They camped that night in a grove of oak trees, the starlight needle glowing softly in Lin Chen's pack. The wands hummed their tune, and Blank the cat curled up between them, purring. Yu Qing had been quiet all day, and finally, as they sat by the fire, she asked the question that had been weighing on her.
"Lin Chen," she said, staring at the flames. "Why do some things never happen? Like… what if you'd never woken up as zero? What if Gao Yang had never been that 'loose thread'? And you—your being an anomaly… is that fate? Or is it just something that never was supposed to be, but is anyway?"
Lin Chen pulled out his blank book and flipped to a page that was still completely white—no lines, no glow, just empty space. He held it up to the firelight.
"Have you ever looked at a blank page and wondered what would have been there if you'd written something different?" he asked. "That's the space between what was and what never was. It exists because every choice creates a 'never was'—a path you didn't take, a story you didn't write."
He set the book down and picked up the starlight needle. "My being an anomaly… I used to think it was a mistake. That the world's narrative had a glitch, and I was it. But after everything—after Gao Yang, after the cave, after all the lines we've woven—I think it's both fate and something that never was supposed to be."
Yu Qing leaned forward, listening. The fire crackled, and the wands' tune grew softer, as if waiting for his answer.
"Fate is the Weave—the big pattern we saw in the cave," he said. "It holds all the stories together, gives them a place to exist. But the blank spaces… they're the 'never was' parts. They're not part of the pre-woven pattern, but they exist because the Weave needs them to. Without empty space, a tapestry can't breathe. Without 'never was,' 'what is' has no meaning."
He thought back to Chapter 1—waking up as Boy 73, no name, no story. "I was a 'never was'—someone who wasn't supposed to be in the narrative at all. But that's exactly why I can see the threads, why I can weave new ones. The anomaly isn't a break in the Weave—it's a part of it. The part that makes room for change."
Yu Qing pulled out her notebook and wrote down his words, then looked up. "So the things that never happened… they're not just nothing. They're part of our lives too. Like… what if we'd never gone to the Starfall Archive? We'd never have known about the turning point, but Gao Yang still would have chosen his ending. The 'never was' doesn't change what is—it just makes it clearer."
Lin Chen nodded, picking up a stick and drawing a circle in the dirt. Inside it, he drew a line. "This is what was," he said. "Outside it, all the space around it—that's what never was. But the circle only has shape because of the space around it. The line only has meaning because of what it isn't."
He looked at the glowing needle in his hand. "The Weave needs both. It needs the written stories, and it needs the anomalies—the 'never was' people who can mend it when it tears. That's why I'm here. Not by accident, not by pure fate… but by the balance between the two."
Blank the cat meowed and rubbed against his hand, and Lin Chen smiled. Even the cat was a 'never was'—he'd never intended to have a pet, but Blank had walked into their story anyway, and now he was as much a part of it as anyone.
As the fire died down, they sat in silence, thinking about the space between what was and what never was. The first major arc was waiting for them at "The Weave," but now, they understood why it was there—why the anomaly, the 'never was,' was the only one who could face it.
The night was quiet, but the wands still hummed, and the needle still glowed. The 'never was' parts of their lives were now as real as the 'what is'—and that was exactly how it was supposed to be.