I felt it again — that strange, aching dissonance.
The words that had appeared before me, carved into the fabric of this world, were not meant for me. I knew it. I felt it. They didn't belong to my story.
They were someone else's.
And yet they pulsed faintly in my mind, like echoes of a forgotten script that I wasn't supposed to read.
For a long moment, I stood there, unmoving beneath the pale sky. The air was still, almost reverent, and somewhere deep within that silence, I sensed it — a presence. Watching.
Unseen, but unmistakably there.
It wasn't human, nor was it bound by the same world I stood upon. I couldn't prove it, yet every fiber of my being screamed that something beyond was gazing down at me.
I lifted my eyes to the heavens.
The clouds had stilled — frozen in place — as if time itself had been caught in hesitation. Then, slowly, faint light rippled across the horizon. It wasn't sunlight. It was softer, more deliberate… like the shimmer of ink brushed onto parchment.
And then I saw it.
A shadow, vast and divine, descended through the heavens. It was shaped like a hand — long, weightless fingers carrying a pen that glimmered with unearthly light.
My breath caught.
It began to write.
The void before me — the endless nothingness that had marked the edge of the world — trembled as the pen moved across invisible lines. The emptiness rippled. Then, slowly, color bled into it — green, blue, brown — as though the sky itself had been dipped in pigment and spilled onto the earth.
Grass sprouted first, tender and wild.
Then came the whisper of leaves, the stretching of roots.
Trees burst from the once-blank ground, their branches unfurling like sentences coming to life. Rivers formed next, veins of silver threading through the newborn landscape. Mountains rose like punctuation marks, marking the rhythm of creation.
I could only stare, unable to breathe.
The world was being written before me.
The hand — that divine silhouette — moved with steady grace, each motion deliberate, each curve of ink birthing new reality. And I stood at the border, half in awe, half in terror, as the once-dead land beyond the village began to pulse with life.
Beside me, Elyndra remained still, her small hands clasped before her. She followed my gaze, but her expression was calm — untouched by wonder.
She didn't see it.
Couldn't see it.
"Do you… see it?" I asked quietly, my voice trembling. "The shadow… the hand writing the sky?"
Elyndra blinked, confusion softening her features. "What are you talking about?" she said gently. "There's nothing there. Are you joking with me, Carten?"
"No," I whispered. "The hand… it's right there — can't you feel it?"
Her brows knit. "I don't see anything," she said again, more firmly this time, as if trying to reassure me. "The air's clear. The fields are as they've always been."
As they've always been.
Her words sank into me like a blade wrapped in silk. I turned to look at her fully — her golden hair catching the light, her dark eyes innocent, unknowing. For her, this was the world as it had always been. The forest, the meadows, the distant hills — all eternal, unchanging, familiar.
But I had seen it born from nothing.
I had seen the ink pour from the pen of a god.
I looked back toward the newly formed land. The divine shadow was fading now, its pen no longer moving. The ripples of creation were stilling, the edges of the new world hardening into reality.
Where there had once been void — blank, formless — there now stretched a living horizon. The air carried the scent of rain and earth. A breeze stirred the grass, whispering softly, as though the world was taking its first breath.
"Elyndra," I said slowly, "do you see the land beyond the hill now?"
She tilted her head at me, half smiling, half uncertain. "Why are you asking that? Of course I do. It's always been there. I'm not blind, you know."
Her laughter — light and innocent — echoed faintly in my ears.
Always been there.
Always.
My chest tightened. I wanted to tell her that it had not always been there — that I had witnessed its birth mere moments ago. That a divine shadow had rewritten reality itself while she stood beside me, oblivious.
But I knew it would mean nothing to her.
Because for her, it truly had always existed. The moment the world was rewritten, her memory had rewritten with it. Her perception had reshaped, adjusted, aligned itself to the new truth.
She was part of the story. She could not question its ink.
I, however… I stood outside it.
The wind shifted slightly, carrying with it the faint scent of parchment and ink — the residue of creation. It lingered, just long enough for me to know that what I had seen was not a dream. That the divine shadow had truly passed through this place.
I turned my gaze back to the horizon, where the void had once been. The land shimmered faintly, the edges of it not quite real, as if the ink had yet to dry. There was beauty in it — fragile, newborn beauty — but also unease. A sense that something had been forced into existence too soon.
I could still feel the presence watching from beyond the sky, its unseen eyes fixed on me. Not on Elyndra. Not on this village.
Only me.
It had written the world again, and yet I could not shake the feeling that it expected me to understand why.
Elyndra tugged lightly at my sleeve. "Come," she said softly. "The village is waiting. You've been staring for so long."
I looked at her, at the calm certainty in her expression, and then back at the new land.
It was perfect — too perfect.
And though I said nothing, a quiet dread began to stir inside me.
Because if the world could be rewritten once,
it could be rewritten again.
And next time, I wasn't sure if I'd still be written into it.