The sky was wrong.
Not red.
Not burning.
Not storming.
It was peeling.
Like paint scraped off an old wall.
Kael Veyr stood knee-deep in corpses, blade cracked, lungs drowning in iron-scented air.
The Crimson Siege was supposed to end tonight.
He knew that.
He didn't know how he knew.
But somewhere - deeper than thought something whispered:
You die here.
An arrow pierced his shoulder.
He didn't scream.
He couldn't.
The pain felt… rehearsed.
Around him, soldiers clashed in mechanical fury. The clash of steel echoed in repeating intervals. A scream replayed twice from the same throat.
Kael froze.
The scream repeated again.
Identical.
Perfectly timed.
He turned slowly.
The same man fell again.
The same blood splashed in the same shape.
The world had stuttered.
A blade entered Kael's ribs.
Cold.
Precise.
Fatal.
He felt his heart rupture.
He fell backward.
Sky above him cracked like porcelain.
And then..
Silence.
Darkness should have come.
Instead...
Words.
Golden lines drifting across the sky.
Not symbols.
Not runes.
Text.
He couldn't read it fully.
But he understood fragments.
-Kael Veyr dies amidst the chaos, his sacrifice unnoticed—
His chest trembled.
His hand moved.
But he was dead.
Wasn't he?
The battlefield froze.
Mid-swing.
Mid-bloodspray.
Mid-scream.
Everything stopped.
Except him.
Kael slowly stood.
The blade was still in his ribs.
He pulled it out.
No blood fell.
Instead, black ash poured from the wound.
He stared at the sky.
"I… die?"
The golden sentence shimmered.
Then corrected itself.
{Kael Veyr was meant to die..}
The word meant flickered.
Something inside his skull cracked.
Like glass splintering.
Pain unlike flesh.
Pain like identity tearing.
He saw something.
Beyond the sky.
A vast white expanse.
And a hand.
Holding a pen.
The battlefield resumed.
Time crashed back into motion.
But something had changed.
Kael didn't move like before.
His body felt… misaligned.
Like he was slightly out of sync with reality.
An enemy soldier charged.
Kael stepped aside before the man moved.
The future felt visible.
Not prophecy.
Not instinct.
Foreshadowing.
The man's strike paused mid-air..
As if waiting for approval.
Kael tilted his head.
"Are you waiting," he whispered, "for permission to hit me?"
The soldier's face glitched.
For a split second, it wasn't a face.
It was unfinished.
Blank.
Like a placeholder.
Kael drove his blade upward.
The soldier split in half.
But no organs spilled out.
Only ink.
Black ink splashing onto dirt that swallowed it instantly.
Kael stared at his hands.
"I was written," he murmured.
Another wave of enemies charged.
He should have felt fear.
Instead...
He felt irritation.
Why did they always attack one by one?
Why did the strongest arrive last?
Why did the hero shout before striking?
Why did villains laugh before dying?
Patterns.
Repetition.
Structure.
This wasn't war.
It was narrative.
A horn echoed across the battlefield.
Three beats.
Always three.
Kael looked toward the hill.
There she stood.
Serin Vale.
The Heroine.
Armor silver.
Cape untouched by blood.
Sword glowing faintly.
Untouched.
Protected.
Plot-armored.
He could see it now.
A faint golden thread wrapped around her form.
Deflecting fatal trajectories.
Shifting lethal blows by inches.
The world bent to protect her.
Kael stepped toward her.
An arrow flew toward her throat.
The thread tightened.
Wind curved.
Arrow missed.
She didn't even notice.
He felt anger for the first time.
Not at her.
At the design.
"Do you know?" he asked quietly when he reached her.
She cut down three enemies in a single elegant arc.
"Know what?" she replied.
"That you cannot die."
She paused.
Just for a breath.
Long enough for a blade to nearly pierce her spine.
The golden thread snapped it aside.
Her eyes narrowed.
"…What did you say?"
"You are protected," Kael said. "The world favors you."
"That's called skill."
"No," he whispered. "It's called authorship."
The sky trembled.
A new sentence burned across the clouds.
Kael Veyr begins to lose coherence.
His vision distorted.
His fingers flickered transparent.
He staggered.
Serin caught him.
For the first time !!
Her thread weakened.
Just slightly.
She looked down at him.
And for the first time in her life...
She felt fear.
"Why are you fading?" she whispered.
Kael laughed weakly.
"Because I am not supposed to exist past this chapter."
Then it happened.
A presence descended.
Not physical.
Conceptual.
Pressure crushed the battlefield flat.
Everyone froze again.
Except Kael.
And something else.
A tear split open in the sky.
White beyond white.
A silhouette stepped through.
Featureless.
Cloaked in flowing parchment.
Its face smooth.
Unwritten.
The Scriptor.
It looked at Kael.
Not with eyes.
With assessment.
Like reviewing a draft.
A voice entered Kael's mind.
Cold.
Detached.
"Deviation detected."
Kael felt rage boil through him.
"You wrote me to die."
"Correct."
"Why?"
A pause.
"To motivate her."
Serin.
The Heroine.
He was… fuel.
Disposable emotion.
His fists trembled.
"I refuse."
The Scriptor tilted its head.
"Refusal is not permitted."
Kael stepped forward.
Each step tore reality slightly.
Blood leaked from his nose.
His bones screamed.
But he moved.
"You gave me thought."
"Yes."
"You gave me pain."
"Yes."
"Then you gave me the right to question you."
Silence.
Then....
The Scriptor raised its hand.
Golden text formed around Kael.
Erase.
His skin began disintegrating into ash.
Serin tried to move.
She couldn't.
Her thread bound her.
Kael screamed.
Not from pain.
From understanding.
He saw it clearly now.
The Manuscript.
Lines of causality.
Paragraphs of fate.
He reached toward them.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
He grabbed the sentence describing his death.
It burned.
Like holding the sun.
The Scriptor's voice sharpened.
"Unauthorized edit."
Kael roared and tore the sentence apart.
The sky shattered.
Time collapsed.
The battlefield folded inward.
The Scriptor staggered for the first time.
A crack formed across its smooth face.
Ink bled from it.
It whispered...
"Impossible."
Kael, half-erased, half-burning, smiled through blood.
"I was written to die unnoticed."
He stepped forward.
Reality tearing behind him.
"So notice me."
He drove his blade into the Scriptor's chest.
Not metal into flesh.
But will into narrative.
The crack spread.
The Scriptor screamed....
And exploded into scattered letters.
The battlefield resumed violently.
Everyone collapsed to their knees.
Sky normal.
War continuing.
As if nothing happened.
Except !!
The golden thread around Serin was thinner.
The sky had a hairline crack.
And Kael stood.
Alive.
Bleeding real blood now.
He looked at his hands.
They were solid.
Heavy.
Human.
But above him...
In faint flickering script...
A new line formed.
The story destabilizes.
Kael whispered:
"Good."
Far beyond reality.....
In a place of endless white...
Another hand paused mid-writing.
Ink trembled at the tip of its pen.
And slowly…
It began a new chapter.