the edge of a cliff, arguing with someone invisible.
His voice was raw, furious. "You can't take it from me! I earned this timeline!"
A second voice answered, distant, calm, painfully familiar.
You were never meant to hold both quills.
Lightning flashed, and I saw the silhouette of a figure cloaked in gold.A hand reached out—and my other self drove the Inkblade through his own chest rather than let go.
The vision shattered.
✦
I fell backward, gasping.The corpse was gone.Only the blade remained, half-buried in the ground.
Arjun's voice was trembling. You saw it too?
"Yeah."
Who was he talking to?
I looked up at the sky.It was bleeding light again, cracks spreading faintly across the horizon.
"Someone who didn't want to be written."
✦
The Inkblade hummed when I picked it up.Its tone was lower now, almost sorrowful.
"…every anchor becomes its own warning…"
"Noted," I said.
I sheathed it, though it felt heavier than before—as if it remembered more than I did.
✦
The rain finally fell.Each drop hit the ground and turned to letters that dissolved a second later.And within that quiet rain, a whisper spoke.
The past remembers you, Ishaan Reed.
I froze.
[ Incoming Transmission : Source – Unknown Origin ]
"Of course it's you," I said.
You've changed the sequence too many times. The echoes are beginning to write themselves.
"I'll fix it."
Every fix is another fracture.
✦
The voice paused, softer now.When the past starts writing back, even anchors drown.
Then it was gone.
I stood there in the rain that spelled my name on every surface until the letters faded away.
✦
Arjun whispered. What did it mean?
"That I'm running out of margin."
And you're still making jokes.
"Only until the punchline kills me."
By the time I reached the valley, the world had stopped pretending to be stable.The clouds moved backward.Rivers flowed uphill.Every reflection lagged two seconds behind the real thing, like reality itself was buffering.
[ World Stability : 62 % → 49 % ]
✦
The city below still shimmered, alive in fragments.From this distance, I could see patches where the script of existence stuttered—whole neighborhoods blinking in and out like skipped pages.
I exhaled. "Guess I'm the only proofreader left."
Arjun's ember dimmed. Proofreading the end of the world—how poetic.
"Don't encourage me."
✦
I followed the road toward the city.Halfway down, I noticed something odd: footprints in the mud ahead of me, identical to mine, moving in perfect reverse.
Each step I took erased one of theirs.
[ Temporal Inversion Detected ]
"I really need to stop meeting myself," I muttered.
You attract yourself like a paradox magnet.
"Technically, I'm more of a walking editorial mistake."
Semantics don't help when you're collapsing causality, Ishaan.
✦
The footprints ended at a door that shouldn't exist—a freestanding wooden frame in the middle of the road, shimmering faintly with script.
Carved across the lintel were the words:THE PAST AWAITS ITS AUTHOR.
"Yeah, no," I said. "That's not ominous at all."
You're going in, aren't you?
"I'd be disappointed if I didn't."
✦
I pushed the door open.
Instantly, the world inverted.Up became down. Rain turned to fireflies.And I found myself standing in my own apartment—clean, quiet, impossible.
A cup of tea sat steaming on the table.The clock on the wall read a time that didn't exist anymore.
✦
My chest tightened.This was the memory the unwritten me had shown—the day that wasn't supposed to return.
Arjun whispered, This can't be real.
"It's not," I said. "It's what the past wants me to see."
Then a voice came from the kitchen.
"Back already?"
✦
I turned.A woman stood there—her face familiar in the way dreams are familiar.Not someone I remembered, but someone I should have.
Her smile was soft, weary."You never stay gone for long."
"Who are you?"
She tilted her head."Your unfinished chapter."
✦
The lights flickered.Every object in the room began to whisper—the cup, the clock, even the floorboards—all speaking fragments of my own thoughts.
The woman stepped closer."When you rewrote the world, you cut more than lines. You cut people. You cut me."
I swallowed hard."I didn't mean to."
"Intent doesn't undo ink."
✦
Her body began to unravel into letters, drifting like ash."I'm not angry," she said. "Just… remembered."
The ink spread across the floor, crawling toward my boots.Each letter that touched me burned—not pain, but guilt.
[ Emotional Feedback Detected : Anchor Integrity 48 % ]
✦
Arjun's voice trembled. She's part of what you erased, Ishaan. You have to let her go.
"I can't."
If you hold on, you'll drown with her.
"Maybe that's what she wants."
✦
The woman reached out.Her fingers brushed my cheek—warm, trembling, impossibly real.
"Let me fade, Ishaan Reed," she whispered. "Before the story forgets you too."
Then she was gone.
The apartment collapsed with her—walls peeling into paper, ceiling dissolving into script.
✦
I fell backward through nothing and landed hard on the mountain road again.The door was gone.Only a few golden letters drifted in the air, rearranging themselves into one final message:
The past has written its first line.
[ New Quest : Prevent the Past from Rewriting the Present ]
Arjun broke the silence. This is getting worse, isn't it?
"Depends," I said, standing up. "On whether we still have an eraser."
✦
I looked up at the fractured sky, the glow of the city below, the ink still drying on the horizon.Somewhere beyond it, the Unknown Origin was watching.And somewhere deeper still, the creator was waiting to see which one of us blinked first.
I dusted off my coat and started walking."One page at a time."