It had been a month
Silas had grown—not in strength or stature, but in stillness. In knowing. In listening. The forest of blades and beasts had become familiar under his feet, and the stone walls of the bright city no longer seemed as towering.
He'd joined the Adventurer's Guild.
Auren, Mira and Vekk had vouched for him, curious yet quiet about his abilities. He hadn't shown them the parchment, or the coin that came from nowhere, or the strange symbols that still danced behind his eyes when he closed them. They only knew he was kind. And precise. And lucky.
Very lucky.
Silas passed the entrance test with a borrowed sword and more determination than talent. He placed 23rd out of the 50 wannabe adventurers, After a few small quests, the guild approved his first long-range license. Permission to travel alone.
He needed solitude. Answers. Distance.
He set off at dawn.
The sun crowned the hills as he walked. Meadows stretched wide and golden. Magic shimmered like fog on the horizon, and beasts sang low in the woods. Silas wrote sparingly now. He had learned restraint. The ink answered only when necessary—and often not in the way he expected.
Sometimes he would ask for shelter, and instead find a tree shaped like a tent. Or for safety, and be guided to a traveler who had lost his map. The ink was not a tool.
It was a presence.
And on the twelfth day of his wandering, it guided him to a glade.
It was small, quiet, carved like a forgotten memory between trees that bent in reverence. At its center, a stone well rose from the moss. No bucket. No rope. Just a ring of ancient stone and darkness within.
Silas felt it before he saw it.
A tug in his chest. The same feeling he'd had the first time he wrote and the ink answered. He knelt beside the well.
Inside—it shimmered.
Ink.
But not black, not exactly. It was every shade of night, every starless sky. It moved like thought. It pulsed like a hidden heartbeat.
No one else would have seen it.
Silas reached out. He didn't touch the ink. He didn't need to.
The moment his hand hovered above it, the surface rippled—and a single word rose into his mind like a voice from a dream:
"Connected."
Silas fell backward, breath caught.
This was no ordinary well. This was his well. A reflection of the lake he'd seen in his dream—the one from which all stories poured. It wasn't just metaphor. It was real, in the way only a story made true by grief could be.
He sat there for hours.
He thought of the old world. The gray skies. The empty rooms. The laughter he watched but was never invited into.
He thought of his mother, the only one who stayed. And how she had left, too, not by choice.
He remembered the faces that turned away when he cried. The hands that didn't reach back. The god he begged for answers. The silence.
He had come from a place where nothing was written for him—only against him.
Silas stood. Looked down into the ink once more. Then, softly:
"I'm done waiting for that world to explain itself."
The ink shimmered, brighter this time, like it understood.
"I will write the answers now."
And with that, Silas turned from the well.
He walked deeper into the world.
⸻
He crossed valleys where thunder rolled in blue grass. He passed through cities carved in crystal and spoke with merchants whose animals could sing. He saw floating spires, and winged knights, and clouds that tasted of honey and citrus.
And every night, before sleep, he looked at the stars.
Not the few stars of his old world, hidden by light and smoke.
These stars sang.
They danced in spirals of infinity, folding across the sky like pages in an unwritten book. Whole galaxies drifted just beyond reach. Nebulas bloomed like flowers across the black.
He whispered, "It's endless."
And it was.
⸻
And I, the Narrator, watched him from the place beyond places. The story moves not with haste, but with weight. A boy with grief becomes a man with ink. A question becomes a vow.
He has left his beginning behind. Not forgotten. Not erased. But released.
And though he walks now among cities of gold and suns that speak, he is still the boy who once asked, "Why me?"
He does not yet know the answer.
But he is getting closer.