It started with a box.
A dumb, torn-up cardboard box tucked behind winter coats nobody wore anymore in the hallway closet. One of those forgotten spaces families used as a graveyard for stuff they couldn't throw away but also couldn't explain why they kept.
August had gone in looking for duct tape to fix Maya's broken toy.
He came out holding a piece of his past he'd forgotten existed.
"Oh," he said to no one.
The box was heavier than it looked. Dust came off in clouds when he pulled it free. Inside: school notebooks with margins full of doodles, crumpled report cards (mostly B's, one spectacular F in PE), birthday cards covered in glitter from when his handwriting looked drunk, and at the very bottom, wrapped in an old Walmart bag like someone had tried to protect it…
A black sketchbook.
Thicker than his current one. The cover was scratched to hell, but the anime sword sticker in the corner was still there, half-peeled and faded. He'd put it there after watching something that made him cry in sixth grade.
He knew what this was before he even opened it.
The original. The first Arthur book.
August sat down right there on the hallway floor, back against the wall. The overhead light buzzed like a dying mosquito. Maya's cartoon laughter drifted from the living room. Normal sounds. Normal Saturday.
He opened the book.
There he was.
Arthur.
The early drawings were rougher. Heavier lines. More dramatic poses. Twelve-year-old August had definitely thought he was creating the coolest thing ever. Current August wanted to die a little from secondhand embarrassment.
"God, look at this edge lord," he whispered, but he was smiling.
Arthur stood tall in those first pages, sword out, coat billowing (there was always wind in twelve-year-old August's universe). Dark hair covering one eye. The scar more pronounced. There were comic panel attempts too, with dialogue bubbles:
"Mercy is a gift the dead can't afford."
August stared at it. Then snorted. "Bro. Who let me write like this?"
He turned the page.
More panels. Arthur fighting shadow creatures that looked like angry scribbles. Arthur falling off something tall. Arthur protecting someone (August couldn't tell who, they were drawn small, always behind him, always looking up at him like he was the only real thing in the world).
Then the pictures stopped.
Just words. Pages and pages of tiny handwriting, like he'd been racing to get it all down before it disappeared.
Chapter 6, apparently.
He'd forgotten he wrote actual chapters. Memory had turned it all into just drawings, but here it was. A whole story bleeding across the pages.
August shifted to get more comfortable and started reading.
Arthur was bleeding. Arthur was arguing with someone about the price of salvation. Arthur was walking away from a burning village because "ash doesn't judge and the dead don't need apologies."
(Okay, that line kind of went hard though.)
Then a sentence underlined three times in red pen:
"He had no name before this. So I gave him mine."
August's hand froze over the page.
He didn't remember writing that.
But it was his handwriting. His red pen. Even the way he curved his i's was the same.
"I made you up," he said quietly to the sketch. "You're not… you're just a story."
The sketchbook didn't answer. Obviously. Because it was paper and glue and his old imagination running wild.
But at the bottom of the page, in pencil so faint he almost missed it, was a note:
"Do you still remember why?"
The hallway suddenly felt smaller. The light dimmer. Even Maya's distant laughter seemed muffled, like he was underwater.
August touched the words carefully. They were real. Indented into the paper. Written by a hand.
But whose?
Time disappeared while he read.
Chapter 1: Arthur wakes up in a field where everything is dead. No memory of how he got there. Just scars he can't explain and a sword that feels heavier than it should. The sky is described as "bruised like God's knuckles after a bar fight."
August physically cringed. "Okay, calm down, baby Shakespeare."
But underneath the purple prose was something real. The loneliness came through. Arthur didn't talk for the entire first chapter. Just walked. Observed. Existed in a world that had already ended.
Chapter 2: Arthur finds a kid hiding in a collapsed house. Doesn't speak to him. Doesn't ask his name. Just clears the rubble, leaves half his food, and walks away. The kid calls after him but Arthur doesn't turn around.
August paused. He could see it so clearly. Not like memory of writing it, but like memory of watching it happen. Arthur's shoulders set against the weight. The careful way he'd placed the apple where the kid would find it. The sound of his boots on broken stone.
Chapter 3: Enter Kael. A man with one eye who smiled too much and said things like "You don't even flinch anymore. That's not strength, friend. That's rot."
August read that line four times.
In the margin, in different ink (blue this time, newer looking):
"Was he right?"
August's chest felt tight. He flipped pages faster now.
The story got darker. Arthur killed things that used to be people. Arthur saved people who didn't want to be saved. Arthur alone at night, sharpening a sword that never seemed sharp enough.
Then Chapter 9. A full-page drawing.
Arthur on his knees, one hand pressed to his chest like he was holding something in. Or keeping something from getting out. Behind him, the sketch of a city crumbling. Above him, nothing. Just white space where the sky should be.
Underneath, in that same rushed handwriting:
"I didn't want to be saved. I wanted to be remembered."
August sat in the hallway until his legs went fully numb. His mom's door was closed, the house settling into its nighttime quiet. Even Maya had gone to bed, probably after negotiating for "five more minutes" forty times.
He should get up. Should put the book away. Should go to bed and pretend this was just nostalgia hitting weird.
Instead, he whispered, "Arthur?"
Nothing happened.
Of course nothing happened.
Then the hallway light flickered. Just once. Quick enough to be nothing.
His heart hammered anyway.
August scrambled up, pins and needles shooting through his legs, and stumbled to his room. He shut the door and sat on his bed, sketchbook held like something that might explode.
This was stupid. He was being stupid. Lights flicker. Old writing looks mysterious when you're tired. That's all this was.
He opened to the first page again.
Arthur stared back. Same drawing. Same dark lines.
But now, underneath the first note, in writing so fresh it looked wet:
"You promised."
August dropped the book like it burned.
It landed face-up on his comforter. Arthur's drawn eyes somehow finding his anyway.
"This isn't real," August said out loud. His voice cracked. "This isn't real. You're not real."
The book lay still. Just paper. Just ink.
But August's hands shook as he picked it up again.
He flipped through randomly, needing to see something normal. His old drawings. His old stories. Things that stayed where he put them.
Instead, he found a page he definitely didn't remember.
It wasn't his writing. The letters were sharper. Angry. Like someone carved them into the paper:
"You LEFT me there."
August's blood went cold. He turned the page.
More writing. Same harsh style:
"In the dark. In the nothing. You PROMISED you'd come back."
Next page:
"But you grew up. And I stayed. And stayed. And stayed."
August slammed the book shut. His breathing came too fast. This wasn't (couldn't be) happening.
He shoved the sketchbook under his pillow. Not because he thought it would help. Not because he believed any of this.
But because some part of him, the twelve-year-old part maybe, felt guilty.
That night, he dreamed of empty fields and the sound of someone calling his name from very far away.
When he woke up, the sketchbook had moved.
It sat open on his desk, showing Chapter 10.
The final chapter.
The one where Arthur died.
August read the first line and felt something in his chest crack open:
"He knew the ending before it came. Heroes don't get to grow old. They just get to choose what they die for."
Underneath, in his twelve-year-old handwriting:
"I'm sorry, Arthur. But this is how stories end."
And below that, in the angry carved writing:
"No. This is how you ENDED me."
August backed away from the desk, heart hammering.
The morning sun made everything look normal. His room was just his room. The sketchbook was just paper.
But Arthur's drawn face looked different now.
He looked awake.
And he looked furious.