Kaien's life at Arcanum Academy had slowly devolved into a strange, disorienting blend of surrealism and unease. What had started as a bizarre chance to control the narrative was beginning to feel more like a slow unraveling of the fabric of reality itself. The more he tinkered with the scroll, the more the world around him seemed to slip further into chaos—small, unnoticed glitches that only he seemed to witness. He couldn't ignore it anymore. It was happening.
It started small.
One morning, Kaien sat down for breakfast in the cafeteria, expecting a normal, uneventful meal. The usual suspects were present—students in varying states of enthusiasm, some chatting loudly about their classes, others sitting in silence, eyes glued to their plates. But when the food arrived, he couldn't help but notice something strange. The dish in front of him—a glistening roast chicken leg, accompanied by mashed potatoes and vegetables—was the exact same as the day before.
He shrugged it off at first, chalking it up to coincidence. The chefs must've gotten lazy. But the next day, it was the same. And the next. Three days in a row, he ate the same three dishes in different configurations. A roast chicken here, mashed potatoes there, vegetables arranged just so. Even the seasoning was identical.
As he stared at his plate, it became clear: he was trapped in a loop, a cycle that he had somehow created. A fraction of him laughed—after all, who would care about cafeteria food in a world like this? But deep down, it gnawed at him. He hadn't written this part of the world. He hadn't planned this. It wasn't supposed to be like this.
But it wasn't just the food. It was everywhere.
The campus grounds were vast and sprawling, filled with hidden alcoves and statues honoring famous magical figures of old. Kaien had passed one particular statue several times—a tall figure with an outstretched hand, carved from alabaster. It was a grand piece, but it always felt… out of place. Something about its smooth, featureless face made Kaien uneasy.
One afternoon, as he walked back from class, he passed the statue again. This time, though, it wasn't quite the same. The hand that had once been outstretched now rested at its side.
Kaien stopped in his tracks, eyes widening in disbelief. He could've sworn the statue's hand had been raised the day before. Had he been mistaken? No, he remembered clearly.
He stood there for a moment, staring at it, but before he could gather his thoughts, a student walked past and casually remarked, "You're still staring at that thing, huh?"
Kaien turned to find the student smirking as he walked away, and then turned back to the statue. When he blinked, the hand had returned to its original position—outstretched, as it had always been.
Kaien's heart thudded in his chest. It moved.
The statue wasn't just a static object in the world—it was alive, changing when no one was looking. It was a glitch, like the food. A ripple in the world that shouldn't have existed. But the more Kaien thought about it, the more it became clear: this wasn't an anomaly, it was a warning. Something was happening. The world was reacting to him, to his tampering with it.
Later that day, Kaien received something strange: a detention scroll. But the words on it were blank.
At first, he assumed it was some sort of mistake—an error in the system. Detention scrolls were supposed to be filled with the details of a student's misdeed, outlining the punishment to be carried out. This one, however, was an empty slate.
Curious, Kaien pulled out his own ink pen, dipping it into the ink well on his desk. What would happen if he filled it out himself? What if he could control his own punishment?
He hesitated for a moment before scribbling on the parchment, "Must stay in the library for the next 48 hours."
The moment the words left his pen, the scroll absorbed the ink, glowing faintly in the dim light. Kaien blinked. That was... unusual.
He watched as the parchment, with its newly inscribed words, flickered and turned to ash in the air before reforming back into a solid scroll. But before he could make sense of what had just occurred, the door to his room swung open, revealing the familiar, stern face of Professor Inkwell.
"You've been summoned, Mr. Lior," Inkwell said, his voice cold, though his eyes gleamed with quiet understanding.
Professor Inkwell's classroom was dark and smelled of ink and parchment. His lecture began without delay, his words deliberate, almost measured. He spoke of written magic, the art of manipulating fate through words and ink. His lecture took a somber turn when he began discussing narrative gravity.
"Narrative gravity," Inkwell said, adjusting his glasses, "is the force that resists undue alteration of the story. It is the universe's natural balance—a force that resists changes to the established path. When you manipulate reality too much, it fights back. It corrects itself. Every story has its course, and to stray too far from that course brings consequences."
Kaien's thoughts raced. Was this why everything felt so... off? Was the world fighting against him, trying to return to its original state?
Inkwell paused, as if sensing Kaien's inner turmoil. "You've already seen it, haven't you, Mr. Lior? The glitches? The anomalies? Be careful. The more you write, the harder it becomes to control. This world is not as forgiving as you may think."
Kaien's mind whirled. What Inkwell said made sense. He had felt it too—the pull of something stronger than him, something in the world pushing back against his edits. He had no idea how deep this went, but it was becoming clear that the cost of rewriting fate might be higher than he could imagine.
Later that night, Kaien sat alone in his room, staring at the scroll. It had been days since he last edited something truly significant, but his curiosity gnawed at him. What would happen if he pushed just a little further?
He picked up his notebook, the one that had accompanied him since the beginning. The pages were filled with his hastily written thoughts, his observations, his experiments with the scroll. He turned the page.
The next entry was not his.
A single sentence, in his handwriting but clearly foreign to him, appeared on the page:
"Stop before Chapter 13."
His blood ran cold.
This was his own handwriting—but he had never written those words. He stared at the warning for a long time, his heart thumping in his chest. Was this a sign? A warning from the world? Or from something else?
Before he could contemplate further, the door to his room creaked open, and his thoughts snapped back to reality.
The next day, Kaien found himself in class again, distracted, unable to shake the chilling feeling from the warning in his notebook. As the lesson continued, he couldn't resist the temptation to experiment.
Across the room, a classmate—a nervous-looking boy named Dorian—sat hunched over his desk. Dorian had always been quiet, overshadowed by the more prominent students in the Scriptors faction. Kaien, in a moment of idle curiosity, glanced at the boy's fate. The story had always cast him as a background character, someone who would never truly be seen.
Kaien couldn't resist. What if I gave him a little more?
He wrote on his scroll, "Dorian will participate in the afternoon debate."
Nothing happened at first. Kaien smiled. Maybe this time, the world would cooperate.
But as the class progressed, Kaien noticed something strange. Dorian wasn't in the room anymore.
The bell rang, and the class emptied. But Dorian never showed up again.
Kaien's heart skipped a beat. Where had Dorian gone? He was gone, erased. No one noticed, no one spoke of him. As if he had never existed.
Had Kaien just rewritten someone's existence out of the world entirely?
The consequences of his actions were becoming clearer with each passing day. And the warning had never been more urgent.
To be continued…