Alen stared at the blinking cursor of Chapter 2789, feeling as if it mocked him. The document filled half his screen, the other half reflecting his tired face—eyes dull, shoulders slumped, hair sticking up from too many nights spent wrestling with sentences.
He had been writing this novel for twelve years. Every day. Every morning, evening, and stolen lunch break. His life had collapsed into three tasks: write, sleep, repeat.
What once ignited him now felt like an anchor chained to his ribs.
The characters he had once loved—Keren the flameborn knight, Varesh the exiled prince, Lira the oracle—no longer stirred anything in him. Their fates felt mechanical. Their dialogue hollow. And worst, he found himself no longer caring.
"I just need to finish this chapter," he muttered. "One more scene."
But the sentence in front of him blurred. His head felt heavy, his thoughts drifting like scattered pages. Just a moment of rest, he told himself. Just a minute… then he'd deal with the plot knot twisting the story into nonsense.
His eyes closed.
And darkness swallowed him.
---
Alen woke with a jolt.
Instead of his desk, he lay on hard cobblestone. Above him stretched a pale sky. The air smelled of soot, bread, livestock, and too many bodies packed into one place. Something about that mix of scents triggered recognition.
"No way…"
He sat up. The town around him bustled with life—wooden carts, crooked houses with slate roofs, vendors shouting about fish and spices, children weaving between muddy puddles. A town he knew too well.
Brookmill.
A small riverside settlement that appeared in the first three chapters of his novel. It was where a minor character—barely a footnote—gave the protagonist a crucial warning before disappearing from the story entirely.
A character named—
"David!" someone shouted behind him. "David Zarick! You're late again!"
Alen froze.
Oh no.
He turned slowly. A thick-armed blacksmith glared at him from the doorway of a forge, sparks crackling behind him. The name slotted itself into Alen's memory like a cruel joke.
David Zarick.
A background NPC.
A man who warns the heroes once and then fades into oblivion, never mentioned again. He wasn't a warrior, a mage, or a villain. He sold iron nails and occasionally complained about taxes. That was it.
Alen felt cold.
"I'm… David Zarick?" he whispered, looking down at the dusty apron now tied around his waist.
The blacksmith barked, "Don't just stand there gawking. We need the cart loaded before the militia comes through, or we're in trouble."
Trouble. Right.
Alen knew exactly what was coming.
In his novel's early chapters, Brookmill faced a sudden raid from a rogue faction. Buildings burned, people fled, and several unnamed townsfolk died. David Zarick wasn't explicitly shown dying, but he was never mentioned again. Logically—and narratively—he didn't survive.
Alen's throat tightened.
"Oh, this is bad," he muttered. "This is very, very bad."
A bell tolled in the center of town. People's heads snapped up. Vendors froze mid-shout. The air shifted—heavy, anxious.
That bell only rang for one reason.
Attack.
Panic spread like sparks through dry straw.
Shouts erupted. Someone dropped a basket. A woman grabbed her children. Guards rushed toward the western gate, drawing weapons that Alen knew were mostly for show.
The blacksmith looked at him, fear flashing underneath anger.
"David, move!"
But Alen didn't move at first. He was frozen, a writer trapped inside one of his own footnotes. A character whose life he'd never bothered to flesh out, because why would he? David wasn't important.
Except now he was David.
And that meant his survival depended on a few lines he had written twelve years ago—with zero thought for realism, strategy, or mercy.
A horse screamed somewhere down the street. Smoke began drifting above the rooftops.
Alen's breath came fast and ragged.
"I'm not supposed to die here," he whispered. "I didn't even give you a proper ending, David. You just… vanished."
He gripped the edge of a cart to steady himself. The ground trembled as enemies approached. The town shook with chaos.
Fear punched him in the ribs—raw, electric, awakening something he thought long dead.
Not passion for the story.
Not duty to his work.
Survival.
He straightened, swallowing hard.
"Fine," he said to the rushing panic of Brookmill. "If I'm David Zarick now… then I'm rewriting his ending."
He turned and ran—not away from danger, but toward any chance he could find to live.
For the first time in years, Alen felt alive.