The feather refused to die.
I'd dropped it in a cup of rainwater back at the ruins—half hoping it would dissolve, half afraid it might hatch something—but it only floated there, glowing faintly under the moonlight.
Even when the water evaporated, the feather stayed wet.
✦
I leaned against what was left of the cathedral wall. The night air tasted like cold ink and smoke. The quill-scar on my arm pulsed with every heartbeat, matching the feather's glow.
Arjun stirred inside me, a small ember of irritation.You've been staring at it for an hour.
"It blinks first, I win."
That's not how divine artifacts work.
"Then it's a moral victory."
✦
[ System Notice : Stability Radius = 12 m ][ Warning : Chronological Drift Detected ]
The world still hiccupped around me. Time had wrinkles now—seconds that repeated, footsteps that echoed before I took them.
Arjun's ember flared again. You're unraveling faster. The anchor title's eating your timeline.
"I'll grow another one."
That's not funny.
"It's a little funny."
✦
The wind changed.Somewhere beyond the ruins, bells began to ring—slow, uneven, as if they weren't sure which hour they belonged to.
I picked up the feather. It pulsed once, and letters bled from the edge—delicate, golden handwriting that hovered above my palm.
If the creator wills it…
The same line from before. But beneath it, new words coiled into view:
…follow the echo that wasn't written.
✦
"Cryptic as usual," I muttered.
Arjun's tone sharpened. Maybe don't. Last time you followed a divine breadcrumb we almost fell out of reality.
"Almost."
That's not a metric for success.
I tucked the feather into my coat. The glow sank through the fabric, tracing faint veins of light across the seams.
[ Quest Initiated : Trace the Unwritten Echo ]
✦
The path down the mountain had changed again. Where broken stone had been hours ago, there was now a stairway made of light—fragile, almost transparent.
Each step hummed like a heartbeat.
"I'm starting to hate metaphors," I said, and began to descend.
The air thickened the deeper I went. The sky above folded into itself, the stars curving downward like eyes leaning close to read a page.
You feel that? Arjun whispered.
"Yeah. Someone's watching the margins again."
✦
Halfway down, I heard laughter.Children.Not real, not human—just the sound of them, echoing from a story I hadn't written yet.
Then came the smell of ink. Fresh. Sharp. Familiar.
When I stepped off the last stair, I was standing in an alleyway that shouldn't exist—narrow, drenched in shadow, walls made entirely of pages.
Each brick was a paragraph.Each puddle reflected a different world.
[ Location : The Gutter of Drafts ]
✦
"Home sweet anomaly."
A soft rustle answered. Something moved in the dark ahead—tall, thin, its body cloaked in scraps of parchment.
It tilted its head, paper crackling.When it spoke, the voice was layers of mine and others, whispering over each other.
You should not be here, Authorless One.
"Funny. I was thinking the same about you."
✦
The creature's eyes opened—black wells filled with text spiraling inward.The feather called you.
"Looks that way."
Then you carry a sentence the gods forgot to finish.
I frowned. "Meaning?"
It stepped closer. Pages peeled from its arms and drifted toward me.On them, I saw fragments of events that hadn't happened—me standing in places I didn't recognize, talking to people I'd never met.
Alternate futures. Or maybe drafts of them.
✦
Arjun hissed in my mind. Don't touch those!
Too late. One page brushed my hand, and for a heartbeat I saw——a battlefield made of mirrors,—a woman made of flame calling my name,—my own face cracking like glass.
Then it was gone.
I stumbled back. "What was that?"
Echoes of what could write itself next, the creature said.The feather remembers the future that never was.
✦
It raised a hand of torn script and pointed behind me.Through the folds of the alley, the air shimmered—revealing a doorway of pure gold light.
Beyond lies the ink that remembers you. If you enter, it will show the cost of being an anchor.
Arjun's voice dropped to a whisper. Ishaan, think carefully—
"Thinking never saved anyone," I said, and stepped toward the light.
Light folded inward as I crossed the threshold.It wasn't warm, wasn't cold—just aware.Every particle carried a whisper.
He walks again.He holds the broken quill.He writes without permission.
✦
The floor beneath my boots was made of words, thousands of them overlapping in a moving tide.Each letter glowed faintly before fading back into the current.
In the distance, something vast exhaled.The entire chamber rippled as if reality had lungs.
Arjun's ember fluttered. We've been here before… haven't we?
"Maybe in another draft."
[ Location : The Memory of Ink ]
✦
At the center of the space floated a single object—an inkwell carved from glass that held no reflection.Instead of liquid, it contained a miniature storm of light and shadow swirling together.
The feather in my coat burned hot.Before I could react, it tore itself free and drifted toward the inkwell, glowing brighter with each heartbeat.
"No," I said quietly, "you're not doing this alone."
✦
When the feather touched the inkwell, the storm inside froze.Then, slowly, a figure rose out of it—familiar in shape, wrong in detail.
It was me.Or rather, the version that had never become the Anchor.His eyes were clear, unburdened, untouched by ink.
He smiled."You look tired."
✦
Arjun whispered, This is dangerous—
"Everything's dangerous," I muttered.
The other Ishaan—the unwritten one—stepped closer."You shouldn't have picked up the quill. You could have lived a simple story."
"I'm not good at simple."
He tilted his head. "No. You're good at breaking things."
✦
He raised his hand, and a line of golden text spun between his fingers.It hovered like a thread of sunlight.
"This is what you lost when you rewrote the world."
"What is it?"
"A day. The one you never lived. The price you keep paying."
He flicked the line toward me. It struck my chest—and suddenly I remembered.
✦
A quiet house.A cup of tea gone cold.Someone's laughter from another room.A life without gods, without stories that fought back.
The memory hurt more than any wound I'd ever taken.
[ Timeline Fragment Restored : +1 Memory Shard ]
The unwritten Ishaan's smile softened."See? You could have been happy."
"I could have been forgotten," I said.
✦
He paused. "Why keep fighting for a world that keeps erasing you?"
"Because if I stop, no one else remembers why it mattered."
Silence stretched between us.Then the unwritten Ishaan nodded once and placed the feather back into my palm.
"Then carry it. But remember what it costs."
✦
The light dimmed.The chamber began to collapse inward, folding into a single sentence.The feather pulsed once, fusing into my skin, leaving a faint golden mark beside the old quill scar.
[ New Trait Acquired : The Feather of the Forgotten ][ Effect : Recover lost fragments at the risk of erasing present ones. ]
Arjun's ember flickered uneasily. That's… unstable.
"So am I."
✦
The golden doorway dissolved, spilling me back into the mountain air.The night had grown still again, the ruins waiting in quiet disbelief.
I looked down at my hands.The scars glowed faintly—one silver, one gold—intertwined like rival signatures.
"Two authors," I murmured. "One mess."
The wind carried the faintest whisper from nowhere and everywhere:
Every story that remembers itself must one day choose its ending.
✦
I looked toward the distant city.Its lights flickered, forming patterns that might have been constellations—or warnings.
Arjun said nothing, and for once, neither did I.We simply stood there, listening to the quiet hum of a world that wasn't sure if it was healed or merely waiting to break again.