Echo of the Author

“You cannot save what was never written. But you can still be blamed for it.”

The passage opened up into a hexagonal room that was maybe fifteen meters across this diagonal. There wasn’t anything in the room, but the walls were lined with runes that I could not read. The only apparent exit from the room was the way we had come, and that way was blocked by the fog.

We were trapped.

The ashes of the Burned Index still clung to us, fine as regret. I closed the book slowly, its last lines still echoing in my mind like a held breath. The fog outside the room stopped moving, but it did not need to. The world had already decided which page we were on.

Ashen brushed soot from his shoulders, eyes scanning the crumbling walls. “This place feels… quieter now.”

I nodded, but inside, Lina was stirring. She wasn’t speaking, but I could feel her watching. It made me uncomfortable. I didn’t quite know who she was really, or what she wanted with me. I wished she would go away and leave me alone, but I did not think that would happen soon.

That’s when I noticed a small draft of wind that didn’t belong. It stirred the ash on the floor in a spiral, revealing something beneath.

A staircase? No—not a staircase. The idea of one. Half-real, ink-lined, shimmering like a sentence not quite committed to paper. It led downward into impossible darkness.

“There’s more?” He asked. “You are full of surprises.”

“There is always more,” I replied, not knowing what else to say.

There was nowhere else to go, so we descended. The steps gave way beneath us with each step we took, rewriting themselves a moment before our feet touched them. This wasn’t a path carved by stone. It was one written on momentum and intent.

Lina’s voice came through like parchment torn mid sentence. She had been quiet for so long, I almost began to forget she was there. One can dream, can’t they?

“I remember this place. It was supposed to connect two ideas. A metaphorical bridge. But I never finished it.”

“Then where does it go?”

“That depends on who you are when you get there.”

Great. Even the voice in my head is speaking in cryptic language. Can’t anyone give straight answers here? I shook her off as a waste of time and continued down the staircase. Each step appeared just before I made it. Each step was taken not knowing if there would be anything to step on to.

* * *

After what seemed like an eternity, the steps ended without warning. One moment we were descending through the earth, stone beneath our feet and silence clinging to our backs like a second skin. The next, we emerged into a hollow vastness.

Before us rose the ruins of a cathedral. Its spine was broken, the ribbed arches collapsed inward like a body kneeling under its own weight. Stained glass, half-shattered, filtered what little light reached us into bruised blues and ash-gray reds. Most of the windows were gone entirely, replaced by outlines of dust and memory on soot-darkened walls.

I took a slow breath. The air smelled like rain and forgotten ink.

“Where are we?” I whispered.

Ashen didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on the altar, or what remained of it.

The altar had been replaced by a desk. Not a ceremonial platform, but a writer’s desk, carved and battered, worn by time and long use. Its drawers were open, spilling old ribbons, brittle carbon paper, and half-burnt outlines. Stacked nearby, rising like cairns, were neat towers of manuscript pages. Some stained, others half-scorched, all covered in the same tight, familiar handwriting.

My handwriting.

Ashen moved first, approaching the desk like he was stepping into sacred ground. I followed.

There was a single draft lying open on the desk’s surface, weighted by a broken glass inkwell.

PROPERTY OF AUGUST DENIER
FINAL NOTES – DO NOT PUBLISH

I stared at the pages. The ink had faded, but the lines were unmistakable. Red markings slashed through entire paragraphs. Whole characters had been blotted out. On one page, I saw two names — Elyne and Ashen — circled and rewritten, then crossed out entirely. Below that, a handwritten note in the margin:

They were never meant to survive. It was always supposed to hurt.

The words made me cold with anger and frustration.

Ashen read over my shoulder. He didn’t speak right away. Then, with a quiet certainty, he said, “All that blood… just to make it real?”

I nodded slowly, throat tightening. My eyes locked on the margin.

“She thought pain gave it weight.”

Lina stirred. A tremor beneath the skin. Her voice was distant, worn down at the edges. “You weren’t supposed to wake up,” she whispered.

My fingers curled around the desk’s edge. “Why write us at all?”

Ashen stepped back like something had cracked. “I fought for you. I thought we were fighting for something real.”

“I thought so too,” I said. But I wasn’t sure whose voice it was anymore. Mine. Hers. Both.

But I wasn’t sure if I was talking to him or to myself. Or maybe to her.

“I bled for something I thought was real. But it was just a scene. A sentence. Something someone else could erase.”

There was a pause, a silence shaped like breath being held. Then the words came, layered in both our voices:

“I remember you. I remember building you from words I barely understood. I remember thinking you needed to hurt, or else none of it would matter. But maybe pain was just the only thing I knew how to write.”

Ashen flinched, just slightly. As if he realized the voice didn’t belong entirely to me anymore.

The air in the cathedral changed. It carried with it the chill of someone listening. The walls didn’t ripple, and no ghostly voices echoed. This wasn’t magic, or not the kind we’d come to expect. It was the stillness that answered. The kind that comes after something true has finally been said.

Ashen didn’t move. His gaze lingered on the desk, then on me. Quietly, he said, “You gave us sorrow. But we gave ourselves meaning.”

And for once, Lina didn’t argue. “I was wrong,” she whispered. “But not about everything.”

I turned back to the manuscript. I could have burned it. I thought about it. I thought about rewriting it all. But instead, I let it stay. I let the hurt exist.

“We live past the page,” I said. “You don’t get to own that.”

Something shifted in my chest as if Lina silently agreed.

The silence was short lived. A long, low sound, like a blade being drawn across a chalkboard, echoed through the ruined nave. Ashen spun. I turned toward the sound. In the far doorway, where light should have spilled in, there was only shadow. A tall, straight-backed figure cloaked in white stepped through. The fog filling in behind it

A Proofreader.

Its eyes were covered with red lenses. Its hands, ink-stained and meticulous, unfurled a sheaf of blank parchment. The pages bled as they moved.

“Correction required. Consistency breach. Unauthorized character arc detected.”

Ashen reached for his sword and readied himself for combat. Ready to make our final stand

I grabbed the book at my hip with trembling hands. It opened for me, as it always did. The page was blank, but I wasn’t. I didn’t write to destroy this time. I wrote to escape.

“The memory survives,” I scrawled. “Let the ink forget.”

The words flashed on the page. The world bent, folding in on itself. The walls disappeared. The desk disappeared. Everything faded to white as we ran. We ran for our lives.