The courtyard was buzzing when Lin Chen and Yu Qing stepped out—students crowded around Gao Yang, who was re-telling the story of the library Scenario with wild hand gestures. "And then he held up that blank book, and whoosh—all the books just… stopped. Like they'd forgotten how to fight!"
Lin Chen kept walking, but he could feel eyes on him now—some admiring, some wary. The "Blank Prodigy" title had already spread faster than a rewritten narrative.
"Did you know," Yu Qing said, pulling out a small notebook, "that no one's ever had an Unwritten Sequence before? All the records go back a thousand years, and every Sequence is cataloged. You're… unprecedented."
"That just means no one's written about it yet," Lin Chen said, glancing at the academy's main tower. A dark thread of fate twisted around its spire—thicker, more menacing than any he'd seen. Something bad was coming.
Just then, a bell tolled three times. A man in a golden robe descended from the tower, his badge gleaming with the mark of Sequence 4: Narrative Lord—one of the academy's four masters. His name was Wei Zhen, and Lin Chen saw his fate clearly: he was the one who'd trigger the academy's greatest crisis in a month's time.
"Lin Chen," Wei Zhen called out, his voice carrying across the courtyard. "Come with me. The masters wish to speak with you."
Yu Qing squeezed his arm. "Be careful. They don't like things that don't fit their rules."
Lin Chen nodded and followed Wei Zhen into the tower. The walls were lined with portraits of past Sequence masters—each one with a story written in gold ink beneath their face. All except one empty frame at the end of the hall.
"The Unwritten One," Wei Zhen said, noticing his gaze. "A myth from the first age—someone who could rewrite the world's very foundation. We thought it was just a story."
They entered a circular room where three other robed figures waited. The oldest among them, a woman with silver hair, spoke first: "Lin Chen. Your performance in the library was… unexpected. We've examined your status, and it shows no fixed Sequence. Explain yourself."
"I don't have one," Lin Chen said, his voice steady. "I write my own path as I go."
The masters exchanged glances. "That's impossible," said a man with a sharp jaw. "The world's narrative is fixed. Every path is pre-determined. You can't just… make one up."
"Can't I?" Lin Chen asked. He pulled out his blank book and wrote a single line in his mind: The room grows cold.
Instantly, frost spread across the table. The masters jumped back, their eyes wide with shock.
"Stop that," Wei Zhen commanded, his hand glowing with golden light. "Your power is dangerous. It threatens the order of the written world."
"The order that lets good people die because their story says so?" Lin Chen countered. "The order that marks someone as 'worthless' because they're born with zero?"
The silver-haired woman leaned forward. "You have a choice, Lin Chen. Let us study your power and write your Sequence into the records—you'll be honored, trained as a master. Or… you'll be expelled. Your power will be sealed, and you'll be erased from the Tapestry."
Lin Chen looked at the blank frame in the hall, then at the masters' faces—each one trapped in their own written path, unable to see beyond it. He thought of Yu Qing waiting outside, of Gao Yang trying to find his new place as a Sequence 8, of all the students who'd started to look at him as a hope.
But he also thought of the dark thread twisting around the tower. If he let the masters seal his power, that crisis would play out exactly as written—hundreds would die. If he stayed… he'd have to fight the very order that held the world together.
He opened his blank book. "I choose neither."
Before the masters could react, he wrote two lines:
The door opens.
I walk through it.
The door behind him swung open. Lin Chen turned and walked out, leaving the masters staring in stunned silence. Yu Qing was waiting in the hall, a small bag slung over her shoulder.
"I knew you'd say no," she said, smiling. "So I packed. Where are we going?"
Lin Chen looked out the tower window at the darkening sky. The dark thread was growing thicker. "We're going to find the source of that shadow," he said. "Before it writes its own ending for everyone."
As they walked out of the tower, Gao Yang ran up to them, breathing heavily. "Wait—take me with you. I used to think power was about having a written Sequence. But you showed me… it's about what you do with the space between the lines."
Lin Chen looked at him, then at Yu Qing. The threads of their fates were weaving together now, creating something new—something unwritten. He smiled.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go rewrite the shadow."