Kael couldn't sleep.
Althea's words echoed in his mind like a warning bell tolling in the deep: "When stories go off-course, they tend to correct themselves."
He'd altered a fixed point — the duel with Rowan — and now the narrative was unraveling. But that wasn't what haunted him.
What haunted him… was the idea that the world knew.
That somewhere, something was watching.
A Forgotten Library
On the third level of the Academy, hidden between the Hall of Seers and the lesser alchemical labs, was a door few students noticed. It was old, warped from humidity, and marked with a faint rune in the shape of a broken quill.
Kael found it by accident.
Or maybe it found him.
The door creaked open into a narrow spiral of dust and parchment. A forgotten annex. No light crystals. Just rows of scrolls and books untouched by time.
It felt… familiar.
He stepped inside, fingers trailing over the spine of a cracked leather tome. The titles were strange: The Chronolect of Lost Threads. The Unauthored. The Fade Between. These weren't about magic or history. They were about stories — the mechanics of fate, narrative, and identity.
And then he saw it.
A thick book with no title, wedged between a collection of banned treatises.
He pulled it free.
The pages were blank — at first.
Then words bled onto the paper like ink drawn from memory.
"Kael awoke with the feeling that he was being erased. Not from the world… but from the story."
His blood ran cold.
He flipped the page.
"He was never supposed to exist. But something changed. Someone slipped through the cracks."
Kael staggered back.
This wasn't a book. It was writing itself.
"He thinks he is alone."
The next line appeared as he stared.
"But he isn't."
A Familiar Voice
Kael snapped the book shut and turned—
And came face to face with someone he knew.
A boy, around his age. Messy dark hair. Faint scar on his lip. Brown eyes wide with disbelief.
"…Kael?" the boy whispered.
Kael's heart nearly stopped.
"Eli?"
Eli Carter. His old roommate from his previous life. From the real world.
The world before the novel.
Kael took a shaky step forward. "How the hell are you here?"
Eli looked just as stunned. "I… I don't know. I woke up in a noble's body last week. Thought I was going insane. But then I heard the duel. And I saw you. And I knew."
Kael's thoughts raced. This wasn't supposed to happen. He was the outlier, the anomaly. Not Eli too.
Unless…
Unless something — or someone — had brought them both here.
Eli gave a nervous laugh. "Dude… are we in a story?"
Kael looked at the self-writing book still trembling in his hands.
"No," he whispered. "We're in a broken one."