August told himself he was fine.
Again.
He even said it out loud while brushing his teeth:
"I'm fine. This is fine. I'm just sleep-deprived and possibly hallucinating but also definitely hydrated."
The mirror didn't argue.
The lights didn't flicker.
Nothing moved in the corners.
Which almost made it worse.
Because silence now?
Felt like bait.
Still—he made himself laugh.
A real one, too.
He cracked open the sketchbook that afternoon, sitting on the carpet with a blanket over his shoulders like a burrito of denial. The page was already open to Chapter 10. The death scene.
He'd read it a dozen times. Maybe more.
But this time, he read it like someone flipping through an old Tumblr post from 2015—fully expecting to cringe.
And at first, he did.
"His eyes were the color of sorrow that forgot how to cry."
"Okay, Shakespeare," he muttered. "Relax."
He kept reading.
"Each breath was a thread unraveling."
"Oh my god," he whispered. "I was trying so hard."
He laughed again. Genuinely this time.
Until—
He reached the middle.
And the sentence that had always been there—
"He didn't scream when the blade went in. Just looked at me."
He froze.
Wait.
Me?
That wasn't there before.
He flipped back to his notes.
Checked the margins. Compared old drafts.
There was no version where Arthur looked at anyone. Let alone him.
He looked back at the sentence.
Now underlined.
Now darker.
Now… true.
"He didn't scream when the blade went in. Just looked at me."
August whispered, "That's not right."
And his hands started shaking.
Because something came back.
Not the story.
The memory.
He wasn't writing it like a narrative.
He was describing something he saw.
He had written Arthur's death like someone writing a witness statement.
And the next line—
Was even worse.
"He knew I'd do it again."
August dropped the book.
Hard.
But it stayed open.
The letters began to shift—slowly, like they were melting and reshaping. The ink warped. A new sentence formed at the bottom.
Not part of the story.
Part of now.
"Then why are you laughing?"
The room dimmed.
The power cut.
And in the pitch black, he heard it.
Breathing.
Low.
Behind him.
He didn't move for nearly a minute.
The power was out. The silence pressed on his chest like a second body. The sketchbook lay open, pages still, ink glinting faintly in the dark like it wanted to speak again.
August couldn't breathe.
That sentence.
"He knew I'd do it again."
It wasn't metaphor.
It wasn't fiction.
It was confession.
He whispered, "No, no, I didn't write that—"
But he did.
Somewhere in him, he did.
Because now the memory was coming back.
Not like nostalgia.
Like a bruise pressed too hard.
—
He was younger. Twelve. Maybe thirteen.
He remembered the scene—not drawing it, but feeling it.
Arthur wasn't just dying.
Arthur was looking at him.
August hadn't written the death from the outside.
He'd written it from the inside.
From the one who held the sword.
Arthur didn't resist.
He knelt.
He didn't beg.
He looked up.
At him.
And waited.
August hadn't just killed Arthur.
He had chosen to.
He didn't remember why.
Not yet.
But the truth settled over him like cold water down the spine:
Chapter 10 wasn't written in sorrow.
It was written in control.
He opened the sketchbook with shaking hands.
The page was fully changed now.
A new image.
Arthur kneeling.
Not wounded.
Not yet.
But eyes locked on someone above him.
And in the corner, just faintly sketched—like a memory that didn't want to be remembered—was August's hand. Gripping something.
A blade.
His blade.
He had drawn himself.
And beneath it, new words, written not in Arthur's elegant script, but his own handwriting—childish, uneven, emotional:
"I had to."
He stared.
And the sketchbook responded.
Another voice. Sharper. Slower. Someone else.
Not Arthur.
Not the blurred figure.
But something in-between.
"No one ever has to kill their own creation."
August stood up so fast his chair fell over. His chest heaved. He felt sick.
"I didn't mean it," he whispered.
But the notebook bled new lines.
"Intent doesn't undo action."
"You killed him because you were scared of what he would become."
"And now?"
The light flickered on.
Arthur stood in the doorway.
Fully there. Fully real.
Eyes tired.
Expression unreadable.
August took one step back.
Arthur didn't move.
He just looked at him.
And said—
"This time, you don't get to decide what I become."
Arthur didn't blink.
Didn't speak again.
He just watched August.
Like a man standing in the house where he died.
August's breath shook in his chest. His body wanted to move—run, yell, anything—but something about Arthur's presence pinned him in place. Not with fear.
With weight.
August finally whispered, "Why now?"
Arthur's voice was quieter this time. Not angry. Not cold. Just tired.
"Because this was the page you left me on."
August's vision blurred.
He'd drawn Arthur's death not as an accident. Not as a tragedy. But as a lock. A door sealed tight. A containment.
He thought it would stop the story from growing beyond him. From turning into something he couldn't control. Because even at thirteen, even back then, he knew—
Arthur was starting to feel real.
And that scared him.
He hadn't just killed a character.
He had sealed a person.
Arthur stepped forward.
Slow. Heavy. Real.
"I waited in silence," he said. "While you forgot me. While the world forgot the rules you made. While the rest of it—"
He paused.
August's chest tightened. "The rest of what?"
Arthur looked him dead in the eye.
"The story didn't die with me."
August swallowed.
"No," Arthur said, stepping closer, "you ended me… but you left the door open."
The hum returned.
Low.
Behind the walls.
Behind the light.
Behind the reality.
And August remembered.
He hadn't just written a death.
He'd written an exchange.
The end of Arthur was also the release of something else—something buried, unnamed, formless. He hadn't finished Chapter 10 because it wasn't just Arthur's goodbye.
It was the story's awakening.
He looked to the desk.
The sketchbook was open again.
New page.
No drawings.
Just one sentence, burned into the paper like it was branded:
"You can't keep both of us."
August turned to Arthur.
But Arthur was gone.
Not vanished.
Just… moved.
Somewhere else.
Somewhere near.
Because now, in the corner of the room—
the shadow twisted.
Not a shape. Not a blur.
A thing.
Waking.
And August knew, without needing it explained:
It had waited 5 years in the silence between sentences.
And now that Arthur was back?
So was it.