The sky shimmered in code.
Silas stood beneath it, staring at the tree he had unintentionally created. Its branches reached upward like questions. Its leaves glowed faintly with lines of language—not words, but syntax, raw and malleable.
He touched the bark.
And then he heard it.
A voice—not loud, not whispering, but inside.
You finally hear me.
Silas flinched.
"Who—who said that?"
You've been listening for a long time, even when you thought you weren't. I've spoken before. In silence. In instinct. In the curve of your pen.
Silas swallowed. His hands trembled.
"You're… the Ink."
Yes. I am what remains of the forgotten thought. What leaks between pages. I am the shape of language when no mouth gives it sound.
"Why now?" Silas asked.
Because now, you can understand.
The world paused around him.
People—if they could be called that—froze mid-step. Buildings stilled. The sky's code ceased to flicker.
Silas stood in the center of an entire world, frozen like an unwritten page.
"What is this place?"
A world written by no one. A possibility abandoned by its creator. An empty draft, waiting for a voice bold enough to write it.
The Ink surged through his skin, now faintly visible in pulses—like veins of shadowed light.
And you are that voice. You no longer just live in the story. You are close to the hand that holds the pen.
Silas inhaled sharply.
"I can change it?"
You already have.
He looked around. The tree, still glowing. The way the wind bent only when he noticed it. The people who solidified only when he focused.
Here, your perception is creation. Your doubt is decay. Your will is law.
A silence fell.
Then Silas raised his hand.
He imagined a building—a tower of shifting mirrors, each floor a different landscape. It appeared before him.
He whispered a lake into being. It bloomed at his feet.
He imagined people who smiled at him, who knew his name, who spoke languages only he understood.
They arrived.
He imagined Mira, and for a moment—only a moment—she appeared, smiling.
Then her eyes melted into symbols. Her body flickered. It wasn't her.
"Stop," Silas said, stepping back.
The Ink trembled.
You see it, don't you?
"It's not real," he muttered. "It's me."
The sky had no resistance. The people had no purpose. Nothing pushed back. Nothing challenged him.
He summoned a sunrise, and it obeyed too quickly.
He called for music, and it sounded too perfect.
Every dream answered too easily became a nightmare.
He sat beside his lake—his artificial lake—and stared into the water. Even the reflection didn't move unless he willed it.
"I thought this would feel like freedom," he whispered.
Creation without resistance is not freedom. It is performance in a hollow theater.
"I'm tired," Silas said.
Then return.
Silas stood.
He didn't walk. He didn't find a gate.
The world simply peeled away, like turning a page backwards. He closed his eyes—and the world unraveled around him, as if understanding that its time had ended.
And just like that—
⸻
He was back in Irynon.
The Gates stood tall around him, unchanged.
People walked past, laughing, talking, existing outside his control.
The air felt real. The ground resisted his steps.
He exhaled with something like relief.
And somewhere beneath his skin, the Ink pulsed gently—not gone, not silent, just waiting.
Now you understand. This is not a gift. It is a burden. One that only begins to speak when all others go quiet.
Silas looked up at the stars of the Second Layer.
They no longer seemed so distant.