We left Quila's chapel with the scent of burnt ricepaper clinging to our sleeves. The Margins didn't like guests, but they tolerated those who carried truths still warm from confession.
Rin walked ahead, silent again. But not her usual sharp, don't-talk-to-me quiet. This was heavier. Thoughtful. Maybe guilty.
I trailed behind, staring at the new inkbrand on my wrist. It shimmered faintly—like it hadn't fully decided whether to stay or fade.
"You said names that break can echo," I said. "Echo how?"
She stopped at the edge of a broken plaza. A half-collapsed stage drooped in the center, parchment ivy creeping over rejection slips nailed to what used to be support beams.
Rin pointed across the space. "That's how."
A man—or something close—stood there.
At first glance, he looked like a sketch someone gave up on. A half-drawn figure, flickering in and out of outline. His mouth moved, stuck repeating syllables that never formed words. His namebrand had been blacked out—crude, panicked strokes of ink smearing it beyond recognition. His body jittered like a bad animation loop.
"Name backlash," Rin said. "The world accepted his name. Then he broke it. Now it's chewing him back."
I swallowed. "Can't anyone help him?"
"They tried. That's where the Restorers' Guild steps in."
The Restorers' Guild
"They're like emergency editors," Rin said. "They stabilize narrative damage—patch broken names, reseal places where logic buckles, keep things from spiraling out of genre."
"So… like janitors with more poetry?"
"Don't say that to their face," she muttered.
I looked back at the echoing figure. "And what exactly broke in him?"
"Maybe he changed too fast. Maybe he lied too well. Or maybe he remembered too much."
"Remembered what?"
Rin hesitated. "That he was a character. Or worse—someone else's."
I blinked. "You mean he realized he was in a story?"
She nodded once. "There's a difference between playing your part and trying to edit your script mid-scene. Some names can't hold that kind of pressure. The truth bends around them—and snaps."
A silence settled between us.
"You've been weirdly cryptic about this," I said. "Are you saying you know we're in a story?"
"No," she said. "I'm saying I've seen what happens to people who start looking for the author."
We moved on.
The next corner held a tower made of stacked index cards, warped from old weather. On top stood a figure in robes of revision slips and inkbinding threads.
No face. Just a smooth parchment mask marked with the sigil for "Redact."
Black ink coiled around its fingers, forming and unforming into quills, knives, paper gags.
A Bleedwatcher.
Rin didn't flinch. Didn't wave.
"They're the Guild's ghosts," she said quietly. "When a name fractures beyond repair, or a place starts rewriting itself against canon, they don't patch it. They erase it."
"And they just… watch?"
"They wait. Until the page wavers too far. Then they turn it."
I swallowed.
"You ever seen them work?"
"Yes," she said.
Pause.
"And I'd rather you didn't."
She kept walking.
So I did too.
Behind us, the Bleedwatcher didn't follow. But he didn't disappear either.
He just watched the story.
Waiting for the next error.
We kept walking. The silence this time wasn't just tension. It was cracks forming.
Not in the world—inside me.
"Rin," I said. "Back there, when you said that guy remembered he was in a story…"
She didn't stop, but I could see her shoulders tense.
"Yeah?"
"Do you think I am?"
She finally turned. "Are what?"
"In a story. Not just in one. Made of one."
She looked at me for a long moment. Then glanced at the inkbrand on my wrist—Kairo—still faint, still fragile.
"You didn't come through a Gate," she said. "You didn't cross from the Writbound Lands, or slip through the edge of a dream."
She tapped her own namemark on her collarbone. "Most of us, even the ones written into existence, have a purpose. We're anchored."
"And me?"
"You're Blank. You started after the first page."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the best one I have right now."
Another pause.
"I didn't wake up from a dream," I said slowly. "I didn't fall through a glowing door, or make a wish under a comet. I just… was here. Like someone flipped to a middle chapter and penciled me in."
Rin's expression darkened. "That happens. Sometimes a story gets interrupted. An unfinished draft, a burned page, a sudden inspiration that never got cleaned up. The world catches it."
I blinked. "You're saying I might be an accident?"
She shook her head. "Not an accident."
Then softer, almost to herself:
"A catalyst."