I didn't care about the voice anymore. It had whispered to me too many times, fading into nothing, and I had grown numb to it. Hours passed as I walked, following the faint curl of smoke rising through the thinning trees. My limbs ached, my body screamed with fatigue, but my mind — ever alert — was drawn forward by instinct, by some unnameable force.
The forest finally gave way, revealing a village. More a tribe than a settlement, huts leaned slightly, roofs patched with straw and cloth, stone paths worn smooth by countless generations. Life pulsed here. The village was alive. Simple, fragile, yet stubbornly enduring.
At the entrance, a guard noticed me. Black hair glimmered faintly, green eyes sharp and observant. His simple cotton clothes, handwoven, hung functional and careful. He smiled.
"Welcome, foreign traveler," he said. "We are honored to have you among us."
Relief washed over me. After the endless silence, the death, the shadows, hearing words of welcome was almost painfully beautiful.
Beside him, a girl emerged. Small, delicate, her blonde hair catching the light, black eyes absorbing it. She studied me with measured scrutiny, a presence calm and knowing.
"My name is Elyndra Starveil," she said softly. "I will assist you while you remain in this village."
She guided me through the village, pointing out wells, hearths, storage huts, explaining the rhythm of life. Everything here was complete to her, written fully into existence. Her reality had edges, and she lived entirely within them.
Time passed until she led me to the far edge of the village. I froze. My breath caught.
I didn't move. I couldn't. My feet were planted firmly on the soil of the village, the safety of the written world beneath me, while my eyes — my mind — reached beyond, into the endless void.
It stretched infinitely, a half-world of unfinished story, a place where nothing had been written, where the laws of reality had yet to take form. Darkness pooled like thick ink, the silence absolute. The air itself felt heavy, pregnant with potential, danger, and secrets I could not yet grasp.
Elyndra stood beside me, her small hand resting lightly on my arm, her black eyes watching the village as she always had — calm, aware, constrained. She could not see the emptiness. She had no notion that it existed. Even if I pointed to the void, even if I screamed into the wind, her eyes would not pierce it. She was bound entirely by what had been written, and that portion of the world — the unfinished half — simply did not exist for her.
"Why is there nothing there?" I whispered, my voice trembling, though not with fear.
Elyndra tilted her head, her brow furrowing slightly. "I… I don't see anything," she said softly. Her tone was almost puzzled. "The village ends here. There is nothing else."
Exactly. She could not know. She could never know. The edge of reality — the unwritten, the void, the end of this half-world — was invisible to her eyes. It existed only for me, alone, a secret pressing against my mind with a weight both exhilarating and terrifying.
I swallowed, my throat dry. I wanted to say something, to make her understand, but there was no way. No words could bridge the gap between what she could perceive and what I could.
So I remained silent.
My gaze lingered on the void. Its contours shifted vaguely, like shadows half-formed in water. Endless, dark, yet not empty. Something lingered there — a presence, a hum of potential, a waiting. The story had yet to reach this place. Perhaps it never would, except through me.
I felt the pulse of it, quiet yet insistent. It tugged at something deep within me, whispering that my journey was far from over, that the truths I sought, the eternal truths, lay just beyond the edge of what had been written.
Elyndra's hand squeezed mine lightly, grounding me back to the world she could see. "Carten?" she asked softly, concern threading her voice.
I turned to her, and for a brief moment, the strangeness of our perspectives collided. She saw the world as whole, safe, complete. I saw it fractured, infinite, unfinished. Yet we stood together, divided by perception, bound by proximity.
"It's… nothing," I said finally, my voice low, almost a whisper. "Nothing you could see. Nothing you could ever see. It's… beyond."
She nodded slowly, accepting my words as truth, though they made no sense to her. She could not imagine what lay beyond the edge of the village. She could not see the void that swallowed the world's end. And that was the way it had to be.
I turned back to the black expanse. I did not step forward. I did not cross the boundary. I only stood there, staring, feeling the weight of something eternal pressing against the edge of the written world.
The village behind me was alive, warm, safe. The void before me was silent, infinite, and unknowable. I did not move. I only watched.
For the first time in a long while, I understood: the story had paused. The world had ended here for everyone else. But for me, for my eyes alone, the unwritten half waited. Waiting for a hand, waiting for a choice, waiting for the courage to step into a reality no one had yet dared to author.
I did not move. I only stared.
And that was enough.