Kael had seen many things since the rebellion.
Magic turned to melody. Towns born of imagination. Even a man who insisted he was written by a tree.
But he had never met someone who had no story at all.
Until now.
The Girl in the Inkfall
They found her on the edge of the Inkfall — a black river that hadn't been there yesterday. Its waters rippled with half-formed metaphors and untethered dreams, too chaotic for even Eli to make sense of.
The girl stood barefoot in the shallow bank.
Pale.
Expressionless.
Unwritten.
Althea was the first to approach. "Are you hurt?"
The girl looked at her with empty eyes.
"I don't know," she said. "Am I supposed to be?"
Eli frowned. "What's your name?"
She tilted her head.
Then shrugged.
"That… hasn't been decided yet."
Kael stepped forward. "You don't remember who you are?"
"No," she said softly. "But it's worse than that."
"I don't think I was ever written."
The Impossible Blank
Eli tested her with glyphs. Memory spells. Echo-ink resonance.
Nothing.
Not a flicker.
Not even a rejected draft or hidden footnote.
She wasn't a corrupted character.
She was a void — a narrative black hole.
"This shouldn't be possible," Eli muttered. "Every being is recorded somewhere. Even the Red Quill's fragments leave ink traces."
Kael stared at the girl. "Then maybe she's not a character."
"I'm real," she whispered suddenly. "I breathe. I feel. I just… don't belong."
Kael looked her in the eyes. "Then we'll write you a story."
She winced. "No. That's how it starts."
"That's how he finds you."
Marked
That night, Kael couldn't sleep.
He kept thinking about her words. About the Red Quill.
And about how his own page had started bleeding again.
When he unrolled it under moonlight, the ink shimmered red.
A new line had been added — one he hadn't written:
"You gave them freedom, Kael. Now they're drowning in it."
And just beneath it, another:
"She was meant to be your daughter, once. In a version of the world you erased."
Kael dropped the page.
The girl…
She was his.