What Must Be Written

The tome remained open.

But Aouli could not bring himself to touch the quill again.

It lay across the parchment like a line of bone across a grave—immobile, unsettling, too quiet. The last lines he had written still shimmered faintly, each letter slowly bleeding black into the fibers of the page until they vanished into the parchment, not erased, but absorbed.

"I don't know what else to write," Aouli admitted.

Veriss stood behind him, silent. Waiting.

Kaero was further down the platform now, sitting on the ledge with one boot half-dipped in the ink river. He hadn't spoken in some time. Aouli caught him glancing into the water again and again, as if it might change. As if it might speak.

Aouli dipped the quill again.

It pulsed against his fingers—warmer now. Eager.

He wrote:

I was born in light, but shaped by loss.

The ink slithered down the page, rippling as though resisting his truth. Aouli clenched his jaw and pressed on:

Gaia made me—but she didn't tell me who I am. Others did. Flames. Echoes. Pain. But I... I am not sure I exist without their reflection.

The page trembled.

The ink leapt from the quill, splashing onto the paper in a sudden, jagged burst.

Images tore through Aouli's mind.

Not remembered—inflicted.

He saw a city made of coral, submerged in green light, slowly strangled by rising temperatures. Creatures screamed silently as algae bloomed into poison.

He saw a wind-swept desert, once rainforest, where twisted metal carcasses of agricultural drones wandered aimlessly under cracked solar panels.

He saw children in oxygen masks playing beside piles of incinerated books. Their laughter filtered through carbon scrubbers.

And he saw Kaero again—older this time, standing over the grave of someone Aouli didn't recognize, gripping a shard of metal in his bleeding palm.

The images didn't stop.

Each time Aouli blinked, the vision changed. Each new world was a forgotten catastrophe.

He tried to pull away.

The ink surged.

Veriss stepped closer, his voice no longer gentle.

"You have asked for truth," the Echo said. "The ink does not merely reflect your story. It reveals the context into which your story is born. The worlds before. The losses you carry unknowingly."

"I didn't want this," Aouli gasped.

"And yet, here you are."

The quill split.

Not broken—evolved.

It sprouted a second point.

And then a third.

Each one dripping with emotion given shape: fear, fury, yearning.

Aouli dropped it.

He turned away from the tome, breath ragged.

Behind him, Veriss stared impassively.

"You are not ready," the Echo said.

Aouli turned. "No. I'm just not finished."

But Veriss shook his head.

"You seek to write a story of life. But you cannot yet bear the weight of death. Your light is still reaction. You are still fleeing what you were meant to absorb."

A tremor passed through the ink river.

Aouli staggered.

Then realized: Kaero was gone.

A thin trail of ink, too deliberate to be natural, stretched down the edge of the platform and across a pale bridge of script-scrawled stone that hadn't existed before.

Aouli didn't hesitate.

He ran.

The bridge narrowed as he crossed it—an impossibly thin span suspended over swirling, wordless ink. Beneath, voices murmured without language, and shapes danced in the current like dying memories.

He found Kaero on the other side—motionless, standing in front of a wall that hadn't been there minutes before.

The wall was covered in scenes.

Moving ones.

A broken city. A shelter. A child. A scream.

A loop.

The same thirty seconds, playing over and over.

Kaero didn't speak.

Didn't move.

Aouli stepped beside him.

"Kaero," he whispered.

No response.

The world around them flickered.

A dome of ink and ash closed in, trapping them in a theatre of memory.

Aouli stepped in front of the wall.

"Kaero!"

The scavenger blinked.

Then slowly—so slowly—turned.

"She's in there," he said hoarsely.

"No. She's gone."

"I saw her. She said my name."

"It was the Inklands," Aouli said. "It echoed her."

Kaero stepped back. His eyes burned.

"You don't get it. I left her. I saved the system logs before I carried her out. I saved data, not my family."

His voice cracked.

"I've been trying to convince myself I did what I had to. But what if the truth is simpler?"

Aouli stepped forward.

"You did what you could."

"I did what I thought would make it hurt less later," Kaero snapped. "It didn't."

The memory-loop accelerated.

Aouli made a choice.

He stepped to the wall.

And instead of breaking it—

He wrote.

Not on paper.

Not with ink.

With light.

He traced a sentence into the air.

This memory belongs to grief. But so does the future.

The loop slowed.

Kaero staggered, breathing hard.

The wall cracked.

And shattered.

The dome dissolved.

They stood again on ash.

The bridge gone.

Only Veriss waited, silent.

Aouli's hand still glowed.

The light dimmed.

He had not finished his story.

But he had saved Kaero from his own.

And that, perhaps, was enough.