The Black Colors Market lay deep in the Under-Perspective, a geographical rift in the city of Iris that defied the laws of three dimensions. Here, houses appeared abstract—sometimes as cubes, sometimes as mere lines depending on your viewpoint. The air didn't carry the scent of oxygen; it reeked of concentrated Chinese ink and burnt sulfur.
The Headless Knight, Sir Garrett, pulled Sol through the crowd of warped creatures. His silver metallic armor gleamed coldly, but it ended abruptly at the neck with a sharp edge, as if a cosmic blade had excised his head from existence.
"Don't touch anything, boy," Garrett's voice echoed from inside his armor, deep and vibrating. "In this market, if you touch a color you cannot afford, the vendor has the legal right to steal your lines. You don't want to end up as an erased ink blot on the pavement, do you?"
Sol followed him weakly. His left hand, which had once been mere faint lines, was peeling, specks of graphite falling like sand from a broken hourglass. Around them, vendors displayed strange goods: bottles filled with stolen children's laughter, wooden boxes containing shadows of lost travelers, and even canned sounds that shrieked whenever shaken.
"Sir Garrett," Sol whispered, his voice fragile, "where are we going? My body… it's dissolving. I feel like I'm becoming nothing again."
Garrett stopped before a massive iron door engraved with a scissors and scalpel symbol."This is Master Constantine. He's a soul restorer, a master at stabilizing crumbling lines. If anyone can prevent you from vanishing, it's him. But beware… Constantine does not accept gold—he wants visual stories."
Garrett knocked with his heavy metallic hand. A small slit opened, and a brass telescope eye spun wildly, inspecting them.
"Garrett?" a paper-thin voice rasped. "I told you I cannot redraw your head. The line that severed your neck is from Eternal Ink—it cannot be undone. Leave!"
"I did not come for myself, old man!" Garrett roared. "I bring a sketch with the Eternal Pigment Eye, infected by the critic!"
Silence stretched, then the heavy bolts slowly retracted. The door swung open, revealing a workshop that looked like a surgical studio. Constantine was tiny, his body composed of folds of dyed fabric, his eyes magnified by golden lenses mounted on his skull.
"Come in… quickly!"
Inside, drawn limbs hung from the ceiling on invisible wires; hands moved slowly, legs walked in the air, half-formed faces stared with empty eyes. Constantine placed Sol on a table covered in absorbent white paper, soaking up the ink leaking from him.
"My God…" Constantine whispered, inspecting Sol's glowing blue eye. "You're not just any sketch. You carry the source code. That critic, Lucia, wasn't trying to kill you—she aimed to liquefy your essence and redraw it in her own palette."
He pulled out a long needle and a vial labeled Blue of Forgetting, its liquid glowing."I will inject perspective into your veins. It will hurt—you will feel every particle of you being redrawn sharply. Hold still."
As the needle pierced Sol's arm, he let out a silent scream. The world shattered into millions of colored pixels. His paper bones strengthened, his faint lines sharpened into black, raven-like strokes.
Then the workshop shook violently, as if a giant hand had struck the building from above.
"They found us!" Garrett shouted, drawing his massive Void Sword.
The walls turned cold gray. Features faded. A cosmic eraser descended, wiping the ceiling clean. From the whitened void, the Correctors appeared—faceless beings in skin-tight suits, holding luminous erasing pens.
"Target: Sketch Fugitive 001," they intoned in unison, a sound like electrical buzzing. "The error will now be corrected."
Garrett charged at them, his Void Sword cutting the air."Constantine! Take the boy to the Abstract Tunnels! I'll stall these slaves!"
"No!" Sol tried to stand, feeling the unusual weight of his renewed body.
Constantine didn't wait. He pressed a hidden button beneath the table. The floor split, revealing a chute leading deep beneath the city, where the Purifiers' light could not reach.
"Listen, Sol," Constantine said, pushing him toward the shaft, "you are not a 'mistake in the drawing.' You are the lost message left by the Creator before vanishing. Seek the Abandoned Atelier at the end of the tunnels. There you will understand why you were born incomplete."
Sol plunged into the abyss. Above him, Garrett fought in the midst of the erasing white light. The market vanished, the workshop erased, and the knight's voice faded into oblivion.
He landed at the bottom, surrounded by walls pulsing with forbidden colors that shifted constantly. Alone, clutching Constantine's diamond-tipped brush in his right hand, and carrying the truth in his glowing right eye… he held the power to either burn the world or redraw it entirely.