2025-05-21 23:38:36
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
The Penman’s Reckoning
The world had changed.No more screaming trees. No more walls that bled stories. The earth under Kaiza's feet was solid, unscarred by ink or teeth. The sky above was clean no longer a canvas of scratched-out constellations but a soft shade of morning gray.He strolled through a place that was familiar and alien all at once.A village.Rebuilt.Humans migrated, talked, laughed. Some of their faces were familiar to him—Calder now worked at a smithy. Soryn instructed youngsters under the shade of a windmill. They greeted him with no trepidation in their eyes.No recollection of what they had suffered through.No recollection of the Library, the Author, or the terrors they had narrowly escaped.They were free.But Kaiza wasn't.The Hollow HeroHe stood outside Soryn's house, observing as she read to the children. Her voice was soft, soothing, without the shaky accent it once possessed when tormented by memory.Kaiza's hand reached for her, hesitated, and then withdrew.She didn't recall h
Chapter 83: The Verse That Should Not Be Read
The darkness wailed like a maimed beast.Ash fell from a torn sky, every flake murmuring things no mortal lips should repeat. The survivors cowered within a circle of shattered scripture, salt, and terror. The fire had died hours before, but its heat lingered—a memory of the Script-Breaker's birth.Kaiza lay on his side, his body convulsing in silence. His blood whispered scripture now. Each drop hit the ground and crawled away, forming riddles that tried to rewrite the earth itself.Soryn kneeled beside him, her fingers trembling. “Kaiza, stay with me—don’t let him take your story.”But Kaiza’s eyes flickered, showing two truths.One was him—fractured, burning, bleeding.The other… was the other.Inside the Ink RealmKaiza stood in an endless white emptiness. But when he glanced upwards, he saw words rather than stars. Thousands of sentences written across the sky, swirling in muddled spirals. His body half-ink, half-skeleton, his fingers oozing punctuation.Then he saw him—the Scrip
Chapter 82: The Hollow Resurrection
Blood stained the broken stone under Kaiza's boots, his and not his. The howling wind that rushed past Hollow City's remains bore the whispers of untold tales, memories waiting to perish, and cries that hadn't ceased even though the Manus had been destroyed. The triumph had been brief, swift, and brutally quiet.He still could see that figure himself, the abandoned version in the broken realities. That piece was lost, but the warning lasted.You were never supposed to exist.Kaiza's fists clenched, the veins standing out in his arm from the aftershock of raw magic and adrenaline. His sword, once aglow with righteous indignation, now dulled in his hand, its edge chipped from the fight against a monster that was half myth and half himself.Kaiza," Soryn whispered, by his side, his voice shaking with fatigue. Her robes were rent, her left arm bleeding profusely where a piece of accursed glass had lodged. "We have to leave. The city will not last long. There is something still stirring un
Chapter 81: The Final Page
The wake of Manus's death had left Hollow City in a hush too profound to understand. The streets, which had once cracked with the pandemonium of infinite rewrites, now lay eerily quiet, as if the city itself was holding its breath. Under the blackened ruins of the Archive, the whispers of ancient magic vibrated, the dark strand that had tied Kaiza's history to the rewritten world slowly fraying.Soryn's bloody hand lay upon Kaiza's shoulder, her breath thick, but her eyes unyielding. There was no triumph in the atmosphere, only the whisper of restoration, as if the first gasp of fresh air after a long, choking storm.Kaiza faced her, his chest straining. His body was a collection of broken glass and ink, each segment of him drawn towards fatigue, but his head ran. The Manus was destroyed, but the truth, whatever was left of it, was still caught up in the net of memories that had been torn asunder.He looked out toward the looming cityscape, the once-daunting skyline now faded and batt
Chapter 80: The Final Rewrite
The field had fallen silent but not motionless.Black fog swirled like paper smoke, coiling above the broken pieces of the Forgotten Quill's magic. Ink, blood, and memory drained into the ground, yet at its core were two Kaizas: one singed and burning on the inside, the other improbably clean.The "Perfect Kaiza."A phantom brought into being by deepest wish a form of himself unsullied by defeat, unwounded by guilt.You were born to command, not to question," the ideal Kaiza said, voice as smooth as silk infused with venom."You might have saved Thalen. Saved your mother. Soryn. Elira. All of them."The actual Kaiza lurched to his feet. Cloak in shreds, armor splintered, eyes bloodshot but firm. Soryn leaned against a shattered spear behind him, praying silently to keep her mind from shattering once more."This isn't a fight of swords," she growled. "It's a fight of truths."Kaiza knew she was correct.The Quill still spilling ink into the sky was challenging him. It had brought this
