The march began at dawn — though the sky no longer knew time.
There was no sun. Only a gash of pale light that bled across the heavens like a memory trying to forget itself. Beneath that wounded sky, Elías walked — flanked by monsters, myth, and memory.
They moved not as an army…
But as an answer.
To a question no one dared ask aloud.
---
The land changed around them.
What had once been parchment fields became rivers of glass. Mountains shifted as they walked, turning their faces away in shame. Trees grew backward. Birds spoke in questions.
Each step forward unwrote the map behind them.
---
Tirian noticed it first.
"The world… it forgets itself."
"It remembers something older," Elías replied.
"Something worse?"
"No," he said, gripping the quill. "Something honest."
---
They passed through a village of ink statues — people frozen mid-scream, their bodies hollowed by forgotten confessions. The walls whispered names in languages no one remembered inventing. Children's laughter echoed in reverse.
They didn't stop.
Not out of fear.
But because the road ahead needed their feet to be real.
---
Then came the dreams.
Not from sleep.
From walking.
With every step, Elías saw glimpses.
Not of his past — but of possible ones.
In one, he ruled a kingdom of silence, where every word spoken became a blade.
In another, he died at birth, and the scythe was buried instead of raised.
In yet another, he became a slave to a god made of mirrors, forced to watch himself rot forever.
Each vision pulled at him.
Tugged at the core of who he thought he was.
---
"You see it too?" Leshra whispered.
Elías nodded.
"This road is alive."
"No," Verrun growled. "It feeds."
---
The path narrowed.
The wind turned.
The ground breathed.
Then they found it:
A throne.
Carved from compressed language. Surrounded by skeletons made of quotation marks. It sat alone, in the middle of a circle of silence so deep it devoured sound.
A plaque beneath it read:
"The First Lie Sat Here."
---
No one moved.
Not even Elías.
This throne… it tempted.
Offered rest.
Control.
A shortcut.
But the price was invisible — and therefore infinite.
Elías turned away.
He kept walking.
And the throne… screamed.
---
The scream didn't fade.
It followed.
Like a voice trapped in a story it never agreed to be part of.
And as they crossed into a valley made entirely of torn scripture, the scream evolved.
Became a figure.
A child.
No face.
Just a mouth.
Wide, hungry, ink-black.
It pointed at Elías.
"You refused the lie," it said. "So now, truth must bleed."
---
The child opened its arms.
And from behind it, emerged The Inkborn.
Creatures shaped like letters, twisted into muscle and flesh.
Some walked.
Others flew.
All read.
Not with eyes — with mouths.
They devoured truth.
They drank memory.
They hunted authors.
---
Leshra unsheathed her blade.
Verrun's claws ignited.
Tirian raised both hands, whispering a forgotten spell written in pain.
But Elías…
He raised the quill.
---
And whispered:
"This is not your chapter."
---
A gust of silence exploded from the quill.
Not wind — revision.
It erased part of the Inkborn.
But not enough.
The rest screamed forward.
The battle began.
---
Ink sprayed like blood.
Books cracked like bones.
Monsters bit into philosophy.
One Inkborn tried to rewrite Elías' name mid-air — but Leshra split its spine with a phrase made of flame.
Verrun howled a sentence that shattered reality around them.
Tirian wept a poem so bitter it burned three of them to ash.
But they kept coming.
Endless.
They did not bleed.
They edited.
---
Elías fell.
Only for a second.
But he fell.
The Inkborn swarmed him — claws like pens, mouths chanting: "You were never real."
Then the quill burned hot.
Hotter.
Hotter—
Elías screamed a single word:
"ENOUGH."
---
And the sky obeyed.
It folded inward.
Time twisted into paragraphs.
Reality rephrased itself.
And for just a moment —
Everything stopped.
---
When it resumed, the Inkborn were gone.
Rewritten.
Into dust.
The child?
Vanished.
Only the throne remained.
And this time… it bowed.
---
Leshra knelt.
Verrun stared.
Tirian whispered: "He's changing."
---
Elías stood.
The quill now blackened to its core.
But still alive.
Still waiting.
He did not feel like a god.
Not yet.
He felt… closer.
To something vast.
To something terrifying.
To something true.
---
And from the horizon, beyond mountains that screamed names at the sky, came a new sound:
Drums.
Not of war.
Of ritual.
Something — someone — had noticed.
The world had changed again.
And it was not pleased.
---
Question for the reader:What happens when the story you write begins to write you back?