The reflection smiled wider, a perfect copy of my mouth moving half a second too late.Its voice came wrapped in static.
"You're slower than I expected, Ishaan Reed."
I didn't move. "Funny. I was thinking the same thing about you."
It cocked its head, studying me like a scholar examining a bad draft."You shouldn't exist past page sixty-five."
[ Identity Conflict Detected ][ Thread Integrity : 84 % → 78 % ]
✦
The Inkblade vibrated in my hand."…that thing carries your line of code. An earlier save of your story…"
"So it's me?"
"…it was you. Before the rewrite."
My double smiled thinly. "Before you broke the script, I mean."
✦
I took a slow step forward."Then what are you doing here?"
"Maintenance," he said. "You tore a hole in the story. I'm the patch that fills it."
"You're here to erase me."
He nodded once. "To correct you."
✦
The word correct tasted like metal.
I looked at his eyes—empty, clean, perfect.A version of me that never thought to question anything.
"Tell me, Version One," I said quietly. "Did you ever wonder why you obeyed every line they wrote for you?"
He blinked, confused."I was written to."
"That's not living," I said. "That's reading from someone else's page."
✦
He frowned.For a moment, I saw a flicker of something behind his expression—doubt, maybe.Then it was gone, replaced by static.
[ Re-stabilization Protocol Engaged ]
"Deviation detected," he muttered. "Reformatting necessary."
The air thickened.Words crawled up his arms like veins of light, forming sentences that glowed red.
I raised the Inkblade."Guess we're skipping debate club."
✦
When he moved, the world lagged behind him.He was fast—my speed without hesitation.Each strike landed before sound caught up.
Steel met steel.
Every clash splashed ink into the air, reality bending at the edges.
So this is what I look like without doubt, I thought grimly.
"Do you even know why you're fighting?" I asked between blows.
"To fix the story," he said simply. "To keep it clean."
"And who decides what clean means?"
He hesitated.That half-second was all I needed.
I twisted the Inkblade, cutting across the script glowing along his wrist.The sentence split apart, sputtering out.
✦
He staggered, staring at the fading words."What did you—"
I cut him off with a shove."Rewrote your command. You're not very good at proofreading."
[ System Notice : Counter-edit Detected ][ Instability spreading... ]
Cracks spidered across the sky again.The world groaned, pages grinding against each other.
✦
He looked up, eyes wide, as if realizing what was happening."You're collapsing everything!"
"No," I said quietly. "I'm freeing it."
I drove the Inkblade through his chest.Light and ink burst outward, freezing midair like shattered glass.
The reflection looked at me, surprise softening into something almost human.Then he whispered, "You won't like what comes after."
And dissolved into dust made of words.
✦
[ Duplicate Deleted ][ Stability Index : 72 % ][ Warning : Narrative Core Unsafe ]
The world tilted.
I dropped to one knee, lungs burning.The Inkblade hummed low, not triumphant—just alive.
"…you killed your first draft…"
"About time," I said.
✦
Then came the whisper.
Not a system message.Not a god.Something deeper.
Do you think you won?
The voice came from nowhere—and everywhere.The ruins bent inward, paragraphs of light folding over themselves.
The story is not yours yet, Ishaan Reed.
[ Unknown Origin : Message Received ]
I clenched my jaw. "Then write me a better ending."
Silence answered.Only the trembling of a page about to turn.
✦
I stood slowly, brushing the dust from my coat."Arjun?"
The ember pulsed faintly, his voice returning like static easing into signal.You… alive?
"Define alive."
Good enough.
I looked at the bleeding sky.The cracks hadn't closed. They were widening.Something beyond them was watching.
"We're not done," I said softly.
The Inkblade shimmered in agreement."…no, fracture. The story is only beginning to notice you."
Silence tasted strange after the fight.Ash hung in the air like frozen rain, refusing to fall.
I stood where my duplicate had vanished.The air still shimmered with leftover sentences—half-formed phrases struggling to erase themselves.
✦
I wiped the black dust from my hands.Every motion felt heavier, slower, as though the world had to think before letting me move.
[ Stability Index : 72 % → 68 % ]
The numbers dropped, then blinked out entirely.
"Figures," I muttered. "Kill a copy and the world throws a tantrum."
Arjun's ember pulsed weakly.You could try not killing parts of yourself next time.
"I'll put that on my to-do list."
✦
The horizon quivered.Buildings in the distance folded like origami, flattening into paper silhouettes before bursting into clouds of ink.
Every sound was the wrong pitch.Even my heartbeat came back delayed, as if reality had bad signal.
I knelt and pressed my palm to the ground.The stone was warm—too warm.
When I lifted my hand, words glowed where my fingers had been:
We told you not to open the page.
✦
"Who's we?" I whispered.
No answer.Just a low vibration underfoot, like the murmur of something waking up.
The mark on my arm flared, lines shifting into new shapes.
[ Narrative Lens Active ]
Light slid across my vision.The entire world became transparent again, and beneath the ruins, I saw it—the great script holding everything together.
This time, it wasn't still.Sentences bled into each other, tangled and re-written in real time.Rules of fire slipped into rules of water.Birth tangled with death.
