The Plaza was quiet now.
Too quiet.
After the Editor withdrew into the sealed wound above, silence collapsed over everything like dust after a battle. Citizens huddled together in alleys and behind crumbling walls, eyes wide with the kind of terror that couldn't be screamed away. No one dared to step into the center where I knelt with the boy in my arms.
His shadow still twitched, faint and broken, curling weakly around him like a wounded animal. His breaths came shallow, each inhale dragging threads of ink down the corner of his mouth.
I held him tighter, as though that alone could keep him tethered here.
The Scribe stood across from us, parchment-face unreadable. His ink-dripping eyes scanned me with something between awe and dread. Finally, his voice scratched low, heavy.
"You displaced him. An Editor. That has not happened since—" He stopped himself, lines folding inward sharply. "No. It has never happened."
I swallowed against the iron taste in my throat. My veins still burned. My vision doubled, fractured with floating fragments of text.
[Paradox: 29.]
[Collapse Probability: 62%.]
Every heartbeat threatened to tear me open.
But I forced the words out. "He isn't the one who displaced him. We did."
The boy stirred faintly in my arms, his small fingers curling against my sleeve. His eyes fluttered open, ink-black veins spiderwebbing faintly at their edges.
"I… I didn't break, right?" His voice was hoarse, but underneath it—there was something else. A deeper timbre. A resonance that hadn't been there before.
"You didn't break," I whispered back. "You fought him."
His lips curved in the smallest smile before his eyes rolled closed again, exhaustion dragging him down.
The Scribe knelt closer, parchment rustling. He traced his written fingers over the boy's shadow, not quite touching it. The shadow hissed softly in response.
"This is not fragment behavior," he murmured. "This is… evolution."
My stomach clenched. "What does that mean?"
"It means," the Scribe said slowly, "he is no longer a stabilized placeholder. He is becoming… authored. Writing himself, piece by piece. That shadow is his pen."
I stared down at the boy, my chest twisting. Authored. Becoming real.
But that meant—
The Editors would never stop coming.
The System chimed faintly.
[Warning: Anomaly Entity diverging from fragment parameters.]
[Stability unknown. Monitoring required.]
I dismissed it angrily. The System didn't understand him. Not like I did.
The boy wasn't a glitch. He wasn't a tool. He wasn't even just a fragment anymore.
He was… him.
And I wasn't going to let them write him out.
But the City wasn't silent out of reverence.
It was silent out of fear.
I could feel their eyes on me—on us—from every window, every shadowed street corner. Whispers slithered like rats between alleys.
"Enemy of the Archive."
"Wielded paradox like fire."
"Brought an Editor here."
Some looked at me with awe. Most with dread.
I knew what they saw: a half-broken Candidate who had stolen power not meant for mortals, carrying a fragment that should not exist. A walking paradox. A threat.
And maybe they weren't wrong.
We didn't stay in the Plaza. The Scribe urged us away quickly, through winding alleys where the walls still dripped with half-written sentences.
When we finally stopped in a hollowed-out library, the boy was already unconscious, his shadow coiling tightly around him like a cocoon. I laid him on a cot of torn parchment sheets, brushing the hair from his forehead.
He looked peaceful, but the flickering text-lines across his skin told a different story. The paradox backlash was inside him now too.
The Scribe watched me silently, then finally spoke.
"You carry a burden you cannot hold alone."
I met his gaze. "I've been alone this whole time."
"No longer," he said sharply, parchment rustling. "He binds himself to you. He is your tether, as much as you are his. If one falls, so does the other."
I clenched my fists. "I won't let either of us fall."
The Scribe tilted his head. His face shifted into new lines: [Naïve. Or stubborn.]
Maybe both.
Hours blurred into one another. I sat by the boy's side, forcing myself to stay awake even as paradox gnawed at my bones. Every time his shadow twitched, I reached for him, afraid he'd vanish if I looked away.
The System never stopped buzzing faintly in the background.
[Collapse Probability fluctuating: 61%… 64%… 60%.]
[Stability check failing.]
Every alert was a reminder. I wasn't stable. He wasn't stable. Nothing was.
And yet—he was still here.
When he finally stirred again, it was deep into the Archive's endless twilight. His eyes opened slowly, glowing faintly with both childlike fear and something… older.
He whispered, "They'll come back, won't they?"
I hesitated. "Yes."
"Stronger?"
"Yes."
He nodded slowly, accepting it with a gravity no child should bear. "Then I need to be stronger too."
His shadow rose behind him as if in agreement, stretching tall enough to brush the library ceiling.
The Scribe hissed softly. "Each time he draws on paradox, he will drift further from fragment into anomaly. Further from anomaly into… author."
"And that's bad?" I asked sharply.
The Scribe tilted his head. "Bad for him. Worse for you. The Archive cannot tolerate anomalies that write. You saw the Editor's reaction. The more he grows, the faster they will descend."
The boy looked at me, voice quiet but steady. "And if I don't grow, I die anyway."
I couldn't argue.
The System interrupted.
[New Trait: Anomaly Bond.]
You are tethered to the Shadow Fragment anomaly. Damage, paradox, and collapse risk may be shared.
[Warning: If one collapses, both collapse.]
I froze, staring at the glowing words.
Bonded.
Of course. That was why my paradox hadn't killed me outright. He'd taken half of it into himself. And if either of us failed…
Neither would survive.
I looked at him again—this boy who shouldn't even exist, who now carried half my doom in his small body. He met my gaze, unwavering.
"Then we don't collapse," I said firmly.
For a long moment, silence stretched between us. Then his lips curved into that same small smile from before.
"Okay."
But survival wouldn't be that simple.
When we left the library the next day, the City's whispers had thickened into something heavier. Some citizens bowed their heads as I passed, their eyes filled with hope. Others spat curses, hiding their children behind them.
Enemy. Savior. Monster. Candidate.
Every title pressed down on me like chains.
And over it all, I felt the sky watching. That colossal black eye hadn't closed since the Editor withdrew. It lingered above the City, unblinking, waiting.
Waiting for me to slip.
The Scribe whispered at my side. "You cannot linger. The longer you remain in one place, the faster the Archive will close around you. You must move. Rewrite. Survive."
The boy's shadow stretched ahead of us like a road, pointing deeper into the labyrinthine streets of manuscripts yet collapsed.
I clenched my fists.
Enemy or not, paradox or not, I wasn't done.
If the Archive wanted to erase me, I'd force it to read me first.
If the Editors wanted to descend, I'd rewrite every one of them.
And if the boy was drifting into something no fragment should ever be—
Then I'd make sure he had the chance to finish writing himself.
Even if it killed me.
The System chimed, cold and absolute.
[Main Quest Updated.]
Objective: Defy the Archive.]
[Secondary Objective: Safeguard the Shadow Anomaly until fully Authored.]
[Failure Consequence: Total Deletion.]
And above us, the black eye blinked once more.
Not erasure this time.
Recognition.
To be continued…