The crown of petals that hovered above the Eternal Garden quivered as though struck by a silent chord.
The sky darkened not with storm clouds, but with something far older, something hungry.
The stars stopped singing.
The wind froze mid-breath.
Then a crack spread across the heavens like glass breaking under pressure.
Through it, a shadow bled, blacker than the old, yet moving like liquid ink spilt across a page.
Lyra gasped, clutching Oscar's arm.
"It's… alive."
Origin's eyes narrowed, her voice low, trembling with a realisation she hadn't wanted to face.
"No. It's aware."
The Sleeper was not a being, not in the way they understood.
It had no face, no shape.
Its presence was a pulse, a rhythm that consumed all others.
Thump.
The Eternal Garden's song faltered.
Thump.
The petals began to wither midair, falling like dead stars.
Oscar's heart nearly skipped a beat, as if the Sleeper's pulse was trying to override his own.
A voice not heard, but felt slithered through the silence:
"Who… dares… to dream… when I am waking?"
Origin's flame flickered violently.
She had faced gods, dismantled systems, and stood against entire pantheons.
But this? This was different.
"Oscar," she whispered, "this thing… It's not from our story. It's not even from our reality. It's from the blankness between stories the hunger that swallows unwritten worlds."
Lyra's knuckles whitened on her blade.
"Then how do we fight it?"
Origin shook her head.
"You don't fight emptiness. You survive it. Or you become part of it."
But Oscar, calm and steady, took a single step forward.
The garden light clung to him, resisting the pull of the void.
"Then I'll do what I've always done," he said, his voice steady.
"I'll give it a story."
The Sleeper's shadow twisted, recoiling slightly as if it didn't understand the words.
Oscar raised his hand, and the Living Draft shimmered into being before him, floating like a shield of possibility.
It pulsed with countless unwritten words every "what if" and "what could be" vibrating with life.
"You're not a god," Oscar whispered to the Sleeper.
"You're a question. A blank page.
Let me answer you."
He dipped his finger into the ink of the Draft, not black, but every colour and drew a line across the air.
The world around them trembled.
The Sleeper roared not with sound, but with erasure.
Mountains faded.
The sky lost colour
Memories of the dreamers began to unwrite themselves.
Lyra screamed as her own name flickered, letters breaking apart like glass.
But Oscar held firm, writing word after word into the void.
Each word became a star.
Each sentence became a shield.
"If you are emptiness," he cried,
"Then let my story fill you!"
For the first time, the Sleeper's voice, still alien, still wrong, shifted from hunger to confusion.
"A… story?"
The ink Oscar had drawn spread across its formless mass, turning parts of the void into images: a face, a hand, the echo of something once alive but forgotten.
Origin gasped.
"Oscar… you're making it remember."
But it was not enough.
The Sleeper's pulse grew faster, stronger, as though realising the danger of being defined.
It lashed out, and the garden shook violently. Trees of starlight fell like burning meteors.
Lyra and Origin ran to Oscar's side.
"You can't do this alone!" Lyra shouted.
Oscar looked at them, eyes blazing with defiance.
"Then help me write."
Origin placed her hand on the Draft. Lyra did the same.
Together, they wrote not a weapon, not a command, but a song.
The garden's voice returned, louder and stronger, its melody weaving around the Sleeper like chains of light.
The Sleeper's mass thrashed, fragments of shadow tearing free as if caught between erasure and becoming.
Oscar leaned forward, whispering:
"You don't have to consume everything. You can be part of something.
I'll give you a place in the story."
And for the briefest moment… the Sleeper paused.
The ink around it shimmered.
It almost looked like it was listening.
---
The Name We Give the Void
The Sleeper hung suspended above the collapsing Garden, its endless form quivering like a canvas unsure of the first brushstroke.
It was no longer simply erasing; it was watching.
Oscar lowered the quill.
The ink still hovered in the air around him tiny galaxies waiting for their names.
"You've never been called anything, have you?" he whispered.
The Sleeper's reply came as a ripple, not in words but in emotion: confusion, fear, hunger.
Origin stepped closer, her flame dim but steady.
"Oscar… if you give it a name, you give it existence."
Oscar's gaze hardened.
"Everything deserves at least that much."
The Sleeper's formless shadow brushed against Lyra's thoughts.
She staggered, memories flickering of the time she first grasped a blade, the taste of her mother's bread, the fear of the first dungeon.
She gasped.
"It's… taking my life, piece by piece."
Oscar turned sharply.
"Then give it something else to hold. Something you choose to share."
With trembling hands, Lyra closed her eyes and began to speak:
"My name is Lyra.
I once believed my story was only about killing to survive.
But now… I know my story is about protecting what sings in the dark."
The Sleeper paused.
It's shifting void shivered like ink meeting fire.
Origin raised her flame, pressing it to the Draft.
Her voice carried the weight of centuries:
"I am Origin. I have been a god, a judge, a liar, and a mother of stories I did not understand. But I am here, now, to be more than my mistakes."
The flame sank into the ink, fusing with it, creating lines that glowed like burning constellations.
The Sleeper's surface rippled, as if the first shape of a name was forming like clay being moulded by unseen hands.
Oscar placed the final line.
He spoke not as a hero or author, but as a listener.
"You are not hungry.
You are not nothing.
You are…"
He hesitated. The name had to fit.
The Living Draft pulsed in his hands, whispering countless possibilities.
Finally, he breathed the word:
"Aethryn."
The void trembled violently.
The name echoed through every realm through every unwritten corner of creation.
The Sleeper let out a sound not rage, not pain, but something like a newborn's cry, jagged and unsure.
Where shadows had once spread, fragments of colour began to emerge: the faint gold of memory, the deep blue of longing.
Lyra whispered, astonished:
"It's… changing."
For the first time, a voice small and halting formed from the void:
"I… am?"
Oscar nodded, tears stinging his eyes.
"Yes. You are. And you don't need to destroy it to prove it."
The Garden began to bloom again, petals of light returning as if answering Aethryn's hesitant breath.
But Origin's face was grave.
"Oscar… Do you understand what you've done? A name is not just life. It's power. You've bound the void to the story but also invited it in."
The ink in the Living Draft quivered violently, as though fighting against itself.
The pages split, a second book beginning to form one that wasn't Oscar's.
Aethryn's voice deepened, almost childlike but growing stronger:
"I… want… to write too."
Reality shook as the Garden split in two a divide between the worlds of dreamers and the emerging will of Aethryn.
Lyra grabbed Oscar's hand.
"What now?!"
Oscar stared into the forming void and smiled, though it was laced with exhaustion.
"Now… we see what kind of story it wants to tell."