Sunday was quiet.
Too quiet.
August didn't leave his room. Didn't answer texts. Didn't check if Alex wanted to hang out. The sketchbook sat on his desk, open to Chapter 10.
The last one.
The death one.
He didn't remember writing it. That's what made it worse.
Everything before—yes, kind of. Scenes came back in flashes. Phrases rang a bell. But this chapter? It was like reading someone else's final draft, written in his voice, with hands that weren't his.
He read slowly.
"There were no trumpets. No grand last words. Just breath. Shallow. Slow. Like he was trying to stay quiet, even at the end."
August leaned back, eyes scanning every sentence like it was evidence.
"His body was broken—ribs shattered, fingers bent wrong, one eye swelling shut. But he still looked calm. Like death was just a nap he'd already rehearsed."
He swallowed hard. It wasn't gore. It wasn't dramatics. It was small. Intimate. Sad in the way that made your stomach hurt.
"He looked up at no one. Said nothing. But his hand never let go of the sword."
August exhaled.
Why did this hurt?
He had written characters who died before. Whole storylines where everyone blew up or turned evil or vanished. But this one felt real. Too quiet. Too final. Like grief made of ink.
Then came the last line.
The one he didn't remember writing. The one that felt like it had been burned into the page rather than penciled.
"If you remember me… don't bring me back."
August sat there. Just sat.
The world felt still again. Airless. Like the story had sucked all the sound out of the room.
Outside, someone honked a car horn. Distant. Normal.
Inside, the house was still. Even the floor didn't creak.
He stared at the sentence.
"Don't bring me back."
He turned the page.
It was blank.
Then, faintly, as if ink had bled through from somewhere else—
A second line appeared underneath.
New. He swore on his life it hadn't been there before.
"But you kept drawing me anyway, didn't you?"
August dropped the book.
Again.
Because this time, the words weren't just pencil marks.
They were wet.
August stared at the page.
Then touched it.
The ink smudged.
Not dry. Not old. Not a memory trick. Fresh. Damp like it had just been written, like the paper itself had whispered it out when he wasn't looking.
"But you kept drawing me anyway, didn't you?"
He backed away from the desk like it was breathing.
Then immediately came back.
"Okay," he said, voice low. "Okay, okay, okay. I'm officially losing it."
He grabbed a pen. Not a pencil. Not the same pen used before. Something blue. Something his.
He flipped to a new blank page, the one after the death scene.
His hand hovered.
Then he wrote:
Who are you?
He stared.
Nothing happened.
He watched the ink dry. Waited. Heart thudding.
Nothing.
"…figured."
He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "Of course it wouldn't work when I'm watching. That'd be too easy."
He stepped back again, pacing the floor.
Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe he had a weird blackout. Maybe he'd scribbled something half-asleep and forgot. Maybe—
Something new was on the page.
He stopped cold.
Turned.
Walked back slowly.
The words were still in blue ink. Still his handwriting. But they weren't his words.
Underneath Who are you? a reply had appeared:
"I'm what's left."
August's skin went cold.
His knees almost gave out, so he sat. On the floor. Again.
He swallowed and picked the pen back up. Wrote carefully.
Left of what?
This time, he barely looked away for two seconds.
The answer came quickly. Same ink.
"Of what you made. Of what you ended. You forgot me. But I didn't forget you."
His chest tightened.
He could hear his own heartbeat now.
This wasn't fun. This wasn't funny. This was—
He paused.
He wasn't scared.
Shaken? Yes. But not afraid.
Because the words on the page didn't feel like a threat.
They felt like a grief. Like someone mourning themselves.
He wrote one more question.
Are you… Arthur?
There was a longer pause.
Then, slowly, word by word:
"I was."
August didn't move. Couldn't.
The pen fell from his hand.
He wasn't imagining this. Couldn't be.
His sketchbook had just answered him.
And whatever was talking?
It knew him better than anyone alive.
August stared at the last line again.
"I was."
There was a weight to it. Not just the words, but the way they sat on the page. Like finality. Like someone who used to be whole and now… wasn't.
His fingers hovered over the notebook, then pulled back. He didn't want to smudge anything. Didn't want to interrupt.
Instead, he whispered aloud:
"Why now?"
He didn't expect an answer. Not spoken. Not written.
But when he blinked, the page changed.
Another line had formed beneath the last.
"Because you started remembering."
August didn't breathe for a second.
The room felt smaller again. His chest heavy. Like something had opened that couldn't be closed.
He picked the pen back up. Wrote:
Remembering what?
This time, the ink came slower.
Like it was hard to say. Like the words hurt.
"What you wrote. What you buried. What you ended before the story was finished."
August's eyes stung.
Because the worst part was… he felt it. Somewhere inside, deep and quiet, something had always ached when he thought of Arthur. Not just because he liked the character.
Because it felt wrong to leave him there.
He hadn't finished the story.
He'd killed Arthur off and then just… stopped.
Like ripping out a page mid-chapter. Like slamming a door you'd been too afraid to open.
He wrote:
I thought the story was finished.
The page stayed still for longer than he expected.
Then:
"You wrote my death like it was the only ending I deserved."
He flinched.
"But I didn't want to die. I waited. I waited years."
"You forgot me."
August's hands trembled.
He tried to speak but couldn't.
What could he say? He was thirteen. He was hurting. He'd written Arthur's death like it meant something—but maybe it had just been his own sadness. His own escape. A way to say goodbye to something he hadn't been ready to face.
"I didn't mean to," he whispered.
No answer this time.
Just silence.
He turned the page. Blank again.
Except… not quite.
At the very bottom, almost like an afterthought, a single new line had appeared.
Soft.
Lonely.
"Then why did you bury me?"
August shut the notebook gently. Not out of fear.
Out of guilt.
Because he didn't have an answer.
To whatever degree this was.