Chapter 79: The Forgotten Quill
The air had not settled.The conflict with the Echo-Born had burst the heart of the city physically and spiritually. Ash adhered to what was left like snow, and shattered pieces of memory hung in the air: a child's laughter, the last note of a lullaby, and a cry that never dissipated.Kaiza stood on the border of the broken plaza, looking into the charred ink stain where Malrik had been destroyed. All that was left was a lone feather, black, sleek, shining faintly with changing letters along its vanes.Soryn came to stand beside him, her body battered but her eyes intact. "The Inkblade's gone."Kaiza didn't reply. He stooped and picked up the feather from the ground.The names inscribed onto its surface shifted. They recited his name, time and again, each with a different suffix.Kaiza the Redeemer.Kaiza the Betrayer.Kaiza the Flamewrought.Kaiza the Forgotten.Kaiza… the Unwritten.Shivers ran down him. "It wasn't the true threat," he said softly. "Malrik was but the preamble. The
Chapter 78: The Wake of Reclaiming
The sun came up in Hollow City for the first time in what had felt like forever, not as a beacon of hope but as a reckoning. Once-falling walls now shone gold in spots, still bearing the bruises of history rewritten. Under it all, Kaiza stood at the boundary of what was once the Citadel of Silence, observing the people convene, returning faces, new ones. Survivors. Dreamers. Fighters.A new era was being written. And Kaiza was its reluctant designer."You don't trust it," Soryn breathed down his neck.Kaiza spun around, his gaze not a burn but a distance. "Hope has a price. Always. The pen, the curse, the vessels… they all cost us something. And now the world offers us peace like it wants us to grin and forget."Soryn’s fingers traced the healed scar along her collarbone, the one she earned in the forgotten future they’d glimpsed in the Archive. “Peace isn’t a reward. It’s a beginning.”Before Kaiza could answer, a ripple tore through the sky above.Thunder boomed though no tempest ra
Chapter 77: Embers of the Rewrite
The heavens above Aeloria were no longer filled with darkness, but neither were they bright. Instead, they seemed to linger in a quiet world held in suspension. Villages rebuilt their homes. Survivors prayed to old gods in hushed tones. But the quiet that followed in the aftermath of the Hollow Quill's downfall was more deafening than war ever was.In the center of the Ashfen Vale, the Core's ruins glowed softly under the ground, embers that refused to perish. Above, a tree had started growing its trunk striped with silver ink, its leaves sharing secrets with the breeze.Mina sat in the shade of that tree.She no longer heard the editor's chorus, nor did the voices rip at her mind. But the ink had not fully departed from her. Her fingertips were permanently stained, as if the Hollow Quill left its mark behind.Kaiza emerged from the treeline, satchel in hand and his tattered coat over his arm. He hadn't changed, but his eyes bore centuries. He sat down beside her in silence."They're
Chapter 76: Ashes of the Unwritten
The Tear's light faded behind them, a blinding tear now closed up like a wound that would never heal. Kaiza and Mina stood in silence under the fallen arches of the Sanctum Orbis, surrounded by echoes of what might have been — a dozen possibilities that would never be.Kaiza's breathing was slow and shallow, his body still acclimating to being real once more flesh, not ink. He took Mina's hand. She didn't delay. Their fingers were intertwined, stabilizing each other in the eerie quiet."We did it," he whispered, more to himself than to her."Yes," Mina replied softly, then continued, "But something's not right.She was right. Something was off with the air in it, not merely lingering magic, but something deeper. A hush too total. As though the world waited, holding its breath.The Return to AeloriaWith dawn, they reached the perimeter of Aeloria, their former home of sorts. It was devastating waiting for them.Houses were half-eaten by ink. Roads cracked like dried-up parchment. And
You may also like
Fury of the Forgotten
Sampson708 viewsELVIS WAYAS
Krisander923 views"I will be a Villain in this life."
Amber Shaw1.5K viewsThe Connection
NtParty1.1K viewsThe infinite growlers
Sam Chase 964 viewsTHE POSSESSIVE MAFIA BOSS: HERBERT HALLOWAY
Ludovic6.2K viewsYou Are My Savior
Leah Felix2.5K viewsBeautiful Creatures.
Onya1.8K views