I woke to the sound of my own handwriting.
Not the scratch of a pen — the words themselves, murmuring against my ear like gossip that didn't care if I heard. They tangled through the air like fine threads of smoke, curling into my dreams until they tugged me awake.
The quilt was wrong. The ceiling was wrong. Even the air was wrong — scented with apple blossom and something warmer, like bread fresh from the oven of a house I didn't own.
The bed was a cathedral of fabric, all ivory sheets and velvet throws. My hair, which I remembered being a chaotic bun the night before, now fell in polished waves down my back, threaded with white pearls like frozen tears. My nightshirt was gone; in its place was a pale blue gown, its sleeves whispering against my wrists like sighs.
A familiar dream.
I knew exactly where I was.
I had built it. Word by word.
This was Hartwell Manor, the setting of my unfinished novel, The Grazed Heart. I had written its stone arches and glass corridors into being, its orchard into bloom, its east wing into ruin. The main female lead was Avery Hartwell.
And now — somehow — I was Avery Hartwell.
The knock came soft but deliberate — three taps, like punctuation on a sentence I hadn't planned to write.
"My lady?" a voice called, warm as candlelight but sharp at the edges. "Aiden is waiting in the east garden."
Aiden.
The name fit in my chest like an old key in a lock. Tall, dark-haired, impossibly steady-eyed — the main male lead. The man who was supposed to both destroy and save Avery in equal measure. Equal measure which will now destroy...me?
When the door opened, he was exactly as I'd imagined — and at the same time, he wasn't. His hair were mussed, not the sleek wave I'd described. His shirt collar was open, revealing the faintest scar I didn't remember writing. His gaze didn't just observe me; it searched, like he'd been waiting for a detail to appear. His eyes searched for the truth which he quite couldn't deal with. His lips looked like they were waiting for years, for the incoherent words in his mind to be spoken.
"You're look...different," he framed, voice low enough that it almost didn't belong to the air.
My pulse stuttered. "H-huh?" I couldn't believe that it was just a dream...it felt ridiculously true.
He smiled faintly, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Come before the roses fade."
What did he mean by that?, I thought.
---
The east garden was blooming as though time had been bribed. Roses spilled over the trellis like secrets too heavy to hold back. Bees moved through the air like living punctuation. A punctuation more like a full stop.
I looked around, only to find Aiden coming towards me with a piece of rugged paper.
Aiden handed me a folded piece of paper. "I found this under my pillow this morning."
I opened it. The handwriting was mine. But not the me I was now — the me from my desk, my coffee-ring-stained notebooks, my apartment with the peeling windowsill.
It read:
The plot has been stolen.
Only you can rewrite it before it rewrites you.
"What is this?" I breathed.
"I hoped you could tell me," Aiden said, his gaze fixed on me like the truth might be hiding under my eye ashes.
I couldn't breathe. My mind is playing games with me by this stupid dream...Well a dream which felt too real for this world.
---
Dinner that night felt like walking into my own notes only to find half the lines crossed out.
Eleanor, the head maid's daughter and a great friend of Avery, who in my story had died in Chapter Three from a poisoned goblet, sat across from me, laughing at something one of the servants said. When I stared, she raised an eyebrow. "Is there something in my teeth, my lady?"
"No," I said slowly. "Just… wasn't expecting you."
Her brows frowned but she didn't say anything.
---
Later, in my room, another note waited. Same paper. Same ink. Same handwriting. But not mine:
"They're not your characters anymore.", it said.
---
Days blurred into each other like wet ink trying to make sense. The rules I had written refused to obey me.
The hunting trip which meant to injure Aiden ended with him returning unscathed, his hands cupped around wild strawberries, offering them like jewels...to me?
The thunderstorm I'd planned to destroy the manor never arrived — instead, the sky poured gold light through the halls until the marble glowed.
Even Aiden's lines weren't mine anymore.
Once, in the library, I tried to catch him in the act.
"You're supposed to say, 'Danger follows those who don't keep their distance.'"
