Then whoosh—it takes off. One wingbeat. Gone.
Vanished into the sky like a Tinder match who said "let's hang soon" and never replied again.
And I just stand there.
Looking up like maybe I'll get a sign. I don't.
I walk in.
The room's too warm. Too peaceful. The air feels filtered and artificial, like a hotel lobby scented with guilt and linen. Selain's still asleep. Blanket tucked around her like life never got loud. She fits this world too well.
Me?
I feel like a glitch. A narrative error someone forgot to edit out.
I take a breath. It shudders.
I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I am.
Something changed. I can't pretend otherwise.
I look at the ceiling like it's going to answer me. Rude. It doesn't.
Everything's still. Window open. Stars blinking like nosy little paparazzi.
Selain? Still out cold. Or playing dead to avoid emotional intimacy. Respect either way.
My thoughts are chaos.
Like, full PowerPoint presentation but every slide is just the word "WHY?" in Comic Sans.
Fog. Screams. That slab. The damn status screen. The whole "you're the Author now, congratulations?" thing.
Syres Vale.
Dead girl turned literary god.
Except not really. Because apparently I'm Seris now. New name, new trauma, same burnout.
I used to be sick. Like, "future GoFundMe poster child" sick. Hospital bed. Wires. Beeping machines and sterile walls. Books were my escape hatch. And now?
I might've rewritten reality.
Cool.
I look at my hands. They're shaking. Not scared. Just… overwhelmed. Purpose-adjacent. Like my body knows I've been assigned the boss fight but skipped the tutorial.
What do you even do when the world's yours to write?
Spoiler: panic.
I panic.
I stand up, feet hitting the floor like I'm announcing my resignation from passive living. The moonlight cuts across the room like a stage light. Melodramatic. I lean in.
"I spent sixteen years waiting to die," I say, because apparently I'm doing soliloquies now.
"Sixteen years behind glass, watching everyone else live. Sixteen years begging the universe for a chance to not fade."
My hands ball into fists.
"But now I've got something else. Not just a life—a story."
Oh god this is so cringe, but I keep going anyway.
"This world—Artelia—it's chaos and myth and a mess I might've made. But it's mine too. And I'll live it. I'll own it. Even if I don't remember how or why it exists. I'm done being forgotten."
I turn to the stars. Glaring at them like they owe me money.
"I'm going to live. Write. Matter. I'll scream my story loud enough the gods have to cover their ears. I'll be impossible to erase."
And breathe.
There's a pause. A dramatic, theatrical pause.
Then—
"…That was… dramatic."
I whip around.
Selain. Awake. Blinking. Looking at me like I just confessed to war crimes in poetry form.
I open my mouth. Regret fills it.
"I—how long were you—?"
Her voice is a whisper of fear and confusion and probably some third thing I'll unpack later.
"You… can talk."
Oh no.
Oh no.
Brain: abort mission, set the room on fire, become a rumor.
Mouth: "Oh sh*t."
So yeah. That happened.