The rain wasn't wet.
Kale knew that should've bothered him more than it did, but his mind felt scrambled, like he'd woken up in the middle of a thought that didn't belong to him. The sky above cracked—not with lightning, but with ink, splitting the gray in elegant calligraphy.
The streets of Orison were empty, though the buildings still whispered.
Kale stood in the center of the storm, his coat flapping despite the absence of wind. The world around him flickered, glitching at the edges like bad tape. And in his hands—heavy, humming with forgotten authority—was the Blank Book.
Its cover was smooth, matte black, and bore a symbol burned into the leather: a spiral collapsing inward. The moment he touched it, words began to write themselves on the first page.
> "This is your first rewrite. You will not remember the others."
A figure emerged from the mist—tall, robed in a patchwork of timelines, stitched with golden thread.
"Welcome back, Kale," the figure said. "Again."
"Do I… know you?" Kale asked.
The stranger's eyes shimmered with multiple colors. "Not this version of me, no. But versions of you have met versions of me many times."
"Where am I?"
The figure extended a gloved hand. "You're at the center of the rewrite. The beginning of the last thread. You've been chosen to carry the Book again. To remember what others cannot."
Before Kale could ask more, the figure vanished like ink evaporating from parchment.
---
The storm passed. Reality congealed into something less fluid, and Kale found himself standing at the edge of the city with three strangers waiting under a bent sign that read: "ORISON: WHERE MEMORY MATTERS."
Luma. Torrin. Milo.
He didn't know how he knew their names, but he did. And they seemed to recognize him—not quite with warmth, but with relief.
"You've got the Book?" Luma asked, brushing her white braid over her shoulder.
He nodded slowly.
"Good," she said. "We don't have time to explain much. Reality's already thinning. The Observer will be watching."
"Who's the Observer?" Kale asked.
Milo, the smallest, blinked through oversized glasses. "The one who undoes. The one who watches stories and decides which ones are errors."
"And we're… fighting him?"
"Not yet," Torrin said, checking a blinking device on his wrist. "First, we run. Then we remember. Then we fight."
Luma pulled Kale aside. "You're the Anchor. That Book doesn't just record reality—it can rewrite it. But only when you're strong enough to wield it."
"I don't even remember how I got here."
"You're not supposed to. That's the price of being reborn in the Rewrite Storm."
Kale opened the Book again. More words had appeared:
> "Version 12 initiated. Memory fragments: locked. Narrative convergence in 7 days."
"What does that mean?"
Luma's voice was soft. "It means you've failed this before. Eleven times."
---
As they fled through the skeletal outskirts of Orison, the world began to fragment—buildings that hadn't existed moments ago collapsed into timelines that had never been written. People flickered in and out of place. A man ran past them, aged forward and backward simultaneously, screaming in reverse.
"It's starting," Milo said. "Reality's unraveling where the Observer tested a failed draft."
"What happens if we don't fix it?" Kale asked.
"Everyone becomes a footnote," Torrin said. "Or worse—forgotten entirely."
They reached the edge of the city where time no longer followed rules. A field of broken clocks littered the ground, ticking at random. Some ran backward. Others chimed on imaginary hours. At the center stood a single silver door with no walls.
"Through there is the Vault," Luma said. "Where versions of you wait to be remembered."
Kale hesitated.
Then he stepped forward.
And the Book pulsed again.
> "Welcome to the rewrite."