The boy awoke not in silence, but in the hum of a living forest, far from sorrow's home.
He gasped awake—sharp, cold air flooding his lungs.
Gone was the cabin. Gone was the mirror. Gone, even, was the lake of words.
He lay face-up in a glade he didn't recognize, grass soft beneath him, leaves whispering overhead in a wind that carried the scent of citrus and spice. The sky above was not gray or dull—it was impossibly blue, painted with three suns moving in slow, synchronized arcs.
Silas blinked.
He tried to sit, but his body screamed from exhaustion.
He checked his arms. His legs. No wounds. No blood.
But the notebook was gone.
The pen, too.
He touched his fingers. The ink that once stained them had vanished.
Not faded.
Vanished.
Yet something felt… present. As if the ink had not left, but moved deeper. Into the skin. The bone. The soul.
His fingertips tingled.
Then the ground shook.
It was subtle, but he felt it. A soft quake. A rhythm.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
The trees quivered.
From the shadows between trunks came a snarl.
And then—eyes. Yellow, wide, feral.
A creature burst forth, four-legged and scaled, with tusks like ivory scythes and smoke billowing from its jaw. It looked like something out of an old fairy tale. Or a nightmare.
Silas froze.
He had no weapon.
No idea where he was.
The beast lunged.
But before it could reach him—an arrow slammed into its eye.
Then a second.
Then fire.
It shrieked and stumbled, twisting in agony before falling in a heap, smoke curling from its corpse.
"By the Goddess, that was close!" a voice said.
Footsteps—three sets—rushed to his side.
A girl knelt next to him. Her armor was mismatched but sturdy, her red braid swinging as she checked his pulse. "He's breathing."
"I told you I heard something!" another voice called, a boy with goggles and a large tome slung across his back.
The third was a man, older, quiet, with a blade nearly as long as Silas was tall. He stood over the body of the beast, watching it smolder.
Silas blinked again, disoriented. "Wha… what is this place?"
The girl smiled kindly. "You're safe now. This is Lytheria, Beast Forest"
He tried to speak, but nothing made sense. The suns. The monster. The people with weapons and magic.
He fainted again.
This time, into warmth.
⸻
When he awoke again, it was to the smell of bread.
Fresh.
Sweet.
He was in a wooden cart, wrapped in furs. The girl who saved him sat across from him, whittling wood with a dagger.
"You're awake," she said. "Good."
He stared.
She smiled again. "Name's Kaela. That's Arin." She nodded toward the boy with goggles, who was now reading aloud to a fox that somehow seemed to be listening. "And the quiet one's Bram. You met his sword."
Silas croaked, "Where… am I?"
"On the road to Luthenfall," she said. "Capital city of the Effyis kingdom. We figured it was better than leaving you to the droolves."
"Droo…?"
"The thing with tusks," Arin called.
Silas sat up slowly. The world still didn't make sense.
Kaela offered him bread.
He took it.
It was the best thing he'd ever tasted.
Sweet. Real.
Alive.
⸻
Luthenfall shimmered in the distance like a painting come to life.
Gold-and-silver spires. Floating lanterns. Bridges of glowing crystal. People laughed in the streets. Music played. Birds with feathers like starlight flitted above market stalls.
Silas was… overwhelmed.
It was too much. Too bright. Too happy.
He had never seen a city like this.
And yet—
He wanted to believe in it.
He walked among the crowd, silent, watching. Children played with spell-laced marbles that glittered. Vendors sold bottled rainbows. A man juggled fire while singing in a language that made the heart ache.
He reached into his pocket on instinct.
The pen was there.
But no ink.
Not yet.
He found a blank wall in a quiet alley.
He held the pen to it.
Pressed.
Nothing.
But when he stepped back—
A single word had appeared.
Invisible to all but him.
Why?
It shimmered. Then vanished.
He didn't understand it.
But deep down, he knew—his ink was not gone.
It had simply learned to hide.
The power had gone silent.
Like a heart waiting for a reason to beat.
⸻
And so Silas entered the world beyond sorrow—where magic laughed and swords sang—but carried with him the shadow of a question too large for any city to answer.