2024-12-27 14:37:47Kael stood at the grand mansion, a stark contrast to his simple attire and calm demeanor.
The doors opened, and Evangeline’s father, Mr. Holsten, greeted him warmly, his face lighting up. “Kael, my boy, come in, come in!” he exclaimed, gripping Kael’s hand firmly. “I’m glad you came.” Kael nodded respectfully. “Thank you for having me, sir.” The sound of hurried footsteps interrupted their exchange as Evangeline entered the room. Her sharp gaze locked onto Kael, her expression twisting with irritation. “What is he doing here?” she demanded, her voice laced with contempt. “Father, didn’t I make it clear yesterday? I’m not agreeing to this ridiculous arrangement!” Before her father could respond, her mother appeared, her face mirroring her daughter’s disdain. “Really, Holsten? Inviting him into our home again? How much more humiliation are you planning to bring upon this family?” Kael’s expression remained calm, though his eyes flickered briefly with an unreadable emotion. “Evangeline,” her father began, his tone firm but measured. “I’ve made my decision. You will marry Kael, as promised.” “Promised?” Evangeline snapped, her voice rising. “To who? A promise made without consulting me? Do I not have a say in my own life?” Her mother chimed in, crossing her arms. “Exactly! Evangeline can have her pick of suitors—rich men, influential men, men who could actually bring value to this family. And you want her to settle for... this?” She gestured dismissively toward Kael. Kael’s gaze didn’t waver, though the insults hung in the air. “Enough!” Mr. Holsten raised his voice, silencing the room. “I made this promise to Kael’s father, a man who saved my life. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be standing here today. My word is my bond, and I won’t go back on it.” Evangeline’s anger flared. “You’re doing this because of some ancient debt? I’m your daughter, yet you’re treating me like a bargaining chip!” “You’re my daughter,” her father replied, his voice heavy with conviction. “But I won’t raise you to be ungrateful or dishonorable. Kael may not have wealth now, but he is a man of dignity and loyalty. That is worth more than any fortune.” Evangeline threw her hands up in exasperation. “This is unbelievable! So, what? If I refuse, you’ll disown me?” Mr. Holsten’s eyes hardened. “Yes.” The weight of that single word hung in the air. Evangeline stared at him, her anger giving way to disbelief. “You’re serious,” she whispered. “Deadly serious,” her father replied. “I won’t tolerate selfishness or disrespect for the sacrifices others have made.” Her mother scoffed. “This is absurd! Forcing your own daughter into a marriage she doesn’t want? This will ruin her life!” “Enough, Margaret!” Mr. Holsten snapped. “This discussion is over. Evangeline, if you refuse, you’re no longer welcome under this roof.” Evangeline’s jaw tightened, her fists clenching at her sides. She turned to Kael, her eyes blazing with fury. “Fine,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “I’ll do it. But don’t think for a second that I’m doing this willingly.” Her father nodded, his expression softening slightly. “Good. Then let’s go to the marriage bureau now and make it official.” “Now?” Evangeline’s voice cracked. “You’re not even giving me time to think?” “There’s nothing left to think about,” Mr. Holsten said firmly. The ride to the marriage bureau was tense . Evangeline sat as far away from Kael as possible, her arms crossed and her glare fixed out the window. “You’re a loser, Kael,” she spat suddenly, her voice cutting through the silence . “A complete and utter loser. Do you think this is some kind of victory for you? Forcing someone into a marriage they don’t want?” Kael didn’t respond, his gaze steady on the road ahead. “Answer me!” she snapped. “Or are you too much of a coward to face the truth?” Her words were met with silence, which only fueled her anger. “You’re nothing but a dream wrecker,” she continued. “I had plans, Kael. Big plans. And now, thanks to you, they’re all ruined.” Kael finally turned to her, his voice calm but firm. “I didn’t ask for this, Evangeline. But I won’t apologize for keeping my word.” She laughed bitterly. “Your word? Spare me the noble act. You’re just desperate. You know you’re not a match for me anymore, so you’re clinging to this ridiculous arrangement like it’s your last lifeline.” Kael’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. When they arrived at the marriage bureau, Evangeline hesitated at the door, her body trembling with frustration. Her father placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said softly. “The right thing?” she echoed, her voice filled with venom. “The right thing would’ve been to let me choose my own future.” Ignoring her protests, her father guided her inside. The process was quick but excruciating for Evangeline. Each signature felt like a nail in the coffin of her dreams. When the official finally handed them the certificate, she snatched it and shoved it into her bag without a word. Outside, Kael turned to her. “Evangeline—” “Don’t,” she interrupted, her voice cold and sharp. “Don’t you dare try to act like we’re partners in this. You’re nothing to me, Kael. Nothing.” She stormed off toward her father’s car, leaving Kael standing alone. As he watched her go, he slipped his hands into his pockets, his expression unreadable. Mr. Holsten approached him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Give her time, Kael. She’ll come around.”
