In the capital city of Arquith…
The first chapters of tales are always born beneath towering white turrets.
There, where the royal palace touches the clouds,
stood a girl with a sword slightly longer than she was tall.
Her name:
Elmira Dawn.
Hair of gold that shimmered in the morning sun.
Eyes the color of the sky before a storm.
And a stance that knew no hesitation.
But what truly distinguished her… was not her appearance.
It was the words above her head.
Words bright, clear, unwavering.
"She shall triumph."
Above all, her words were the most powerful.
Her trainer, Commander Raven, smiled as he watched her take down three training knights at once.
"As expected," he said.
He wasn't praising her skill.
He was stating something everyone knew… without needing to explain it.
Elmira does not lose.
Not because she is the strongest.
But because… it is written that she is.
On the very day the merchant fell dead in Eldroin Village… one of the palace windows shook.
It wasn't an earthquake.
Just a slight tremor… in something invisible.
Elmira stopped abruptly during her training.
She placed a hand on her chest.
"Are you alright?" the captain asked.
"I felt… as if a page had turned," she whispered.
He didn't understand.
But above… above her glittering words,
a very small crack appeared.
Invisible to the naked eye.
In the village… Cereth was no longer a child testing his powers out of curiosity.
Now he knew that every change… generates something.
But he didn't stop.
Instead, he became more cautious.
He began to read sentences before touching them.
He learned that there were layers.
Superficial sentences:
"He will lie today."
And profound sentences:
"His treachery will begin here."
And those… should not be trifled with.
One day, he saw a man beating his son in the marketplace.
The sentence above him read:
"He will carry his pain as it was carried to him."
Cerith stared for a long time.
He didn't erase the beating.
He didn't erase the pain.
He just added one word:
"He will stop."
The man froze.
His hand remained raised for a moment…
Then he slowly lowered it.
He looked at his son… as if seeing him for the first time.
And he fell to the ground weeping.
Cerith felt a slight tear in the air.
But this time…
No complete being appeared.
Only a shadow.
He watched it from the corner of the market.
That night…
The first complete Retcon appeared.
It didn't emerge from a sudden fissure.
But it formed slowly.
From the shadows of houses.
From the whispers of the wind.
From words that had been torn apart before.
It was taller than a human.
Its body was made up of random sentence fragments.
"—should have—"
"—didn't happen—"
"—correction—"
His words weren't spoken… They overlapped.
Serith sensed him before he saw him.
He stepped out of his house.
He stood in the middle of the road.
The village was asleep.
The air was cold.
Retcon turned to face him.
And for the first time…
He spoke clearly:
"You're breaking the structure."
Serith didn't back down.
"And you… fix it?"
"We protect consistency."
"Consistency means a woman dies because a sentence said so?"
He paused.
Then:
"Yes."
And here…
Serith smiled.
"So you're not protecting the world. You're protecting the story."
Retcon lunged forward.
The ground beneath his feet cracked like torn edges.
But this time, Serith didn't touch a sentence above the creature's head.
There wasn't a sentence, clearly defined.
He was made of remnants.
He understood something important:
Retcons don't have destinies.
They are tools.
So…
He doesn't need to change their destinies. But to give them one.
He reached out… not toward the object.
But toward the air itself.
He wrote a word.
Not above anyone's head.
But in the space between them.
"It ends."
Retcon stopped.
His body began to unravel.
But before he disappeared… he said something different:
"You are registered."
Then he vanished.
In the capital… Elmira woke up suddenly.
She had dreamt of something strange.
A boy standing in a distant village.
The sky above him… was torn apart.
In the dream, she reached out toward him.
But the words above her head suddenly glowed.
"You will not meet him yet."
She woke up breathing heavily.
She put a hand to her forehead.
For the first time in her life…
She felt someone pulling the string that was guiding her.
In a timeless place… several sentences gathered in a white void.
Not voices.
But commands.
"The element gains consciousness."
Direct intervention is currently prohibited.
Activating the heroine too early could cause the plot to collapse.
Monitoring continues.
Then…
A name appeared.
Incomplete.
"Ser—"
And stopped.
As if the page itself… had refused to write it completely.
Serith sat on his rooftop.
Looking at the stars.
Are the stars also written?
Is the fall of an empire… just a paragraph?
He looked at his hand.
He tried to see his sentence again.
It appeared… fragmented.
"It will be—"
Then fog.
"—cause—"
Then emptiness.
He is not without destiny.
His destiny is… unstable.
And that is more dangerous.
He smiled calmly.
He whispered to himself:
"If the story doesn't want me…
I'll make it revolve around me."
At that moment—
Far, far away… Elmira's words glowed with an unnatural intensity.
"She will prevail."
As if the text… was preparing itself for an upcoming confrontation.