The words sliced through me far more deeply than any enchanted sword.
I said nothing.
Because I was thinking.
My mind, trained in war and deception, wrapped itself around this puzzle like it was a battlefield. If what Orrian said was true, and I had no proof yet that it wasn't, then the choices I believed I made were… what? Chosen for me?
I remembered the first time I slit a man's throat, burnt him to crisp and felt nothing. The first time I smiled through a lie. The ache in my chest when Caelen looked at me like I was something unholy. I remembered fire, endless, ravenous fire, crawling under my skin like it belonged there.
And now I wondered: who gave me that fire?
Who made me this?
"What was I to them?" I asked, voice cold.
Orrian blinked. "To who?"
"The one who wrote me."
"A challenge. A tool. A villain. A beauty. A tragedy."
I let out a breath that did not fog. "So I was a puppet for their amusement."
Orrian's expression softened. "No. You were their vessel. There's a difference."
I turned to it sharply. "Explain."
"They imagined the story, yes. But you carried it. You breathed life into the role. You transformed it. Not every character becomes aware, Eris. You did. That matters."
"Why?"
"Because the moment you started to ask questions, you shifted the narrative. You broke its spine." Orrian leaned forward, eyes glinting. "You changed your ending. The script did not tell you to surrender. But you did. That choice was yours."
Something cold settled in my chest.
I had never questioned why I stopped fighting. I'd thought it was fatigue. Maybe weakness.
But maybe, just maybe… it had been will.
My will.
"You're quiet," Orrian said.
"I'm thinking," I answered.
It smiled. "Good. That's where all revolutions begin."
I tilted my head, watching Orrian carefully.
"If I was written…" I began, voice steady, "then someone chose this for me."
It offered a slow, amused blink. "Go on."
I took a step, or thought I did. The space beneath me shimmered like mist but gave no resistance. "They chose to make me into this thing. A firestorm. A cautionary tale. They designed my ruin."
Orrian spread it's hands. "Possibly."
"And why?" My voice sharpened. "Why write someone just to burn them? Just to orchestrate their downfall?"
It didn't answer right away.
The silence stretched.
Then, at last: "Because every story needs heat to forge it."
I laughed once, low and bitter. "So I was firewood."
"No. You were the forge itself." Orrian drifted closer, head slightly tilted. "They needed someone to move the plot. To drive the emotions. To make others shine."
"To be hated."
"To be remembered."
My jaw clenched. "I could have been more."
"You were more," Orrian said. "That's the problem. You weren't supposed to be. But you became."
I stared at Orrian.
Something sharp twisted in my chest, not quite grief. Not quite rage. Something deeper. A crack forming in my center.
"I did everything I was expected to do," I murmured. "I killed. I lied. I craved power. And in the end, I begged for death."
"You didn't beg," Orrian corrected. "You chose to die. That difference rewrote the ending."
My hands trembled, or would have, if I could feel them.
"Then why am I here?" I whispered. "If all of it's been told, if I've fulfilled my part, then why not let me stay dead?"
Orrian smiled. But not cruelly.
"You're here," it said, voice softer than before, "because the thread didn't cut clean. Because your story shook the seams. You bled beyond the page."
I narrowed my eyes. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying… we can try again."
I said nothing. Just stared.
Orrian clasped it's hands behind it's back and paced a slow circle around me.
"But this time," it said, "you will not begin at the start. No wide-eyed girl with a future waiting. No tragic build-up. That path is closed. Dead. Burnt."
It came to a stop in front of me.
"This time, Eris Igniva… you start in the middle."
"…The middle."
"Where everything's already broken. Where masks are worn and truths are buried. Where you might just find what you were always looking for."
I searched It's face, what little of it I could see.
"And what, exactly," I said slowly, "do you think I was looking for?"
It grinned. "That's the fun part, isn't it?"
Orrian's offer hung between us like the air before a storm, too still to trust.
I said nothing for a long while.
Thinking.
Always thinking.
Even at the end, when my skin cracked, when the fire had made me delirious, my mind hadn't stopped working. I remember calculating the cost of breathing, the pattern of Caelen's sword movements, even as the flames devoured what was left of me.
And now, even here, in this strange silver nothingness, I found myself doing what I always did.
Weighing.
Watching.
Waiting.
What did it mean to start in the middle? What did it mean to return to a story, now that I knew it had never truly belonged to me?
I considered the possibility, remote, but not impossible, that this was all a hallucination. A dying vision. The frayed mind grasping for meaning in its final collapse. I had heard tales of the dying dreaming up gods and angels, stories and symbols. It was not unheard of.
But the longer I remained here, the longer I listened to Orrian's maddening voice and felt the absence of time around me, the more I noticed something was off.
I was off.
The rage that had once churned under my skin, the constant heat, the fire, the need to destroy, it wasn't there. I didn't feel the beat of violence in my throat. I wasn't trembling with hatred. My breathing, if I still breathed, was steady. I felt…
…unnervingly still.
It was not the calm of peace.
It was the calm of absence.
I was not the woman I had been toward the end. The flame-blooded demon Solmire begged to see fall. That woman would never have listened this long. She'd have cursed this floating thing and demanded to be returned, sword first.
I was quieter now. Measured. Cold, even.
It disturbed me how easily I accepted it.
Maybe dying had stripped something away.
Or maybe the story had ended, and with it, the madness it wrote into me