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Chapter 255
The tear widened.Not like paper. Not like sky.It screamed open, as if reality itself had reached its breaking point and could no longer hold its seams together. The margins howled with it—bleeding chronology, bleeding memory.And from that wound came everything the world had once forgotten.Whole timelines—long buried, discarded, pruned from the Tree of Plot—came crashing through like collapsing wavefronts. The bleeding margins quaked, and Subtext warped like a glitching dream.One by one, the alternate realities fell into the world like glass shattering in reverse.A kingdom appeared on a hill that hadn’t existed a second before.An entire species blinked into life—then burned into ash.A river rewound into a volcano, erupting upward from the soil like it was angry to have ever cooled.A child, playing with chalk on a cobblestone path, blinked—then became an old man, screaming, weeping, grasping at memories of parents who had never existed.“This is wrong!” Selene cried. “It’s rewr
Chapter 254
It stood between realities like an ink blot defying grammar.The figure—Draft Zero—wasn’t a man, or a monster.It was the part of a story you were never meant to see.The discarded voice.The original fracture.The wrong sentence, left unspoken for so long it became its own echo.Kael felt its presence like a splinter in his thoughts. Something ancient and misremembered, a half-erased whisper at the foundation of his being.“Who are you?” he asked.But even as the words left his lips, part of him knew.The figure straightened, parchment skin fluttering in nonexistent wind. It had no eyes, no face—only a blankness wrapped in folds of obsolete narrative.“I am what came before, Kael,” it whispered. “Before the first story. Before the first quill. Before the Library carved truth into shelves.”Its voice didn’t travel through sound—it pressed directly into the mind, like a childhood memory reemerging with the wrong details. It turned toward the others—Selene, Pamela, Elias, Riva—and with
Chapter 253
The door opened like a wound.It didn’t swing outward or inward—it simply peeled, like memory detaching from bone, like a truth slowly being admitted. As it parted, light spilled from within—not radiant, but revealing, the kind of light that doesn’t illuminate the world so much as strip it down to the shape of its making.Pamela was the first to move.Despite the warnings in her bones, despite the twitching of glyphs along the corridor walls as if trying to signal “do not enter,” she crossed the threshold with the cautious resolve of a historian walking into a page that should never have existed.Beyond the door was no room, no chamber, no vault.It was a loop.A recursive sphere of memory, repeating endlessly in all directions like an echo locked in glass. In the center of it—curled, flickering, radiant and trembling—was Kael, or rather, the moment Kael first knew himself.⸻It was not a moment of joy. Not triumph. Not even clarity.It was terror.There, at the primal origin of his s
Chapter 252
It began with glyphs.Symbols not etched, but remembered—carved not into stone or bark, but into the soft pliable clay of the world’s forgotten thoughts. They pulsed in the margins like veins beneath a translucent skin, glowing faintly with an inner phosphorescence, casting long shadows that shouldn’t have been possible in a world that had no consistent light source anymore.Elias crouched low near the base of a hill where language itself seemed to weep. His fingers traced the symbols reverently, his brow damp with sweat. He wasn’t deciphering language so much as listening to the sediment of meaning. This wasn’t text—it was subtext. A code carved into silence. A whisper woven beneath the page.“They’re instructions,” he murmured finally, eyes widening. “Or… a confession.”Selene knelt beside him, her own breath shallow. “What do they say?”Elias blinked slowly, as if the words ached to be spoken aloud.“The fusion didn’t end the recursion. It started a descent. There’s another layer…
Chapter 251
The margins bled. They always had—but now the bleeding was slow, syrupy, unnervingly rhythmic. As though the world had found a heartbeat again, and that heartbeat pulsed through torn sentences and decaying metaphors. The stitched edges of reality no longer held neatly; instead, they frayed like threads at the cuff of a forgotten draft. The world wasn’t dying. It was… reconsidering itself.And in the center of that strange, shifting non-place walked Kael.Not the god. Not the mortal. Not the child nor the memory. But the fusion.Gold and grey spiraled in his irises like opposing galaxies caught in collision. His skin shimmered like something written and erased and rewritten. Where he walked, words bent around him—trees leaned to avoid narrative alignment, clouds hovered low as if eavesdropping on a story they couldn’t quite grasp.And he was silent.Not just silent in sound, but in presence. Where Kael walked, conversation fled. Wind forgot to howl. Footsteps muffled themselves. Selene
Chapter 250
The sky was ink.No longer a canvas or a dome, no longer even a concept of weather—the sky above the burning margins bled words. Letters tumbled like ash, catching fire midair, sentences dissolving before they were read. Somewhere, a clock tower chimed without gears. Somewhere else, an ocean recited poetry backwards into salt.In the center of this madness stood Selene, surrounded by the fraying edges of the world. The ritual circle had been drawn in molten ink, each glyph traced from memory, not instruction. The old magic—if it could even be called that—was never meant to fuse two selves from separate narrative threads. But then again, the world was never meant to survive Kael’s story.Selene’s hands were burned black with metaphor.In one, she held the broken quill—Kael’s, the one that ended the war, the one that sealed the Library. It still trembled with the memory of finality.In the other, she held the bleeding pen—Kael-0’s, or perhaps a relic from the first word ever written in
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