Three days into their journey back from the Starfall Archive, they stumbled upon a town they'd never seen on any map. Its houses were built upside down—roofs on the ground, foundations pointing to the sky—and the signs were written backwards, so you had to read them in a mirror.
"Okay, this is definitely not what the map said," Gao Yang said, twisting his head to try and make out a sign that read "SELDOON'S DESSERTS" backwards. "Seldoon's Desserts? Or Noosed's… something? That can't be good."
Lin Chen felt the crystal from Master Lian grow warm in his pocket. The threads of fate here were twisted in reverse—like a story read from the end to the beginning. He'd never felt anything like it.
A man walked past them, his clothes on backwards, humming a tune that sounded familiar but wrong—like a song played in the wrong key. He looked at Lin Chen and smiled, then said, "Nice to meet you, will we?"
Yu Qing pulled out her notebook and started writing. "Reversed narrative space," she muttered. "Everything here is the opposite of what it should be. Stories start with endings, end with beginnings."
They walked into the town square, where a crowd was gathered around a stage. A woman was standing there, crying tears of joy while saying, "I'm so sad my husband just died!"
Gao Yang's eyes went wide. "Wait—did she just say—"
"Reversed emotions too," Lin Chen said. He looked at the crystal in his hand—it was glowing brighter now, pulsing in time with the twisted threads around them.
A boy ran up to them, holding a piece of candy. "Take this, I don't want it!" he said, shoving it into Gao Yang's hand before running away, laughing.
Gao Yang looked at the candy, then at Lin Chen. "I'm confused. Is this a trick? Or just a really weird town?"
Just then, a woman in a normal-looking dress (the only one they'd seen so far) walked up to them. Her name was Mei, and she explained that the town had been like this for fifty years—ever since a powerful Chronicle Keeper had tried to rewrite his own story to bring his wife back from the dead. He'd messed up the spell, and the entire town's narrative had reversed.
"Everyone here is stuck," she said, her voice sad—actually sad, not reversed. "We live our lives backwards. We celebrate when we lose, we grieve when we gain. No one can leave—every time we try, we end up right back here."
Lin Chen felt the faint line in his book tingle. This town felt connected to the turning point in chapter 15—but he couldn't say how. He pulled out his blank book and flipped to a new page.
"Can I try to fix it?" he asked Mei.
She shook her head. "Everyone who's tried has only made it worse. The reversal is tied to the Keeper's grief—you can't rewrite it without erasing his story entirely."
Lin Chen thought for a moment. He'd learned from Xie Yun that erasing a story was wrong—but what if the story itself was causing pain? He closed his eyes and focused on the twisted threads, trying to find the core of the reversal.
He saw it: a single, bright thread that led to a small house on the edge of town. Inside, an old man was sitting at a table, looking at a portrait of a woman. He was smiling, but his eyes were filled with reversed grief—so deep it had twisted the whole town.
Lin Chen walked to the house, his friends following. The old man looked up as they entered. "Welcome, will you stay forever?" he said—reversed, but his voice was gentle.
Lin Chen pulled out his blank book and wrote a line—not to reverse the reversal, but to add something new:
This grief is real, but it doesn't have to twist the world around it.
The crystal in his pocket burst into light. The old man's eyes widened as the portrait in front of him glowed. For a moment, the woman in the portrait looked like she was smiling back. The old man's smile faded, and real tears—tears of sadness—rolled down his cheeks.
Outside, the town began to shift. The upside-down houses righted themselves. The reversed signs spun around to face forward. The crowd in the square stopped crying with joy and started laughing—actually laughing—at a joke someone had told.
Mei ran up to them, her face filled with wonder. "It worked!" she said. "We're free!"
The old man stood up and walked to the window, looking at the now-normal town. "My wife is still gone," he said, his voice quiet. "But now… I can grieve her properly. Thank you."
As they left the town, Gao Yang looked back at the now-normal houses. "So you didn't rewrite his story," he said. "You just added a page to it."
"Grief is part of the story," Lin Chen said, looking at the crystal in his hand—it was now dim, but still warm. "You can't erase it. But you can help it find its place."
Yu Qing closed her notebook and smiled. "Only five days until we reach the next town," she said. "Which means… only four more chapters until chapter 15."
Lin Chen felt a flicker of unease, but he pushed it away. They'd just helped an entire town find its way back to normal. Whatever chapter 15 held, he'd be ready.
Blank the cat jumped onto his shoulder and meowed—a normal meow, not reversed. Lin Chen smiled and scratched behind his ears. The road ahead was still uncertain, but it was no longer twisted. And that was a start.