There was no sky.
Only the slow drip of ink falling from a ceiling that did not exist.
DarkSun opened his eyes in silence.
He wasn't sure if he was still inside a world… or between them.
The ground beneath him rippled like liquid, but did not soak. It was made of something else—raw metaphor, melted and spread thin like tar. The air hummed with fading syntax. Phrases—unspoken and untethered—floated in and out of existence like wandering ghosts.
He sat up slowly.
His body felt heavier than it had ever been.
But not because he was weak.
No—
Because he carried everything.
---
DarkSun looked at his hands.
The skin was ink-black, but not burned. Smooth. Shifting. His veins pulsed with silver and obsidian light. Glyphs surfaced, then vanished across his forearms as if the world still couldn't decide what he was.
A voice echoed inside him—not loud, but infinite.
> "You are no longer a character."
"You are not a narrative."
"You are a consequence."
He remembered Kael.
He remembered the betrayal.
He remembered the Source Book.
He remembered the Reauthor's voice.
And then… nothing.
Just this place.
A realm after endings.
---
He stood.
The ground beneath him responded with a ripple of words—dead lines from books never published.
The first step he took echoed with a single phrase:
> "Inkbearer detected."
The second:
> "Unauthorized existence confirmed."
The third:
> "Survival probability: less than 4%."
He smirked.
That meant he was in the right place.
---
He began walking.
There was no direction—but the Ink inside him pulled like a compass made of instinct and vengeance. Something ahead was broken. And dangerous.
After what felt like an hour—if time even existed here—he saw the first shape.
A man.
No, not a man.
A silhouette, sitting hunched on a chair that floated mid-air above a circle of broken dialogue.
DarkSun approached cautiously.
The figure didn't move. Its body was made of smudged pencil lines and flickering edits. Where its face should've been, there was only a black bar with three white letters:
> [CUT]
DarkSun whispered, "A deleted character?"
The figure jerked its head slowly. Something inside its chest ticked.
> "They left me mid-scene."
Its voice was not its own. It echoed with a dozen tones. Male. Female. Child. Monster. All at once.
> "No closure. No point. Just… abandoned."
DarkSun narrowed his eyes.
"Who wrote you?"
> "No one remembers. But I still speak."
It raised a hand.
From its palm, a cloud of broken grammar twisted into a blade made of questions.
> "Let me ask you something, Inkbearer."
> "Do you still believe you're real?"
---
The blade launched.
DarkSun moved.
Too fast.
The Ink within him surged like a living tide. He ducked low, rolled forward, and thrust out his hand.
From his palm erupted a stream of liquid glyphs—twisting into a black halberd inscribed with rejection marks.
He swung.
The silhouette screamed.
The halberd tore through its chest, splashing the air with meaningless syllables and null syntax. The figure tried to speak, but its voice collapsed into static.
Then it shattered into a puff of erased dialogue.
DarkSun breathed out slowly.
"Still think I'm not real?"
---
The world shifted.
The ground buckled.
The ink rippled.
And above him, the sky returned.
But it wasn't sky.
It was a page—burned at the edges, floating miles above, flickering in and out of legibility.
Words began writing themselves across it in bloodred ink:
> "Sequence Error: DarkSun has entered an unbound worldline."
"Initiating compression event."
The horizon began to fold inward.
DarkSun cursed and ran.
Whatever this realm was, it was unstable. The Codex was gone, but the mechanisms still lingered—fragments of the old law trying to enforce a reality that no longer existed.
He leapt over a collapsed fountain made of quotation marks. Skidded past a streetlight that flickered between scenes. And dove behind a rusted monologue pillar as the world began to close in.
From behind him, something screamed.
Not a creature.
A chapter.
A beast made of shredded pages, crawling with verbs and punctuated teeth. Its body shifted with every line it consumed, growing stronger with every forgotten plot it devoured.
> "REWRITE."
"REWRITE."
"REWRITE—"
DarkSun didn't hesitate.
He stabbed his hand into his own shadow.
From it erupted a black-winged spear made of three forbidden sentences—the kind that could fracture a volume.
He whispered the first:
> "This world is mine now."
And threw it.
The spear collided with the beast mid-scream. The ground shook. Ink rained upward. The sky blinked.
When the chaos faded, nothing remained of the chapter-beast.
Only torn ellipses.
---
DarkSun knelt, panting.
The Ink was still too much. Too wild. The Reauthor had given him a gift—and a curse.
He was powerful.
But unstable.
One wrong sentence, and he'd collapse the realm himself.
Still… he was learning.
And he wasn't alone.
Something watched him.
---
From the ash-smoke of the broken scene, a figure emerged.
Small. Hooded. No face visible.
It whispered, "You don't belong here."
DarkSun raised his guard. "Neither do you."
The hooded figure didn't move. "I come from a story that was never written, Inkbearer."
DarkSun frowned. "What does that mean?"
The figure removed its hood.
It had no face.
Only a mirror.
And in it, DarkSun saw something that made his breath stop.
Himself.
As a child.
Writing on a desk.
Pen in hand.
Notebook open.
And on the cover of the notebook:
> "DarkSun – First Draft"
---
The faceless being spoke again.
> "You think your journey begins now."
"But it already began—before you became a name."
"You are not escaping the story."
It leaned closer.
> "You are walking back into it."
Then it shattered into mirror shards.
DarkSun stood alone again.
And for the first time, he felt it.
The Ink inside him was remembering.
---
He wandered for what felt like hours—until the sky bled red.
In the distance stood a broken tower.
Not of stone.
But of characters—names stacked atop names, piled into pillars. Heroes. Villains. Extras. All collapsed into rubble.
A sign hung above its cracked archway:
> "THE FIRST NARRATIVE"
DarkSun stepped inside.
---
The moment he did, something awoke.
Not a beast. Not a god.
A voice.
Not the Reauthor.
Something older.
> "Who dares walk the broken path?"
DarkSun raised his hand. Ink dripped from his fingers, hissing on the stone.
> "The last one you failed to write."
A throne of erased concepts twisted itself into shape at the far end.
And seated atop it… was a child.
Writing.
Over and over.
Every time he finished a name, the page erased itself.
He looked up.
His eyes were solid black.
And he smiled.
> "Found you."
---
TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 2