The universe had never asked questions before.
It issued consequences. It corrected deviations. It rewrote mistakes until they resembled intention. But now, standing in the place where unfinished stories gathered, the structure of reality hesitated.
The hesitation spread.
Margins in the sky began to close, not by filling, but by folding inward. Time loosened its grip. Cause and effect no longer clung to each other. A sound could exist without echo. A thought could remain unexpressed.
Akash felt the shift immediately. This was not collapse.
This was inquiry.
The pen hovered closer, unsettled. Its surface reflected not words, but options. Every possible continuation shimmered briefly, then faded.
"If nothing is written," the pen said carefully, "what holds the universe together?"
Akash considered the question. No answer arrived fully formed. Instead, he felt the quiet presence of all those fragments around him—stories that had been denied endings yet refused to vanish.
"Attention," he said at last. "Not control."
The universe responded, not with agreement, but with allowance. Space widened. The fragments glowed, not brighter, but steadier. They no longer begged to be completed. They existed.
The pen attempted to write again. This time, a single word appeared—uncertain, light.
Why?
The word did not demand response.
Akash smiled, not in victory, but recognition. A system that could ask why was no longer a prison. It was a conversation.
Far away, dream-stars rearranged themselves without instruction. Fear-holes shrank, uncertain of their purpose. Feelings-planets shifted their orbits freely.
The universe had not been broken.
It had become curious.
And curiosity, unlike repetition, did not require an ending.