He tilted his head. "Why would I warn you away from myself?"
I couldn't hold anymore.
"Because that's how I wrote you."
Something flickered in his eyes — not surprise, not fear. Recognition.
"What are you saying?," he said finally.
My breath hitched. Did I just say that..out loud?, I thought.
"You're not from here," he said firmly.
---
That night, I dreamt in verses:
Ink is a river, and you are its tide.
You wrote me in shadows, but I've learned to hide.
The pen is your weapon; the heart is your crime.
If you leave me unwritten, I'll steal all your time.
I woke clutching the sheets, breathless.
Aiden was standing in the doorway. No knock. No warning. Just pure confusion and maybe... concern?
"You cried out," he said. "In your sleep."
"I'm losing control," I admitted with a heavy heart.
"Or maybe you never had it."
His words are making me confuse more and more. If this is a dream, why doesn't it feel like one?
---
The third letter came inside a hollow apple from the orchard.
If you want to go home, finish the story.
But remember: endings cost.
I wanted to go home. I did. But every time Aiden looked at me — truly looked — something in me faltered.
Something in me felt like I was already home. At home which was not a lonely apartment with a cohesive smell of coffee. But a home which felt like...love. Freedom.
The original ending had been brutal: Avery would die in Aiden's arms, a sacrifice for a kingdom that didn't deserve her. It was tragic, cinematic… safe for me as a writer. But now I wasn't a writer looking down from above — I was her.
And I didn't want to die.
Or maybe I don't want it to end like that while I am with Aiden...
---
The confrontation came in the great hall.
Candles burned in every sconce, light pooling like molten honey. Aiden stood in the center, his coat undone, his expression raw. His jaw clenched, clenched like he didn't had teeth. Eyes darkened eyes looking it my green once with a single ounce of...hope?
"I know what you think is coming," he said.
Huh? What does he know? Does he know about the ending?
"Then you know I can't let it happen." I breathed out. It came out like a whisper, making me think that he couldn't hear it.
"Then change it," he said simply. "Write me differently."
"It's not that easy." I looked at him honestly. With the honesty I was afraid of.
"It is if you stop believing you're only the writer."
"Then what am I?", the question rang in my ears. This was a dream, right...?
---
Something in the air shifted. I could feel the story itself — threads tightening and loosening with my heartbeat. I thought of the letters. Of Eleanor's impossible survival. Of Aiden saying lines I never wrote. The lines which felt to real to be written on a page.
Maybe the story wasn't being stolen. Maybe it was… waking up.
Waking up in my mind.
"I want a different ending," I concluded infront of him.
"Then give us one," he replied softly.
The softness in his voice was something I never quite wrote. It was sthe kind of softness which can make your heart build with thorns but also make it feel like the Garden of Eve.
---
The final scene didn't write itself. It lived.
It lived like it was real. It wasn't, right...?
The manor didn't burn. The kingdom didn't fall. Instead, the roses bloomed so wildly they spilled into the corridors. The orchard overflowed with fruit. Even Eleanor toasted to "a story worth reading twice.", like it was a real story.
Which it was..?
And Aiden — Aiden placed a gold band on my finger, not because I'd written it, but because he wanted to.
The gold band had letters unscripted on it. Letters which I couldn't quite pronounce. Letter which felt too heavy the pronoun.
"You found me," I whispered softly.
"I always will," he said. "Even if you change the ink. Even if you write me into a stranger."
I told myself not to believed it. But a part of me always screamed to believe it.
Maybe always screamed that it was a dream?
---
I woke in my apartment.
The apartment which smelt like overly expired coffee. My tea was cold but not as much as my mind. My laptop was open with a blank page titled:
A Different Ending.
Except the ring was still on my finger.
The ring which he gave to me.
The letters on the ring were now quite visible.
"The hardest choices are the easiest for latter happiness."
When I touched it, I swear I could hear his voice — faint, soft but smiling:
"Your turn, Avery."
---.