Chapter 61: New Ink, Old Scars

□□□'s POV

---

The world had no sky anymore.

Only parchment.

It stretched forever — above, below, beside — ink-stained, pulse-throbbing, whispering half-written prayers from broken timelines. And I stood at the center.

Alone.

The Wordblade hovered at my side — not a sword, not quite. A quill. A scalpel. A curse.

> "Write carefully," Kairoz had once said. "The page doesn't forgive."

---

I raised the blade and sliced through air.

Words spilled out — not from the world, but from me.

> "The fracture shall stabilize. All survivors are granted sanctuary."

Reality bent. Stone rose. Fire calmed. Time aligned.

I'd created Sanctum-1, the first settlement of Order.

A camp for those who had followed me this far.

But in return… something else vanished.

---

I looked down at my hand. A scar was gone.

No — the memory of how I got it was gone.

I couldn't remember what it felt like to fall off my bike. To scrape my palm on gravel. To cry.

> [NARRATIVE COST PAID: "TRIVIAL HUMANITY – 001"]

I tried to laugh it off. Tried to believe that losing one childhood scrape was a small price to pay for a world that didn't fall apart every ten minutes.

But the silence beneath my thoughts told a different story. One that couldn't be written back.

---

Jiwoon approached quietly, holding a cup of bitter leaf tea. His eyes searched mine, as if trying to find what was missing.

> "You haven't slept," he said.

> "Sleep is inefficient when you control time," I answered automatically.

He flinched at my tone.

> "That's not something you would've said before."

I looked at the tea. Took it. Held the warmth without drinking.

> "Before what?"

He didn't answer. He didn't need to.

---

Later, Ereze confronted me beneath the northern tree — one I'd manually restored, leaf by leaf, from fragments of burned myth.

She watched the leaves shimmer in impossible hues.

> "You're rewriting too much."

I turned to her. "The world was falling apart."

> "And now it's a monument to your edits."

> "It's stable."

> "It's hollow."

There was a silence between us that even the page refused to narrate.

She tossed a stone at my feet — engraved with a single name: Yun Seol.

> "You erased her. You said she'd survive."

I stared at the name.

There was no recollection in my head.

Only… the faint outline of guilt.

> "I wouldn't have let her die."

> "You didn't let her die. You deleted her death. And then you deleted her."

---

> [QUERY: RESTORE MEMORY?] [WARNING: RESTORATION MAY COLLAPSE CURRENT NARRATIVE THREAD]

My finger hovered above the glyph.

I could feel something inside me — a version of myself with fewer powers but more pain — screaming for the memory.

I canceled the prompt.

Ereze watched my expression. She didn't say goodbye — just turned and walked away.

---

Night fell — not through any orbital rotation, but because I willed it. I sat beneath the parchment sky and stared into the horizon of bleeding code.

I asked myself aloud:

> "How many more edits until I forget I was ever real?"

The Wordblade pulsed beside me, hungry. Demanding another change. Another stability fix. Another cost.

My hands shook.

I wasn't afraid of dying. I was afraid of being rewritten into someone I would've hated.

---

In the east, the parchment sky tore.

It began with a small flare. Then a fracture.

A new story breaking through mine.

Flames. Smoke. Banner.

Her voice echoed through the fracture like thunder rolling off ink:

> "He's no longer the Reader. He's the Final Editor." "This world doesn't need a god."

It was Arien.

I remembered her — barely. Her voice came first. Then her eyes. Then the betrayal.

---

Jiwoon burst into the Sanctum war tent a moment later.

> "She's rewriting without you. Her own chapter. Her own rules."

I stood, slow.

> "Then it begins."

> "What begins?"

> "The last war."

Not over territory. Not over power.

Over authorship.

Because Arien didn't want to destroy what I built.

She wanted to remind the world it didn't need me to build it.

---