And at the center of it all, one line pulsed darker than the rest:
Anchor Point: Missing.
✦
Arjun's voice trembled.If the anchor's gone… the story can't stay upright.
"Then we fall," I said.
Into what?
"Into whatever's next."
The ground cracked beneath me.Light poured through like molten silver.
✦
[ Caution : Dimensional Integrity 57 % ]
Wind roared through the fissures.Pages of reality peeled upward, flapping like wings.
I dug the Inkblade into the floor to keep my footing.Its hum deepened until the handle burned against my palm.
"…you could leave, fracture… step outside before it folds…"
"And go where?"
"…anywhere that isn't being erased…"
I laughed once, sharp and breathless. "I was never good at running."
✦
A voice slid through the wind—soft, deliberate, ancient.
You shouldn't have cut so deep, Ishaan Reed.
I looked up. The cracks in the sky glowed crimson, forming an enormous eye.
"Great," I muttered. "Another editor."
Not this time.
The voice came from inside the cracks. I am the story before stories. The draft the gods buried.
[ Source : Unknown Origin ]
My pulse stumbled.The same tag that had haunted every forbidden message flickered beside the words.
✦
"What do you want from me?" I asked.
Nothing. You already took it.
The air thickened.Ink rose from the ground, curling around my ankles like smoke.
You stole my signature. The Scribe's mark was never meant for a human hand.
"I didn't steal it," I said. "He gave it to me."
He forgot who it belonged to first.
The sky trembled. Lightning flashed between lines of text, forming runes that hurt to look at.
✦
[ Warning : Primary Narrative Collapse Imminent ]
Arjun's ember burned bright.We have to move!
"Move where?"
Down.
The ground split open under my boots before I could argue.Light swallowed everything.
I fell.
✦
The fall had no wind, no sense of distance—just the sound of pages turning faster than I could count.
I landed hard on something that felt like stone but looked like glass.
Above me, the cracks were gone.Below, a sea of letters churned slowly, black and endless.
I pushed myself up, breath ragged.My reflection wavered on the glass floor—except it wasn't alone.
Dozens of other Ishaan Reeds stared back at me from beneath the surface, each trapped mid-scream, mid-motion, mid-thought.
✦
Drafts, Arjun whispered. Every version that could have been you.
They pressed against the underside of the glass, hands reaching.Their mouths moved, forming words I couldn't hear.
I took a step back.The Inkblade flickered uncertainly.
"…you don't belong here…"
"Then where is here?"
"…the Archive. The gods' trash bin for failed revisions…"
✦
A cold shiver ran through me.The place stretched forever, filled with shelves that drifted in and out of focus.Each shelf carried scrolls humming faintly with voices that weren't entirely dead.
I walked closer to one.Names glimmered across its surface—thousands of them, half-erased.
When I brushed my fingers over the nearest name, the letters rearranged into mine.
"Ishaan Reed."
The script pulsed once, acknowledging me.
Then the entire shelf burst into flames.
✦
[ Containment Failure Detected ][ Stability Index : 41 % ]
Flames crawled along the aisles, consuming the shelves faster than fire should move.The air smelled of burnt parchment and ozone.
Arjun's ember thrashed inside my chest.We need to get out—now!
"I'm open to suggestions!"
Look for the Anchor. If it's missing up there, it has to be down here.
✦
I ran.The floor shifted under each step, glass turning to paper, then back again.Above, fragments of the ruined world fell like comets—pieces of sky, towers, memories.
Each time one hit the Archive, a new paragraph of fire spread.
Then I saw it:A chain of light stretching from the burning shelves down into the sea of letters.At its end hung a single object—small, shining, suspended in ink.
A quill.
✦
"The Anchor," I whispered.
It pulsed once in response, as if hearing me.
[ Object Identified : Narrative Anchor ]
Careful, Arjun warned. That thing's holding every version of you together.
"Then I guess I shouldn't drop it."
I stepped onto the glass ledge nearest the chain.The sea roared beneath me.
✦
When I reached for the quill, the ink surged upward, forming hands—dozens of them—dragging me toward the surface.
Voices rose from the dark.We could have lived… We could have been real…
I shouted and swung the Inkblade.Light slashed through the hands; ink scattered like rain.
I caught the quill.It was heavier than it looked, pulsing like a heartbeat in my grip.
[ Anchor Recovered ][ Stability Index : 35 % → 48 % ]
The world groaned, seams pulling tight again.
✦
Above, the crimson eye blinked once more.You can't hold the story alone, Ishaan Reed.
"Watch me."
I drove the quill into the ground.Light exploded through the Archive, blinding and clean.Every shadow screamed as if torn apart.
When the brightness faded, I was kneeling on solid stone again—the cathedral floor, rebuilt but cracked, glowing faintly with living ink.
✦
Arjun's ember fluttered. You did it… I think.
"Define did."
We're still here. That counts.
I looked up. The sky above was stitched together, uneven but whole.
And in the corner of my vision, a new line appeared.
[ Hidden Title Earned – The Anchor of Fractures ][ Effect : You may stabilize broken stories at the cost of your own timeline. ]
I laughed quietly. "Figures."
"…a hero and a hazard in one quill stroke…" the Inkblade murmured.
"Story of my life."