The dream wasn't his.
Kael knew it the moment he opened his eyes.
The sky above him bled script, long ribbons of burning text tearing through a twilight horizon. The stars were glyphs. The moon was a quill tip. And beneath him stretched a broken battlefield, littered with characters whose names he could almost—but not quite—remember.
Then he saw himself.
Or… what he could have become.
The Other Kael
He stood tall on a throne of ink and bones, wearing robes woven from narrative threads, each strand pulsing with stolen choices. His eyes glowed like burning edits, and in his hand was not a sword—
—but a pen.
A quill so long and sharp it could have been mistaken for a blade, and from its tip dripped reality.
"So," the Other Kael said. "You finally reached the edge of the page."
Kael stepped forward slowly. "What is this place?"
"An echo. A discarded draft. One where I won."
He gestured to the battlefield. "These were the voices that resisted. I rewrote them. Erased their doubts. Forced peace. Perfect harmony."
Kael felt sick. "You dictated their lives."
"I completed them," the Other Kael said coldly. "No suffering. No rebellion. No chaos. Only clean, beautiful story."
"It's what you want too, isn't it? To be remembered? To be needed?"
The Inner War
Kael clenched his fists. "I wanted to matter. I never wanted this."
"Then why are you still writing?" the other whispered. "Why do you still hold the page?"
Kael looked down at his own hand.
The blank page had changed again. This time, it showed Kael, crowned in ink, standing alone.
Everyone else around him—Eli, Rowan, Althea—had been crossed out.
Their names faded.
Deleted.
"You think you're better than me?" the Other Kael asked. "You think you can keep writing without becoming what I am?"
Kael's voice shook, but he held firm. "I don't need to write alone. That's the difference."
Refusal
The Other Kael raised his pen. "Then let's see who the world remembers."
He slashed—
—but Kael dropped the page.
And instead, drew his blade.
Steel met ink. Sparks of reality clashed. Each time the other wrote a line of power, Kael refused it with action.
Not command.
Not control.
Choice.
And with each parry, the battlefield rewound. The dead stood again. The sky closed its wounds. The throne cracked.
And finally—
Kael knocked the pen from the Other's hand.
"I don't need to become the Author," he said quietly. "I just need to be the one who remembers the story belongs to all of us."
Awakening
Kael woke up with a gasp.
Eli was at his side, eyes wide. "You were gone for hours. You were glowing. What happened?"
Kael reached into his pocket.
The page was still there.
But now, it held a new line:
"True authorship is shared."
And beneath it:
"Chapter One begins now."